BRESLAU/WROCŁAW 1933-1949: STUDIES ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE SHOAH

Event program

As part of the MultiMemo project, our partner organization Urban Memory Foundation organized a series of three events in Wrocław on November 23 and 24, 2023, related to the premiere of the book “Breslau/Wrocław 1933 – 1949: Studies on the topography of the Holocaust”, touching on topics related to the project. The series included: 1) a scientific session, 2) a public session as part of the OP_BOOKS series and 3) a city walk around Jewish places related to the history of the Holocaust discussed in the book. UMF, together with its partners, the Dresden University of Technology, the Department of Jewish Studies of the University of Wrocław, the OP ENHEIM Foundation and the German-Polish Foundation for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, invited the academic community and the general public of Wrocław to a series of meetings with editors Maria Luft and prof. Tim Buchen and the book’s co-authors: Annelies Augustyns, Karolina Jara, Agnieszka Jabłońska and Daniel Ljunggren.

In the book, which was the focus of our series of events, the authors take a new look at the history of the Holocaust in Wrocław. The interdisciplinary team selected various perspectives and contexts in which exclusion, persecution and extermination occurred in urban space and reconstructed places and spheres of Jewish life: work and housing, religion and politics, art and culture. The effects of the Holocaust were also examined in retrospect – for example in relation to cemeteries, city cartography, memories of Wrocław or archival sources regarding the Holocaust. The talks during the series of events concerned, among others: the importance of topography and the adopted unusual time frame of research, 1933–1949, as opposed to the usual look at the history of Wrocław before and after 1945. The adopted perspective allowed us to notice the interconnection of worlds, the pre- and post-war ones, and to notice the continuity of some processes, such as functioning of the school in the building at the current Żelazna Street, liquidation of the Jewish cemetery at Gwarna Street, or contemporary challenges related to the preservation and commemoration of some places, such as the area of the New Synagogue at Łąkowa Street, where the 19th-century foundations of the building are still located.

The book is the result of several years of research work by an international interdisciplinary team of 22 people from 6 countries, conducted in 2018–2021 by the Dresden University of Technology. It was published in October 2023 by Neofelis Verlag, and the texts were written in English or German.

photos Wojciech Chrubasik