No simple stories: UCL colloquium on Jewish-Lithuanian relations
6-7 February, 2011. This one- and a half-day colloquium "No simple stories: Jewish-Lithuanian relations between coexistence and violence", brings together experts from many important fields - Jewish history in eastern Europe, Lithuanian history, the history of World War Two and the Holocaust. The colloquium will also hear from specialists in interethnic violence theory, in order to understand the discrepancy between long centuries of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Lithuanians and the short period of extreme violence during World War Two.
The researchers will discuss various scholarly explanations given for this violence. This investigation will combine an assessment of long-term features of Lithuanian-Jewish coexistence between the late 18th and early 20th centuries with an appraisal of political developments after the establishment of Lithuania as independent state.
The colloquium combines three perspectives: theory of interethnic violence, historical appraisal of the traditions of Jewish-Lithuanian coexistence and the history of occupied Lithuania, 1940-1945. It aims to reconstruct the process of changing Lithuanian–Jewish relations in different historical eras and thereby to to dissect the complex issues which took place between the two groups. Amongst the questions raised will be:
- What legal, political, socio–cultural and economical mechanisms regulated the relations between the two ethnic groups?
- To what extent did tolerance, ignorance and recognition play themselves out in Jewish– Lithuanian relations?
- How did mutual stereotypes and myths form? What were the dynamics of their spread and the ways they were overcome?
- What was the degree of anti–Jewish violence, what determined it and who implemented it? What was the reaction of Lithuanian society to this violence?
- What were the relationships between Lithuanian society and Jews living in it? How did they differ or were they similar to those of other societies in Central and Eastern Europe?
On the widely–researched topic of Lithuanian–Jewish relations in the context of the Holocaust in Lithuania, the organizers of the conference also propose to raise the following questions:
- How were the relations of these two groups affected by the Soviet occupation of 1940?
- What role was indicated for local inhabitants in the national socialists’ plans to kill Jews?
- Which social and regional groups did the Lithuanians who participated in mass killings of the Jews belong to?
- What was the social portrait of those Lithuanians who saved Jews?
By addressing such issues of fundamental significance for the understanding of Jewish-Lithuanian coexistence in all its complexity, the IJS and the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies will closely cooperate with Lithuanian colleagues. The colloquium will offer a unique opportunity to contextualize questions which are both extremely sensitive and highly important. By organizing such an event, the IJS responds to high expectations from the general public to address this topic.
Colloquium
February 6th – 7th 2011
No simple stories:
Jewish-Lithuanian relations between coexistence and violence
Conference convenors:
Dr François Guesnet
Sidney and Elizabeth Corob Lecturer in Modern Jewish History
Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies
University College London
Dr Darius Staliūnas
Lithuanian Institute of History
Vilnius
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Venue: Garden Room, Wilkins Building, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
3pm-4.30 pm: Panel One
Chair: Darius Staliūnas
François Guesnet (UCL): Longue durée, histoire événémentielle, and Jewish-non-Jewish coexistence in Eastern Europe
Werner Bergmann (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Technische Universität Berlin): Anti-Jewish Violence in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe: Some Theoretical Considerations
Heinz-Dietrich Löwe (Heidelberg University): The study of pogroms: history, narratives, comparisons
4.30pm-5pm: Refreshment break
5pm-6.30pm: Panel Two
Chair: François Guesnet
Klaus Richter (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Technische Universität Berlin): Lithuanians and Jews. National awakening and economic policies before the first World War
Darius Staliūnas (Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius): Lithuania during the revolution of 1905: a region without ethnic violence?
Motti Zalkin (Ben-Gurion University): Sharunas, prince of Dainava in a Hebrew gown: The encounter of local Jews with Lithuanian culture in interwar Lithuania
Monday, February 7, 2011
Venue: Seminar Room, The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB
10.15am-12noon: Panel Three
Chair: François Guesnet
Antony Polonsky (Brandeis University): Statehood and minority protection between the World Wars: Lithuania in the Central Eastern European context
Šarūnas Liekis (Vytautas Magnus University): The scope of Jewish autonomy in independent Lithuania
Vladas Sirutavičius (Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius): Antisemitism in interwar Lithuania
1.30 pm-3 pm: Panel Four
Chair: Antony Polonsky
Joachim Tauber (Institut für Geschichte und Kultur der Deutschen in Nordosteuropa, University of Hamburg): Hitler, Stalin, and Antisemitism in Lithuania, 1939-1941
Christoph Dieckmann (Keele University): Lithuanian cooperation with the German Occupier. Structures, Processes, Effects, 1941-44
Saulius Suziedelis (Professor Emeritus of History, Millersville University of Pennsylvania): Memories of blood: examining Lithuanian responses to the Holocaust
3 pm - 3.20 pm: Refreshment break
3.20 pm - 4 pm: Concluding discussion
Chair: François Guesnet, Darius Staliūnas
The Institute of Jewish Studies gratefully acknowledges the support of the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in London, the Ministry of Foreign Aiffairs of the Republic of Lithuania and of other foundations.
Sunday February 6th (3pm-6.30pm) - Garden Room, UCL, London WC1E 6BT
Monday February 7th (10am-4pm) - The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB
Free entrance, no registration needed.
Programme of the colloquium (.doc)
More information about No Simple Stories related events:
http://nosimplestories.blogspot.com/
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