Jews in Poland in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

Introduction
The article offers an overview of Jewish history and the development of Jewish settlement in medieval and early modern Poland from the first recorded mentions of Jewish centers in the 11th century through to the end of the 18th century. As in the neighboring countries of Hungary and Bohemia, the...
Jürgen Heyde

Jewish History in Eastern Europe: The 19th Century

Introduction
In Jewish history, the 19th century stands for a time of comprehensive change in all areas of life. Jews, who had previously seen themselves primarily as a religious group, now became supporters of various political or national movements. This gave rise to a range of new, constantly contested Jewish...
Anke Hilbrenner

Jews in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe

A History Told in Six Female Jewish Voices
Introduction
The twentieth century brought monumental changes and unprecedented challenges to the East-European Jewry. Its story is told here in the voices of six Jewish women, whose lives were marked by its turbulent course.
Magdalena Waligórska

Object and collection histories

Background article

Góra Kalwaria or Ger

The fate of the Jewish town and the Alter family library
Góra Kalwaria was one of many shtetls in Poland whose Jewish life disappeared in the wake of WW II. Also goods of Jewish culture suffered immense losses. Particularly interesting is the wartime fate of library owned by tzaddik's family Alter. The history of its dispersal during WW II is exemplary...
Alina Skibińska | Igor Kąkolewski
Background article

In search of history at the Jewish Museum Vienna

The history of a Galician Torah crown
Each of the objects on display at the Jewish Museum Vienna was once intended for daily or ritual use in Jewish families and communities and is bound up with the fates of Jewish people. Together, the objects, each torn from their original context, provide a memorial to the Jews who were displaced and...
Carolin Kayali
Object story

Wroclaw - Shanghai - Munich

A wardrobe trunk testifies to the fate of a Wroclaw Jew
A special object was donated to the Silesian Museum in Görlitz in November 2014: a large, solidly built wardrobe trunk. This imposing piece of luggage and furniture bears the markings of long journeys and intensive use. In 1939, it accompanied Herbert Schneidemann on his escape to Shanghai.
Markus Bauer
Object story

Max Mannheimer and his silver-gray Tatra 87

Max Mannheimer (1920-2016) was an institution, as a painter and storyteller, as a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the Dachau Camp Community.
Peter Becher

Places of remembrance and practices of remembrance

Background article

Places of commemoration of the Shoa in Szeged, Hungary

The Jewish community of Szeged in Hungary has a rich heritage dating back two centuries. Many of their descendants perished in the Holocaust, when Szeged was made the main deportation center for the region. The purpose of the following post is to showcase the Holocaust memorials erected by the...
Dóra Pataricza
Background article

Memorials in Wrocław

Remembering the Breslau Jewish community in the years prior to 1945.
The Jewish community in Breslau, which was the third-largest in the German Reich in 1925, was forgotten for many years. However, after 1989, new interest in local history began to emerge in Wrocław, Poland. Nowadays, monuments and a commemorative procession serve as reminders of the Jewish people...
Maria Luft
Background article

The Białystok Ghetto Cemetery as a Setting of Historical-Political Disputes

The history of the necropolis in eastern Poland acts like a burning glass, a focal point of the upheavals of the 20th century and Polish-Jewish relations after the Shoa. Today, remembrance of this historically significant site alternates between disinterest, urban image cultivation, and a ritualized...
Luca Thoma
Background article

Return and Redemption

Hasidic pilgrimages in contemporary Poland and Ukraine
This text highlights the diverse landscape of Hasidism and contemporary Hasidic pilgrimage in Poland and Ukraine.
Alla Marchenko
Background article

Synagogue, Workers’ University, Cultural Center

The Il Kal Grande in Sarajevo
Once the largest Sephardic synagogue in Yugoslavia, the Il Kal Grande was built in 1930 in the center of Sarajevo. After its partial destruction by german soldiers in 1941, the building has fulfilled a number of different functions and had a varied history, that is little known to this day.
Michael Ilg

Lifeworld perspectives

Jewish Postcard Publishers and the Imagery of the Urban

Background article
In numerous cities across eastern Europe, Jewish publishers enjoyed notable success on the newly established postcard market. This article presents a socio-historical background of this topic and asks whether their social positioning influenced the depictions of the urban world they chose to feature...
Vincent Hoyer | Maren Röger

Laima chocolate – a Riga icon

Latvia’s most famous confectioner and its Jewish origins
Background article
If you’ve ever visited Latvia, you’ll probably have heard of the chocolate brand Laima. Perhaps you’ll even have seen the Laima Clock, a popular meeting point in central Riga. Laima products have been among Latvia’s most successful exports all the way back to the 1920s. What’s less well...
Katja Wezel

The culinary Ashkenaz

Jewish food cultures in Eastern Europe
Background article
Ashkenazi Judaism is inseparably linked to Eastern Europe. Unique Jewish ways of life evolved here, only to be virtually annihilated by the Shoah. And yet, specific Ashkenazi eating habits, with their mix of religious rules and regional influences, survive in many places around the world today, in...
Gunther Hirschfelder | Antonia Reck | Jana Stöxen

Biographical approaches

Samuel Fränkel

A Berlin Jew as a Financier of Polish Industrialization in the Early 19th Century
Biography
The Berlin Jew Samuel Fränkel (1773-1833) settled in Warsaw in 1798 as a representative of a large bank. Within a few years and across numerous political breaks, Fränkel rose to become the most important banker in a divided Poland. In doing so, Fränkel always successfully drew on his...
Markus Nesselrodt

Fritz Lamm: A diary as a companion during his escape in 1936

Biography
Fritz Lamm describes his escape from the Nazi persecution of Jews from Stettin via Switzerland and Austria to Prague in his previously unpublished diary.
Christian Lotz

Hungarian – Communist – Jew?

The many lives of Ernő Gáll (1917-2000), the philosopher without a homeland
Background article
This article sheds light on some facets of the life of the philosopher Ernő Gáll, who as a Jew, a communist, and a Hungarian was both politically persecuted and a perpetrator. A committed intellectual, he acted as a mediator between different political factions and hostile ethnic groups throughout...
Franz Sz. Horváth

Published by

Heidi Hein-Kircher
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Igor Kąkolewski
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Martina Niedhammer
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Eva Reder
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