Rediscovering Traces of Memory

by Webber, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780253221858
• ISBN10: 0253221854
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-25
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

Since the Holocaust, traces of memory are virtually all that remain of more than 800 years of Jewish life in Poland. Yet some of that past can still be found if one knows how and where to look. In this remarkable album, 74 stunning color photographs bear witness to the great Jewish civilization that once flourished here. The images record the sites of Jewish life and death, and the ways in which Jewish culture is being remembered today. Captions and detailed notes explain and contextualize the photographs. An invaluable sourcebook on the Jewish heritage of Polish Galicia, this album also illustrates how photographs can help us understand the past and discover its relevance for the present.

Author Biography

Jonathan Webber holds the UNESCO Chair in Jewish and Interfaith Studies at the University of Birmingham. He is a founding member of the International Auschwitz Council and was awarded the Golden Cross of the Polish Order of Merit for services to Polish-Jewish relations. He is author of Jewish Identities in the New Europe and Auschwitz: A History in Photographs (IUP, 1993).

Chris Schwartz (1948--2007) was an acclaimed British photojournalist who exhibited and published many collections of his photographs on social welfare issues. In 2004 he opened the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, Poland, to bring the story of the Jewish heritage in Polish Galicia to Poland and to the world.