Call for papers: Conference 80 years after Aktion Reinhardt (1942-1943): social reactions and commemoration

We invite you to submit paper proposals for the international conference "80 Years After Aktion Reinhardt (1942-1943): Social Reactions and Commemoration," organized by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum and the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. The conference will be held in Warsaw on September 21-22, 2022.

In the spring of 1942, the Germans – under the codename "Operation Reinhardt" – began the deportation and murder of Jews from the General Government and Bezirk Białystok. They were killed in three extermination centers established for this purpose. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest in German-occupied Europe. It was from Warsaw that, for eight weeks, from July 22 to September 21, 1942 (Yom Kippur), transports to the Treblinka extermination camp departed without interruption. By November 1943, when "Operation Reinhardt" ended, over 1,5 million Polish Jews, as well as Jews from other countries of occupied Europe, had been murdered. The conference, organized by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum and the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, is being held on the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the extermination of Polish Jews.

The first goal of the conference is to examine the collective and individual responses of two communities, Jewish and Polish, during the period of terror and mass deportations to extermination camps. The second goal is to examine and compare the course of the liquidation operations in the Warsaw Ghetto and in various locations across five districts of the General Government. The consequences for the Jewish community and its relations with the non-Jewish population are also important. The third goal is to examine ways of commemorating the sites of the former camps established as part of "Operation Reinhardt."

In particular, we would like to draw your attention to:

Rumors and facts: when did news of the fate of the deportees reach the ghettos?
Jews in the largest ghettos: how did they react to information about the fate of the deported?
Jews in small and peripheral ghettos: how did they react to information about the fate of the deportees?
Actions of the Judenrat, the Jewish Order Service and other institutions on the eve of and during the deportation.
Hiding and Escape: The Response of Jewish Families, Jewish Women, and Individuals to the Incoming Information about the Holocaust: Knowledge, Awareness, and Action.
Diaries and letters: descriptions of deportations as they occurred.
Relationships between Jews and Poles in the "open" ghettos in the light of news about deportations.
Witnesses to deportation: Poles in cities, small towns and villages facing the liquidation of ghettos; the problem of abandoned Jewish property.
Poles living near death camps: daily life and the extermination apparatus
Memoirs: Postwar Jewish and Polish Writing on Deportation and the Holocaust
Artistic images of deportation and extermination (literature, art, cinema, theater)
Commemoration: extermination camp sites 80 years after Operation Reinhard.

The organizers invite researchers (especially young scientists) representing such disciplines as humanities, social sciences and art: history, sociology, psychology, political science, archaeology, cultural studies, art history, etc. to send proposals of their presentations at the planned conference to the following address: conference@jhi.pl.
The deadline for submitting applications is 31 March 2022 r.

Applications of up to 500 words must be accompanied by a short biography. We will notify you of the selected proposal by April 30, 2022. The organizers' coverage of participants' travel costs to Warsaw and hotel accommodations (up to three nights) during the conference depends on the amount of the grant awarded to the organizers. We anticipate publication of selected articles.

Organizing committee: prof. dr hab. Andrzej Żbikowski (ŻIH), dr Martyna Grądzka-Rejak (MGW), prof. Daniel Blatman (MGW).

Conference organizers: