Datum/Zeit
Date(s) - 09/05/2019
18:00 - 21:00
Veranstaltungsort
Zentrum für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
Kategorien
History and memory of the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust
– a meeting with Anna Bikont and Mark Roseman
When: Thursday the 9th May, 6 pm
Where: ZHF Berlin, Majakowskiring 47, 13156 Berlin
End of 2017 Anna Bikont published a very interesting book on Irena
Sendler, a collaborator of Żegota (the Polish Council to Aid Jews),
who dedicated herself to rescuing Jewish children during the
Holocaust. Not putting Sendler’s heroism into question, the book,
entitled Sendlerowa. W ukryciu (Sendler. In Hiding) dismantles the
myths surrounding this figure. Bikont also tells how this story has
been, and still is being remembered and instrumentalized. Doing so in
a broader sense she also questions established narratives on the
rescue of Jews in Poland.
Almost two decades earlier, in 2000 Mark Roseman published a
fascinating book on Marianne Strauss, a young Jewish women from Essen,
who managed to survive the Second World War by hiding in various
places all over Germany while the rest of her family perished in the
Holocaust. The book entitled A Past in Hiding not only tells in a very
impressive way about what it meant to be a Jew in Nazi Germany but
also reflects on how the story has been repeatedly told and retold by
Marianna thereafter. Roseman’s upcoming book Lives Reclaimed: A Story
of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany (August 2019) can be seen as
a sequel to it.
Though Bikont´s book is set in occupied Poland, while the book by
Roseman focuses on Nazi Germany there are many similarities between
them. Firstly, both works deal with Jews trying to survive the
Holocaust and people assisting them. Secondly, the phrase “in hiding”
in both titles can be understood twofold, as a reference to the
actual World War Two experience, but also as a description of the
later process of coming to terms with these narratives, of how they
have been dealt with, silenced, (mis)represented and repeatedly
reinterpreted after 1945.
In the meeting with Anna Bikont and Mark Roseman we will discuss the
conditions and circumstances of Jewish survival during World War Two
in occupied Poland and Nazi Germany. We will also discuss how the
memory of the rescue has been shaped after the war. Finally, we will
attempt to enhance a universal reflection on how to tell such stories
in an appropriate way.
The discussion will be moderated by Zofia
Wóycicka<www.cbh.pan.pl/de/dr-zofia-w%C3%B3ycicka>.
Anna Bikont is a well-known Polish writer and journalist, columnist of
the biggest Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. She published a number of
books on contemporary Polish history including Lawina i kamienie.
Pisarze wobec komunizmu (Avalanche and stones. Writers towards
Communism, together with Joanna Szczęsna, 2006), Sendlerowa. W ukryciu
(Sendler. In Hiding, 2017) and Jacek (a biography of Jacek Kuroń,
together with Helena Łuczywo, 2018). Her book My z Jedwabnego (We from
Jedwabne), first published in Polish in 2004, won the European Book
Prize in 2011. It was published in English in 2015 as The Crime and
the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne.
Mark Roseman is a British-American historian and Holocaust expert. He
is professor of Jewish Studies at the Indiana University
(Bloomington). He authored a number of books on the Holocaust and
modern German history including: Recasting the Ruhr 1945-1959:
Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations (1992), Generations
in conflict. Youth rebellion and generation formation in modern
Germany 1770-1968 (1995) and The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee
and the Final Solution (2002). For his book A Past in Hiding he has
been awarded the Mark Lynton History Prize (2002) and the
Geschwister-Scholl-Preis (2003). His upcoming book Lives Reclaimed
also deals with the question of the rescue of Jews during the
Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
The discussion will be held in English.