Reassembling Jewish Life in Poland

Even as attacks on Jews in Western Europe have gained attention, recent studies have “revisited” Jewish Poland (Lehrer 2013) and documented the “return of the Jew” (Reszke 2013) in a country that has long been associated with antisemitism. The figure of the Jew remains a multivalent symbol in Poland, resilient even in the face of the destruction of Jewish culture during the Holocaust and erasure of its traces during state socialism. My research on Jewish heritage asks what can be done with the fragments of Jewish culture that remain in Poland, sometimes hidden and sometimes in plain sight. And what value does such memory work have? It might appear that too little is left, or that any attempt to piece together fragments will just expose more horror, trauma, and death. Nevertheless, the steady growth of interest in Jewish culture in Poland can be seen in major projects like Warsaw’s new Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and in much quieter ways in smaller communities throughout the country. I examine the ways contemporary memory projects piece together the fragments of Jewish lives (and deaths). If you know where to look, they can be found even in places where whole Jewish communities and their most visible elements have been destroyed. These fragments can reveal something about the past, even if it is just in an incomplete and shattered form. And they can point toward the future—the possibilities that might emerge out of reassembling Jewish life in Poland.