Between October 3rd and 6th, 2010 the International Institute for Holocaust Research in Yad Vashem and the Diana Zborowski Center for the Study of the Aftermath of the Shoah are organizing in Jerusalem the international conference “The Aftermath of the Holocaust: Poland 1944-2010”. The proceedings will be in English with simultaneous translation into Hebrew.

The conference will be constituted of 9 sessions: “Opening Session”, “Survivors’ First Encounters with Post-War Polish Society”, “The Immediate Memory”, “Polish Attitudes Toward the Remaining Jews, 1948-1968”, “Rebuilding Jewish Public Life: First Steps”, “Commemoration and Traces of Presence”, “Polish-Jewish Relations: Questions of Conscience and Consciousness”, “What Has Remained?”, “Concluding Lecture”. The lectures will be devoted to diverse subjects, among others the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968, Jewish religious life in Poland after the Holocaust, the consciousness of the Holocaust among Polish youth after 1989, Yiddish culture in Poland after the Shoah, concentration camps as places of commemoration, post-war emigration of Jews from Poland, reactions of the Polish population towards the Jewish Holocaust Survivors and traces of presence of Jews in Poland. The subject of the Righteous Among the Nations will also be discussed: Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak will give the lecture “Gratitude and Oblivion: The Attitudes of Poles and Jews Towards the Righteous, 1944/5-2007” and Joanna Michlic will talk about the “Representations of Rescuers and Relationships Between Rescued and Rescuers In the Light of Letters to the Central Committee of Polish Jews, 1945-1949”.

In the conference will participate representatives of numerous Polish and international institutions researching the history of Jews, such as: the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Jewish Historical Institute, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Warsaw University, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Jagiellonian University, the Princeton University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Brandeis University in Massachussetts, the Haifa University, the Ben Gurion University in Be’er Sheva and Yad Vashem. Among numerous academics and researchers of the history and culture of Polish Jews who will present their lectures are: Antony Polonsky, Israel Gutman, Feliks Tych, August Grabski, Helena Datner, Andrzej Żbikowski, Eleonora Bergman, Jan Tomasz Gross, Jan Jagielski, Antoni Sułek, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Boaz Cohen, Tamar Lewinsky.

The Conference is underwritten by Eli Zborowski and Family, with the suport of The Gertner Center for International Holocaust Conferences and the Gutwirth Family Fund.