The Power of Place: The Jewish Renaissance, Performative Memory, and Commemoration of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Łódź, Poland 2011 to 2024.
From April 30, 1940 , until August 29, 1944, between 150,000 to 240,000 Jewish and Romani people worked in over 100 factories in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Łódź Poland. Only 8,000-10,000 of the people who were imprisoned in this Ghetto survived the Second World War. Today the Taube Foundation in New York City reports that, 65% of the world's Jewish population have ancestors from Poland. In order to study and to 'unsilence' Polish history, the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center was established in 2010. The Center is an institution that deals with performative memory, historical narratives and the embodiment of Jewish life in Poland and since 2011 it has been holding annual commemoration ceremonies, concerts, public lectures, book readings, educational walking tours of the Ghetto, and cultural festivals that showcase Jewish cultural traditions, the Yiddish language and Jewish life in pre-war Poland. In order to understand the development of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto memorialization project, this paper will analyze data collected from: 1) a systematic thematic analysis of the 3,000 pages of the Lodz Ghetto Chronicle published by Jewish journalists documenting everyday life in this working ghetto; 2) participant observational field work completed in 2019 and 2022; 3) a review of the Dialogue Center's annual programs: and 4) interviews of leaders from the local and international Jewish community. In conclusion this paper’s analysis will focus on how the Dialogue Center in tandem with Jewish and non-Jewish communities, has crossed the ‘Bridge of Silence’ and is stimulating interest in Polish-Jewish history by actively engaging in proposing a historical narrative that is rooted in confronting the memories of the collective violence that took place in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto during the Second World War.