Justyna Majewska (Poland), PhD candidate, Polish Academy of the Sciences, Warsaw, “Jewish social transformation in the Warsaw ghetto as revealed in personal narratives: A case study”.

Justyna Majewska is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate School for Social Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. Her research subject is “The change of the social structure in Nazi ghettos with the example of the Warsaw Ghetto”.

She received her Master Degree in Culture Studies from the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland. Ms. Majewska coordinated and curated the Holocaust Gallery at the Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw. She is an editor of Kalisz letters, that will be published in September 2014 by the Jewish Historical Institute in a series of scholarly editions of documents from the Ringelblum Archive.

During her EHRI fellowship at Yad Vashem, Ms. Majewska conducted research for her dissertation project. The aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive sociological analysis of social change in the Warsaw ghetto. Ms. Majewska explores how the Jewish community’s pre-war social structure was transformed and a new society created under extreme conditions. She analyzes the process of thinking and of decision making in response to particular aspects of the Nazi policy in the broad context of Jewish daily life in the ghetto. She identifies patterns of reactions to the same destructive factors in relation to the pre-war social position of the actors as revealed in their personal narratives. Although the focus is on the Warsaw ghetto as a case study, the Łódź ghetto will serve as useful points for comparison.

Justyna Majewska may be contacted at majewska.ju@gmail.com.