© Maciej Andrzejewski
Your project “Mapping Jewish Lódz” is based on 35 interviews with Jewish citizens of the city who represent different backgrounds and experiences.
1. What perspectives on Jewish life can be shown and how?
The interviews used in the project are a unique source that illustrates the fate of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century. The individuals sharing their stories came primarily from the Jewish middle and working classes. Their recollections place strong emphasis on issues of education, emancipation, and the modernization of the community. Wartime experiences – exclusion, expulsion, and persecution – are particularly prominent. Among the interviews are also the voices of individuals who chose to remain in Łódź after the war and take part in rebuilding the city’s Jewish life. All of these experiences are tied to specific, identifiable spaces. These place-based experiences are used by students to create projects – an exhibition in the urban space and a node-exhibition in a gallery setting.
The connection between individual stories and today's cityscape of Lódz plays a central role in the project.
2. How do students experience this form of engagement with history and what significance does the specific urban space have for your educational work?
Working on the project is a significant challenge for the students of the Academy of Fine Arts, who begin to discover completely new meanings and contexts within the familiar urban landscape. For many of them, these revelations were deeply surprising, reflecting the current state of public knowledge in Łódź about the city’s history and the experiences of its Jewish residents. By presenting everyday life within the space of Łódź, the aim is to break the prevailing narrative that frames Jewish presence solely through the lens of Holocaust commemoration – through sites of persecution marked by tragic experiences. Themes of privacy and everyday life are a key component of the planned educational walking routes that follow the places mentioned in the interviews.
An additional and considerable challenge will be the work on installing the student-created art installations at specific urban sites. These installations will enable interaction with local residents and passersby, thereby enhancing the educational potential of the project.
In the 2025 presidential election, Karol Nawrocki was elected as a representative of the national conservative camp.
3. How do you assess the impact of this political development on civil society engagement and remembrance education in Poland?
The conservative camp places great importance on education about history and the commemoration of the wartime experiences of citizens, which – somewhat paradoxically – also influences projects dedicated to Jewish themes. However, experiences from recent years show that topics related to Polish-Jewish history can become subject to manipulation and political influence, which in turn leads to the distortion of the historical narrative. Particularly dangerous are recent examples of the far right tolerating and trivializing voices of Holocaust denial. At the same time, we have observed with deep concern the phenomenon of Holocaust memorial sites and places connected to Jewish history being vandalized by elements of the anti-Israeli radical left.
Often referred to as the “red city” due to its working-class past, Łódź is a liberal city free from nationalist political influence, and the University is a strong and independent institution. This creates an environment of great freedom and comfort for academic and educational work on Jewish history.
