The question of how to write the history of the CEE Jewry after 1989/91 remains crucial for all the so-called 'bloodlands'. The problem of how – as a majority – to address the past and tell the story of the exterminated diaspora is part of that question.
I intend to examine the phenomenon of heritage tourism, Jewish revival and new philosemitism (Gruber 2002, Lehrer 2013, Zubrzycki 2016) in Polish city museums. I aim to utilize the concept of philosemitic violence (Janicka and Żukowski 2016). I believe that the described tendency serves to recreate the discourse on multiculturalism of the CEE region in the past and therefore to renegotiate the definition of contemporary national identity. The memory of the Jewish diaspora is used to promote multiculturalism and serves that goal well, as the operation is conducted on the memory of the majority-minority relations – without addressing current problems and divisions. Moreover, it allows for the omission of the "difficult" parts of history, and re-writing the story of Central European Jewry through the prism of the narrative forged by the dominant groups.
Hypothesis: The role of memory of the Central European Jewry is often politicized and used in order to negotiate the majority's identity by its juxtaposition with the diaspora. Nostalgia for the multicultural past of the region allows to perform the diaspora (Brubaker 2005) for the majority in the now ethnically homogenous societies.
I would like to reflect on the issue of how the majority commemorates the minority culture and why? How Jewish heritage is being restored and preserved by the non-Jewish majority? What is the role of that heritage in the boundary-making process – how the diaspora and the nation are being performed in that case (Bubaker 2005)? What kind of narrative does it build? What kind of frames the majority uses when approaching the issue? In order to answer those questions, I am planning to analyze two city museums: the Museum of the City of Łódź and Podlaskie Museum in Białystok. I intend to examine how local memory and cult of famous individuals with Jewish roots (like Ludwik Zamenhof or Julian Tuwim) intermingle with the national narrative. I plan to conduct both discourse and visual analysis of the current museums' exhibitions as well as conduct archival research in order to gain historical perspecive on how the expositions had been designed and re-designed.
