Jewish Cemeteries in Poland: Spaces for Negotiating Memory and Cultural Heritage

The aim of my lecture is to present the distinctive status, and the meaning of Jewish cemeteries in Poland, and the various preservation activities taking place around them. I will analyze the meaning of burial sites to the Jewish community living in Poland, to Jewish descendants of Polish Jews living all around the world, who are now searching for the burial sites of their ancestors, as well as to the representatives of Polish institutions, and Jewish organizations participating in negotiations on managing Jewish cemeteries. Furthermore, the relation of closest neighbors – Poles living in different towns, engaging in contact with cemeteries in their everyday life – towards these sites is quite significant for my study. I take a closer look at the communities, the activists, and the “self-taught” experts involved, who take part in creating an innovative field of knowledge, by negotiating different strategies, tactics, and practices in order to maintain, what remains of these sites.

The questions I raise are, how memory is used to understand and perceive Jewish cultural heritage? What are the role, and the significance of memory in cemetery preservation? How is the concept of heritage used to preserve and maintain these sites?

My lecture is based on data collected during almost nine years of ethnographic research, field inventory and documentation, my own cemetery preservation and cleaning activities, as well as my work in the Jewish Historical Institute, where I consult and research the documentation, commemoration, preservation, and maintenance of Jewish cemeteries in Poland.