In March 2018, the POLIN Museum in Warsaw will open a new exhibition on the events of March 1968 in Poland, the anti-Zionist campaign of the Polish Communist government that led to the forced emigration of some 13,000 Polish Jews, half of the Polish Jewish community at the time.

Many of those who had to leave Poland in wake of 1968 came to Israel. This was the third large wave of Polish-Jewish immigration to the state after those of 1945-1949 and 1956-1960. For many, the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968 and the Polish Jewish exodus that it caused seemed to be the end of the history of Jews in Poland. The community was reduced to a few thousand people and its cultural institutions were reduced to their shadows.

The events of 1968 were also a shock as the campaign, barely covered by the fig leaf of anti-Zionism, took place less than twenty-five years after the war in the country most affected by the Shoah, under a regime that had promised to eradicate and combat all forms of ethnic hatred.

We would like to invite you to a unique international event dedicated to both the fiftieth anniversary of these events and the exhibition recently opened in POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The exhibition is supported by the European Association of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (AEMPJ), and the conference at Tel Aviv University is co-sponsored by the AEMPJ in cooperation with Tel Aviv University’s Institute for Polish Jewish History and Israel-Poland Relations and the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at TAU.

The conference will include academic, personal and artistic presentations and discussions that will shed light on this chapter in the history of Polish Jews, its impact on Israeli society, and its legacy in contemporary Polish society.

Institute for the History of Polish Jewry, TAU
Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism, TAU
European Association of the Museum of The History of Polish Jews POLIN
are delighted to invite you to an exceptional conference dedicated to both the fiftieth anniversary of the March 1968 events (cf. below for more information) and the exhibit at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN in Warsaw. 

14:00 – Introduction
14:30-16:30  – 1968 in History
Dariusz Stola (POLIN Museum, Warsaw)
Anat Plocker (Stockton University, US)
Jan Wolenski (Krakow)
17:00-18:15  – Personal Recollections 
Stanislaw Krajewski (University of Warsaw)
Marek Karliner (Tel Aviv University)
18:30-20:00 – 1968 in Art and Film:  Screening of “Lake ’68” and Discussion
Ela Bauer (Seminar Ha-Kibbutzim College)
Irit Shamgar (film director)

Moderated by

• Havi Dreifuss (TAU)
• Scott Ury (TAU)
• Anna C. Zielinska (AEMJP/Univ. of Lorraine, France)

Venue: BEIT HATFUTSOT Museum at the Tel Aviv University Campus, 17 Klausner Street, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Bnai Zion Auditorium

Date: March 18, 2018, 2 PM – 8 PM

contact email: tlv68conference@gmail.com