Artistic Life in the Vilnius Ghetto : Methodological Questions and Historical Sociology

Recent historiographical developments in Holocaust studies have been greatly influenced by the perspectives and methods of the social sciences, particularly through the rise of micro-historical research (Bartov, 2020, Hajkova, 2021). However, historical sociology studies focused on the Holocaust remain relatively rare (Pollak, 1991). In this presentation, I aim to address some methodological questions based on ongoing research into the social functions of artistic and cultural activities in the Vilnius Ghetto (1941-1943).

The Vilnius Ghetto was the site of intense artistic activity between January 1942 and August 1943, a period framed by two waves of mass killings in which 95% of the city's Jewish population was exterminated. Historians have often highlighted the "hallucinatory" memories survivors retained of the vibrant cultural life that flourished in the ghetto (Minczeles, 2000). Others have underscored the heated debates this artistic activity provoked, with the resistance within the ghetto declaring, "You don’t perform theater in a cemetery." (Porat, 2018)

How can we now reconstruct and comprehend the nature and forms of cultural life in the Vilnius Ghetto? In this presentation, I intend to explore the possibilities for developing a historical sociology of cultural practices in the Vilnius Ghetto by comparing two types of sources:

- Contemporary sources from within the ghetto, particularly the few diaries written by its residents.

- Post-war testimonies, primarily oral interviews with survivors.

The comparative value of these sources has long been debated. I propose to revisit these debates through the lens of cultural sociology: What types of cultural practices and social functions can be discerned from one source or the other? Under what conditions, and with what limitations, can these sources be used to analyze the social roles of cultural activities?