The new Polish school of Holocaust history

On 14 and 15 January 2005, the BNF hosted the symposium "Jews and Poland, 1939-2004: Multiform Aspects of the Past". It was opened the day before by two key witnesses, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Simone Veil, and concluded with a conference by Marek Edelman, then the last survivor of the Warsaw ghetto insurgent headquarters from Lodz to give his testimony. 

The novelty of this conference was the presentation to the French public of the work of a new historical school, work carried out in the context of the emergence of the Jewish past in Polish society and the opening of the archives.

Almost fifteen years later, as witnesses disappeared and the Polish government pursued a "historical policy" aimed at undermining or even denying the participation of part of the Polish population in the hunting and murder of Jews in Poland, the researchers met in Paris in 2005 made a name for themselves. Together with others, they published books of great importance, shedding light on the question of Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War and in the years that followed.

It is an intellectual, moral and political requirement to make French researchers, and a wider public, aware of the richness of the work carried out in Poland.

Scientific and organizational Committee : Olga Byrska (EHESS), Audrey Kichelewski (Université de Strasbourg), Judith Lyon-Caen (EHESS), Jean-Charles Szurek (CNRS), Dominique Trimbur (FMS), Annette Wieviorka (CNRS), Claire Zalc (EHESS/CNRS).

International colloquium

Thursday 21 and Friday 22 February 2019

EHESS
Amphithéâtre François Furet
105, boulevard Raspail 
75006 Paris

Programme in French (pdf)

In French and Polish, with simultaneous translation
Free entrance

Conference of Jan T. Gross

As part of this conference, the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and the Collège de France are organizing a public lecture by historian Jan Tomasz Gross, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.

Thursday 21 February 2019, 17h

Collège de France
Amphithéâtre Marguerite de Navarre
11, place Marcelin-Berthelot
75005 Paris

The conference (in French) is available on line. 

Partners of the colloquium

Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah
EHESS
CNRS : Institute of Modern and Contemporary History and Institute of Social Sciences of Politics
Historical Research Centre (EHESS-CNRS)
Center for Holocaust Research (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)
Polish Academy of Sciences - Science Centre in Paris
University of Strasbourg
History Magazine