Location: Online | Date: 18-22 July 2022 | Application Deadline: 1 March 2022

We invite Holocaust scholars, educators, representatives of archives and museums, tour guides, and digital humanities professionals to take part in the EHRI-Seminar “The Lviv Ghetto: Narrating and Mapping the History of Exclusion and Violence”, organized by EHRI partner the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (Lviv, Ukraine). The goal of the interdisciplinary seminar is to explore and reflect on digital tools and methods of research and visualisation of the urban topography of the Holocaust.

The Lviv Ghetto

Focusing on one of the largest but also least researched ghettos in Eastern Europe, the Lviv ghetto, the seminar will place it in the context of recent studies of ghettos and urban topographies of the Holocaust, for example, Budapest, Warsaw, and the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Established in autumn 1941 by the Nazi occupying administration, the Lviv ghetto covered the northern part of the city also known as Lwów, לעמבערג‎, Lemberg. It became a site of forced resettlement, residency in captivity, slave labor, and racial segregation, murder and humiliation, a place of daily survival and resilience, of attempts to resist and revenge for more than a third of the city’s population, the Jewish Lvivians. Starting in 1942, several Aktionеn resulted in mass killings, deportations to the Janowska camp and nearby death camps. While the population of the ghetto was decreasing, its boundaries were shrinking into a smaller area of Judenlager, including just a few streets with places of residence for Jewish forced laborers who worked in a number of factories and enterprises all over the city. Eventually, the remaining ghetto was liquidated in June 1943.

The EHRI Seminar

Using the case study of the Lviv ghetto, the EHRI-Seminar will address the following interrelated themes:

• sources about/from the ghetto: which to use and how
• visual materials: ethics and credibility
• constructing the narrative: precision and sensitivity to language and terminology
• ghetto and urban space
• digital tools in physical and virtual spaces of memory

While the sources on the Lviv ghetto vary, the seminar program will offer a close reading of one of the central sources: the so-called “ghetto cards” – registration cards of over 17,000 ghetto residents created by the Nazi German administration.  Preserved at the Lviv Historical State Archives, a set of registration cards also exists as a digitized collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These cards include the full name of a person, their date of birth, place of residence, occupation, place of work, and special remarks. The seminar will explore ways to utilize sources like these cards for Holocaust research, education and commemoration.

More generally the seminar will contribute to a broader discussion on how to map and study Holocaust sites in Eastern and Central European cities. Aspects and questions we plan to raise and discuss during the seminar will include: How might mapping ghetto topographies provide us with a better understanding of such matters as living conditions, forced labour, surviving strategies during the Holocaust? How can digital mapping projects serve as a platform for Holocaust commemoration initiatives in the public space? What digital tools and methods are the most productive and what are the risks in the context of research and visualisation of the Holocaust urban topography? Thus, the seminar aims to bring together different groups of professionals dealing with the history and memory of ghettos during World War II and to create a comprehensive discussion on the challenges of researching, teaching, and representing the subject.

Online exhibition

Additionally, results of these discussions and input from the seminar will also be utilized for the creation of an online exhibition by the Center for Urban History about the history of the Lviv Ghetto, using digital mapping, as well storytelling tools and methods. The seminar’s participants will be invited to share their comments and feedback on the exhibition at all stages from its conception to its dissemination, including an online publication with recommendations on how to present the history of ghettos to different audiences.

Format:

The seminar will take place 18-22 July 2022 via Zoom. In addition, preparatory and follow-up meetings to the seminar are offered as follows:

• Preparation (April-June 2022)

At the initial stage of the seminar, the participants will explore the history of the Lviv ghetto in relation to other ghettos with the help of distributed reading materials and lectures, which will be available via Zoom and YouTube.

• Seminar (18–22 July 2022)

The content of the one-week seminar (scheduled 3-4 hours per day) is divided into three modules:

1. an introduction where all participants have the possibility to present their projects related to the history of ghettos or the Holocaust more broadly;
2. a set of discussions where participants will be introduced to a digital exhibition project about the Lviv ghetto
3. a workshop on digital tools to use in Holocaust studies, including the study of ghettos.

• Feedback (September-November 2022)

Participants will be invited to share their ideas and thoughts about the seminar, online exhibition and methodological publication with recommendations on how to present the history of ghettos, specifically that of the Lviv ghetto.

The seminar will be conducted in English.

To Apply

Please submit the application form, your motivation letter (max. 300 words) and a CV as one PDF file to seminars@lvivcenter.org by 1 March 2022.

We encourage submissions from advanced graduate students, early career as well as established scholars, educators, archivists, museum professionals, and city guides working with the topics of the Holocaust, cities in World War II and memory.

Important Dates

Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2022

Notification of acceptance: by 15 March 2022

Organization Committee:

Taras Nazaruk (Center for Urban History, Lviv, Ukraine)

Sofia Dyak (Center for Urban History, Lviv, Ukraine)

Anna Ullrich (Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, Munich, Germany)

Academic Curator of the Seminar:

Marta Havryshko (Ivan Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, Lviv, Ukraine)

Questions on organizational matters please address to: seminars@lvivcenter.org

Seminar Background

This seminar takes place within the framework of European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) supported by the European Commission. It is organized by the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (Lviv) as a part of its Digital History Programme and the Lviv Interactive Project.

Image: Logo Center for Urban History of East Central Europe