The thematic block of the 14th issue of Colloquia Humanistica (2025) is entitled Commemoration of Jewish Culture, Tradition and Heritage Outside Western Europe. The Discussions. Presentations. Book Reviews section complements this subject matter, as it contains an article in which Jolanta Sujecka discusses Jewish sites of memory on the examples of Sofia, Kielce and Warsaw, Muhammad Muhammad’s paper on the perception of Jews in the Qur’an, but also Grzegorz Kwiatkowski’s text on the memory of the Jews from Pomerania, Nourit Melcer-Padon’s presentation of an Italian monograph by Benedetto Ligorio, and Katarzyna Taczyńska’s review of an anthology of Polish Yiddish women poets translated from Polish into Serbian. An article by Teresa Dobrzyńska outlines the Slavic Comparative Metrics programme, headed by Lucylla Pszczołowska, at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Literary Research.
The thematic block of the 14th issue of Colloquia Humanistica (2025) is entitled Commemoration of Jewish Culture, Tradition and Heritage Outside Western Europe. The Discussions. Presentations. Book Reviews section complements this subject matter, as it contains an article in which Jolanta Sujecka discusses Jewish sites of memory on the examples of Sofia, Kielce and Warsaw, Muhammad Muhammad’s paper on the perception of Jews in the Qur’an, but also Grzegorz Kwiatkowski’s text on the memory of the Jews from Pomerania, Nourit Melcer-Padon’s presentation of an Italian monograph by Benedetto Ligorio, and Katarzyna Taczyńska’s review of an anthology of Polish Yiddish women poets translated from Polish into Serbian. An article by Teresa Dobrzyńska outlines the Slavic Comparative Metrics programme, headed by Lucylla Pszczołowska, at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Literary Research.
The review presents Sa druge strane pesme. Antologija poljskih jidiš pesnikinja [On the Other Side of the Poem: An Anthology of Polish Yiddish Women Poets], selected and translated by Biserka Rajčić, published by Presing in Mladenovac in 2024. The review analyzes how the translation of Yiddish poetry into Serbian, through Polish translations, affects the transmission of linguistic nuances and cultural context. The text highlights the distance of the Serbian translations from the original texts and the resulting shifts in meaning, while also emphasizing the anthology’s potential to inspire broader engagement with Yiddish literature and women’s poetic voices within the (post)Yugoslav cultural sphere.
The article explores the author's activism for historical memory, with a focus on commemorating the history of Jews in Pomerania. Inspired by personal experiences, including the tragic story of his grandfather, a Stutthof prisoner, and his wife’s Jewish grandmother, the author emphasizes the importance of preserving historical memory. The text discusses the author’s initiatives, such as commemorating the Jewish ghetto in Gdańsk, advocating for the preservation of genocide artifacts from Stutthof, protecting the Jewish cemetery in Chełm, installing Stolpersteine in Gdańsk, and organizing the lighting of Hanukkah candles in the town hall. The author also highlights the need to protect German cultural artifacts, like the Srebrniki Manor, and the role of social media in modern activism. The article concludes with reflections on the importance of determination and dialogue in preserving historical memory.
The author examines the relationships between a poet, geography and local memory in the case of the iconic Polish poet of Jewish descent, Zuzanna Ginczanka (1917–1944), and her native region, today’s Rivne Oblast in Ukraine. The geography of Zuzanna’s life encompasses the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv where she was born, Rivne and surroundings where she grew up, and Lviv where she hid from the Nazis, as well as the Polish cities of Warsaw where she studied and Kraków where she died at the hands of the Gestapo in 1944. Poised between the real and the imagined as well as the private and the cultural, the article proposes to focus on the locality of Rivne and its understudied importance for Ginczanka’s work. Through the lens of her poetic concept of the “Little City,” the article looks at the connection between the real cityscapes and their imaginary portrayal offered by Ginczanka’s poetry, in order to analyze the correlation between her image of the “Little City” and the modern idea of Rivne. By introducing a term “memory agent”, the author explores how poetry and the poet’s personality may inform and affect local memory of Jewish heritage and the Holocaust and, at the same time, the present city’s self-perception. The paper argues that the rediscovery of the histories of non-Ukrainian personalities who were once connected to places in Ukraine will enrich these communities’ historical and cultural understanding, strengthening their sustainability and resilience amid the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war and the struggle against post-Soviet colonial and totalitarian trauma.
A characteristic feature of “illiberal states” is the setting up of parallel institutions whose main role is to challenge the previously existing, democratically established institutional network’s function. In the case of Holocaust museums, this means new exhibitions which reinterpret the past in accordance with the government’s memory politics. As a result, “illiberal” Holocaust museums often gloss over the responsibility of the local government and the non-Jewish population in the Holocaust. Two Holocaust museums were recently established by the Fidesz government in Hungary: the infamous House of Fates, and the House of Jewish Excellences which exhibits the lives of famous Jewish scientists, artists, athletes etc. In this paper I compare the two exhibitions in order to provide an overview of how “illiberal” memory politics transforms and overwrites the existing Holocaust narrative, and to flesh out the complex ideological, political, and social motives behind this process.
Anti-Jewish sentiment remains a global concern, often linked to religious interpretations. In Indonesia, despite the small number of Jews, their presence has become more visible, though they continue to face limitations due to the lack of state recognition and Islamic hegemony. The Qur’an contains numerous verses referencing Jews, some of which are perceived as fostering negative stereotypes. This article critically examines Hamka’s Tafsir al-Azhar, using a textual-analytical approach to explore his interpretation of these verses. Hamka portrays Jews as historically deceitful and hostile toward Islam, but he also warns against generalizing such traits to all Jews. Notably, his exegesis echoes themes of Zionist conspiracy, suggesting Jewish control over global finance and politics. While reflecting his sociopolitical context, Hamka’s commentary raises important questions about religious interpretation, prejudice, and the boundaries of Islamic exclusivism.
The thematic block of the 14th issue of Colloquia Humanistica (2025) is entitled Commemoration of Jewish Culture, Tradition and Heritage Outside Western Europe. The Discussions. Presentations. Book Reviews section complements this subject matter, as it contains an article in which Jolanta Sujecka discusses Jewish sites of memory on the examples of Sofia, Kielce and Warsaw, Muhammad Muhammad’s paper on the perception of Jews in the Qur’an, but also Grzegorz Kwiatkowski’s text on the memory of the Jews from Pomerania, Nourit Melcer-Padon’s presentation of an Italian monograph by Benedetto Ligorio, and Katarzyna Taczyńska’s review of an anthology of Polish Yiddish women poets translated from Polish into Serbian. An article by Teresa Dobrzyńska outlines the Slavic Comparative Metrics programme, headed by Lucylla Pszczołowska, at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Literary Research.
The article considers the ambiguous dynamics of the Łopuchowo Forest, a significant location of Holocaust commemoration among Israeli groups, as the location of the massacre of Tykocin Jews. Its site includes not only marked mass graves and a central monument(s), but also numerous smaller vehicles of memory placed there by Israeli visitors. The collection of lesser artefacts, affected over time by the acting materiality of an organic environment, contributes to the meaning of this forest memorial space. Following these material remnants through autoethnography, the Łopuchowo Forest is approached in terms of different connotations that forest evokes in the Polish and Israeli memory cultures. Considering the dichotomous notions of here (kan) and there (sham) at play in the Polish-Israeli imaginary, the article addresses the role of the Łopuchowo Forest as an Israeli traumascape.
The paper offers an analytical approach to Eliezer Papo’s book Nesabrane priče i još nesabranije misli i crtice, a o десетерцу da se i ne govori [Uncollected Stories and Even More Uncollected Thoughts and Lines, Not to Mention Decasyllabic Verse] (2022), a notable addition to the corpus of Jewish literature written in the Serbian language. The study explores key themes such as the inauguration of canonicity, the limits of the oral and written literary mode, the status of the author, the discourse of nostalgia, and the author’s rejection of diasporic perspectives as the only possible perspective. The author textualizes these questions with baroque linguistic stylization, reflecting his search for words that carry stable meaning and his commitment to the concept of truth. By employing a range of hermeneutic tools, this analysis highlights a new phase in the rich and dynamic history of Jewish literature in the Balkans.
The paper discusses the importance of engaging technological and educational spaces in contemporary processes of learning about Jewish history and culture. The author explores the potentials of merging contemporary technology with innovative approaches to education, particularly in fostering and improving intergenerational and intracommunal dialogues. To analyze the role of the immersion effect in extended educational realities, as well as its significance for intergenerational dialogue in small Jewish communities, two case studies from Serbia are presented and analyzed: the Midrasha project and the Interactive Tour of Jewish Belgrade. The exhibited results show the transformational potential of two different learning programs in the context of extended educational realities at the crossroads of technology and education. These findings might contribute to further reflections and practices in Jewish education and education in general, as well as to the encouragement of intergenerational dialogues.
The review discusses the preservation of Jewish material heritage in Central-Eastern Europe using the exhibition (post)JEWISH… Shtetl Opatów Through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt, organized in 2024 at the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, as a case study. The exhibition offers an in-depth exploration of the Jewish heritage in Opatów through Kirshenblatt’s paintings and contemporary curatorial research. The review presents the structure of the display and delves into details related to selected exhibits. It further examines the Authorized Heritage Discourse, a term used in critical heritage studies to describe the official mechanisms of heritage protection. The review argues that the exhibition highlights the significance of preserving material remnants of everyday Jewish life, which are often overlooked in official heritage practices that prioritize grand and monumental sites. It draws attention to the underrepresentation of Jewish heritage sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List and advocates for broader recognition and preservation efforts beyond the Holocaust narrative.
The fourteenth issue of Colloquia Humanistica reflects on the evolving role of Jewish heritage in Central and Southeastern Europe, focusing on contemporary forms of commemorating Jewish culture, history, and memory in the region. The articles address two significant research challenges: the dominant position of Holocaust memory in academic and cultural discourse, and the insufficient inclusion of local perspectives. The presented case studies reveal the complex tensions between memory and politics, presence and absence, national and transnational narratives. Jewish heritage is portrayed here as a field of dynamic and ambiguous negotiations, shaped both by institutions and by grassroots initiatives as well as everyday remembrance practices.
The text discusses the emancipatory aspect of Julia Dickstein-Wieleżyńska’s (1881–1943) activities, taking into account its sources and selected manifestations. It also draws attention to family relations and the alienation experienced by Dickstein-Wieleżyńska as a Jew and a woman, which, on the one hand, strengthened her emancipatory convictions and, on the other, hindered her from realising them.
The paper will deal with the fictional strategies employed to empower the historical fact of the Holocaust in the following movies: Life is beautiful by Roberto Benigni, The Zookeeper’s Wife by Niki Caro and Inglorious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino. The aforementioned movies have been selected because each of them provides a different representation of the Holocaust: what is more, the Holocaust plays only a backdrop (or is represented pretty mildly) whereas the plot of the movie is concerned with something other than it. Simultaneously, the Jews in the movies are often being stereotyped or inadequately represented (as in Life is beautiful), marginalized (the main role in the movie is given to the Christian saviours, such as in The Zookeeper’s Wife), or are almost equalized with the Nazis (as in the Inglorious Basterds, the Jews being prone to committing the same atrocities and crimes in the act of revenge against the Nazis as the Nazis themselves). The paper will try to determine whether these movies in truth possess the elements of Holocaust denial, or whether it is about an idiosyncratic Holocaust representation.
Benedetto Ligorio’s book delves into the role of Sephardic Jews in the Republic of Ragusa during the 16th century as key players in international trade. Drawing on social network analysis and quantitative archival data, Ligorio examines the Jews’ commercial activities and demonstrates they were integral to Ragusa’s thriving economy, connecting Venice, Ancona, and Ottoman-controlled regions. He compares the establishment of the ghetto in Ragusa in 1546 with those in Venice and Rome, and highlights the pragmatism of Ragusa’s government in allowing its Jewish merchants to continue their commercial activities despite imposed restrictions. Ligorio sheds light on the fluctuating size of the Jewish community, and the eventual concentration of their economic activities in merchant roles after the 1571 decree. Ligorio’s work contributes significantly to the understanding of the Jewish diaspora in the Early Modern Mediterranean, opening avenues for further research into the socioeconomic dynamics of the vibrant Ragusan community and beyond.
The example of Czesława Rosenblat’s (1877–1949) interesting biography is used to show alterations that could be made to the core exhibition of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The article seeks to answer the question why Jewish herstories are still not much commemorated at the Polin Museum, in spite of increasing research on women’s stories in Polish and Jewish historiography. Rosenblat’s biography serves as a means to show complex, non-obvious Polish-Jewish relations. The article reveals the fascinating biography of one of the Jewish women writers who chose Polish as their language of expression. Finally, it shows the complex intertwining of the Polish and Jewish cultures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The term “Jewish sites of memory” that I have made the subject of my paper refers to sites connected with Jewish culture and the Jewish past, but I also try to describe their special status both in the context of Jewish tradition and from the point of view of the present day. I analyse all three cities mentioned in the title: Sofia, Keltz – Kielce, and Varshe – Warsaw, as well as the sites of memory within them, as illustrations of this term’s semantic scope while also asking about the contemporary (after Shoah) status of Jewish sites of memory in these three urban contexts, and in the two national discourses: Bulgarian and Polish.
The article contains an analysis of the activities of two museums: in Tykocin and in Włodawa. These institutions have a number of common features: both are located in small towns in the eastern part of Poland, where large and flourishing Jewish communities existed before World War II. In addition, in both cases, these institutions are housed in buildings that belonged to Jews before the war: a synagogue, bet midrashim, the Kahal headquarters. The article aims to analyse how these institutions affect local communities – both in the general context of the development of social and cultural life and the memory of the pre-war local Jewish community.
The paper analyses a section of the Jewish triptych edited by Jasminka Domaš and comprising Obitelj–Mishpaha, Glasovi, sjećanja, život: Prilog istraživanju povijesti židovskih obitelji and Ako tebe zaboravim: Prilog istraživanju povijesti židovskih obitelji. The focus is on the most recent volume, Ako tebe zaboravim (2018), which presents family accounts from members of the second and third generation of Holocaust survivors, as well as from those who survived the Holocaust as children in Croatia. The paper begins by outlining the defining characteristics of these narratives and the themes recurring throughout the collected stories. These elements allow Croatian narratives to be placed within a transnational model of postmemory storytelling. The article also highlights motifs that demonstrate both the originality of the accounts gathered by Domaš and their dependence on local historical and social contexts. In the final section, the paper provides a detailed analysis of two accounts that stand out from the rest of the volume.
