Between Shtetl and Metropolis: Writing Jewish Urban History in East Central Europe | Keynote Lecture

Natalia Aleksiun’s keynote accompanied the international conference "The Accidental Metropolis? Jewish Łódź from 1800 to present", organized on August 25, 2024 in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto.

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In December 1929, Filip Friedman, a Vienna-trained historian, and a teacher at a prestigious Jewish high school for boys in Łódź, organized a study group for his students. They were to investigate the past as part of their after-school activities program with student presentations, discussions, and excursions. While urban history was not their only focus, they paid particular attention to the history of the city and its surroundings. Local urban history was deemed to be important for the young generation of Polish Jews. This talk will explore how Polish Jews referred to urban Jewish history as a way of framing their own lived experience. It will ask why the Jewish history of Łódź mattered to Polish Jews before the Holocaust, and how the Jewish urban history of Eastern Europe continues to offer a crucial lens for Jewish urban studies and Jewish history more broadly.

Dr. Natalia Aleksiun is the Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville. She holds doctoral degrees from Warsaw University, Poland, and NYU, U.S. She has written extensively on the history of Polish Jews, the Holocaust, Jewish intelligentsia in East Central Europe, Polish-Jewish relations, and modern Jewish historiography. In addition to her 2021 book "Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust" (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization), she is the author of "Dokąd dalej? Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce 1944–1950" (Where To? The Zionist Movement in Poland, 1944–1950) (Warsaw, 2002) and editor of several volumes, including "Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 29: Writing Jewish History in Eastern Europe" (2017) with Brian Horowitz and Antony Polonsky and "European Holocaust Studies, vol. 3: Places, Spaces and Voids in the Holocaust" (2021) with Hana Kubátová. She edited a critical edition of Gerszon Taffet’s "Zagłada Żydów żółkiewskich" (2019). She also serves as co-editor of "East European Jewish Affairs." Currently, she is completing a new book about Jews in hiding in western Ukraine during the Holocaust.