Transnationalism of Polish Jews in the First Years after the Holocaust: Sources, Methods and Relevance for Today''s Global Jewish Historiography

Joseph Lebovic Lecture

Kamil Kijek (University of Wroclaw)

"Transnationalism of Polish Jews in the First Years after the Holocaust: Sources, Methods and Relevance for Today''s Global Jewish Historiography"

In my lecture I will speak about the transnationalism of Polish Jewish community in the first years after the Holocaust (1945-1950). By defending somewhat controversial hypothesis that both in the dimensions of collective, institutional and private Jewish transnational contacts between Poland, Western Europe, North and South America, Land of Israel – this phenomenon had reached its peak in this period (and not in the years 1918-1939), I will show the relevance of this problem, as well as sources and research methods connected to it, for new directions in global post-Holocaust Jewish historiography.

Kamil Kijek is a Assistant Professor at the Jewish Studies Department, University of Wrocław, Poland. He has been a Prins Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Jewish History in New York and Sosland Family Fellow at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. During his doctoral studies he held various fellowships in Israel, Germany and United Kingdom. His research interest include Central-East European Jewish History in the end of XIX and in XX century, social and cultural theory.

A few of Kamil Kijek’s publications include:

    “Dzieci modernizmu. Świadomość i socjalizacja polityczna młodzieży żydowskiej w Polsce międzywojennej” [Children of modernism. Socialization and Political Consciousness of the Jewish Youth in Interwar Poland], Wrocław 2017
    „Jewish Lives under Communism. New Perspectives”, eds. Kamil Kijek, Katerina Capková, New Brunswick, N.J., 2022
    “Was It Possible to avoid ‘Hebrew Assimilation’? Hebraism, Polonization, and the Zionist “Tarbut” School System in the Last Decade of Interwar Poland”, “Jewish Social Studies”, vol. 21.2, 2016, p. 105-141
    „Between love of Poland, symbolic violence and anti-Semitism. On the idiosyncratic effect of the state education system among the Jewish youth in Interwar Poland” [in:] “Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry”, vol. 30, 2018, p. 237-264.
    He has edited (with Grzegorz Krzywiec) special issue of “Kwartalnik Historii Żydów”, vol. 28 (258), 2016, devoted to the problems of anti-Semitism in Poland in the years 1905-1939 and with co-edited three collected studies Polish language volumes on the problems of anti-Jewish violence in XX century Poland (eds. Kamil Kijek. Artur Markowski, Konrad Zieliński „Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku. t. 3: Historiografia, polityka, recepcja społeczna (do 1939 roku)”, Warszawa 2019; eds. Kamil Kijek. Artur Markowski, Konrad Zieliński „Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku. t. 2: Studia przypadków (do 1939 roku)”, Warszawa 2019; eds. Kamil Kijek, Konrad Zieliński „Przemoc antyżydowska i konteksty akcji pogromowych na ziemiach polskich w XX wieku”, Lublin 2017

His current book project is entitled Polish Shtetl after the Holocaust? Jews in Dzierżoniów, 1945-1950

In 2018 he has received an international prize for an outstanding publication in the topic of "Jews and Illiberal Regimes in Eastern Europe after 1917" granted by The Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East-European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for the book "Dzieci modernizmu."

 
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This lecture will be delivered in-person at JHB100 and virtually via Zoom.