Coming to Terms with the Dark Past: Memory of the Holocaust in Poland

Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in Europe before the Second World War, and in recent decades, memory of the Holocaust has been intertwined with political debates about Polish national identity as the country has grappled with this history. This series will explore the complications of Poland’s long process of coming to terms with the dark past and its relevance for our current moment, drawing on the speech of a Holocaust survivor in Poland, Marian Turski, who spoke at Auschwitz during the commemoration of the 75^th anniversary of the camp’s liberation.

Karen Auerbach is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where she teaches Jewish history, East European history and the history of the Holocaust. Her first book, The House at Ujazdowskie 16: Jewish Families in Warsaw after the Holocaust, was published in 2013, and her second book, The Nighttime Butterfly: A Catholic Woman and Her Jewish Family in Warsaw at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, is forthcoming in July. Previously she taught at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and was a journalist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Star-Ledger of Newark