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On June 15–17, 2026, the Emanuel Ringleblum Jewish Historical Institute, in cooperation with University of Florida, Yad Vashem World Holocaust Center, Jerusalem, Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, Wiener Wiesenthal Institut fur Holocaust Studien, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, The Viener Holocaust Library organized the international conference Documenting the Holocaust: Testimonies as Historical Evidence. Partners of conference were Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Polin, Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, Centrum Badań Żydowskich.

The conference revolved around testimonies of the Holocaust produced during World War II and after its end. The goal was to examine the value of these source materials as evidence in historical research – taking into consideration all their potential and limitations, the contexts of their production, and their subsequent use in science, education, and remembrance practices.

The Holocaust Survivor Testimonies Collection held at the JHI derives from one of the earliest projects of finding and documenting the experiences of people who survived the Holocaust. With time, however, it has become just one among many similar collections. Over the years, numerous institutions launched their own projects to gather Survivors’ testimonies and memoirs, thanks to which we have access to a rich, complex body of materials.

The participants of the conference visited the Jewish Historical Institute. They saw the JHI’s core exhibition, What We’ve Been Unable to Shout out to the World, which primarily discusses the underground activity of the Oneg Shabbat group in the Warsaw ghetto and the history of the extraordinary collection they created from its inception to the present day. Marta Kapełuś then led a curatorial tour of the newest temporary exhibition, Images of Identity. The Collection of Berlin’s Pre-War Jewish Museum. The participants also had a chance to peek into the JHI’s Archive, which holds Poland’s largest collection of documents connected to the history of Polish Jews in the twentieth century.

Keynote lecture: “The bread of one’s dreams”. Poetry, Testimony, Historical Evidence | June 15, 2026

The event was inaugurated by Dr. Michał Trębacz, Director of the Emanuel Ringleblum Jewish Historical Institute, who emphasized the importance of international cooperation and the need to continuously engage in research of the Holocaust.

Professor Judith Lyon-Caen (historian and professor at EHESS – School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris) gave a lecture focusing on the significance of literary studies in assessing the value of testimonies as historical evidence.

Basing her argument on the achievements of Saul Friedländer and selected proposals by Michel Borwicz, the speaker called for a greater degree of literary attention in order to better discern the value of testimonies as historical evidence. She also proposed approaches to reading testimonial poems as poems and, precisely as poems, as “sources for history”.

Day 1 | June 16, 2026

The first day of the conference opened with presentations from employees of the Emanuel Ringleblum Jewish Historical Institute: Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz – Deputy Director for Programme and Dr. Zofia Trębacz – historian and coordinator of the EHRI-PL project. Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz focused on the historical context of the JHI’s collections, while Dr. Zofia Trębacz discussed the JHI’s involvement in the EHRI project and the role of the consortium in bolstering cooperation between researchers from various international institutions.

Panel I: Voices of the Survivors

The discussion was moderated by Krzysztof Persak (Polish Academy of Sciences, POLIN Museum).

In the first panel of the conference, the speakers focused on the voices of Holocaust Survivors. Krzysztof Kozłowski showed a presentation by Aleksandra Bak-Zawalski (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen) on Holocaust testimonies in the context of social and political transformations.

Rachel Blumenthal (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) spoke about the bases for legal claims and the routes for making them and gave specific examples. She also discussed challenges in using testimonies in historical research.

Anna Rozenfeld (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich / Center for Jewish Studies (ZJS), Berlin) discussed the voices of Holocaust Survivors on Yiddish radio broadcasts in Poland in 1945–1948. She focused primarily on the year 1945, when testimonies of Survivors first started to be broadcast on the radio.

Panel II: Early Testimonies from the Balkans

The discussion was moderated by Stephen Naron (Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies). The panel focused on testimonies from Romania and former Yugoslavia.

Andrea Rudorff (Fritz Bauer Institut, Frankfurt am Main) discussed one of the earliest post-war collections of Holocaust Survivor testimonies, which was assembled in Bucharest.

Olga Stefan (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University) spoke about how time and political contexts shape memory. She discussed the discrepancies between a testimony given by a Survivor before court and their memoirs written down years later.

Tamara Stojanović (University of Belgrade) pointed out the limitations and perspectives of using testimonies as sources in historical research.

Panel III: Violence

The discussion was moderated by Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida).

The third panel focused on the theme of violence during World War II. Magdalena Waligórska (Humboldt University Berlin) discussed the issue of sexual violence suffered by Jewish women. Talia Olshansky-Farkash (Open University of Israel) presented a reconstruction of administrative transformations and eventual liquidation of Jewish labor camps in late 1943.

Panel IV: Diaries

The discussion was moderated by Justyna Majewska (Jewish Historical Institute).

The speakers focused on the issue of personal documents produced during the Holocaust. Tehila Darmon Malka (Herzog College) deliberated on whether diaries can be considered testimonies. Juliane Niklas (Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History) spoke about the information on Nazi camps preserved in the diaries of their French Jewish prisoners.

Kriza Borbala (independent scholar) presented local historiographical context of the disputes surrounding the remembrance of gas chambers in Hungary.

Day 2 | June 17, 2026

Panel V: Trials

The discussion was moderated by Agnieszka Haska (Polish Center for Holocaust Research, Polish Academy of Sciences).

The second day of the conference opened with presentations focusing on post-war court trials. Edyta Gawron (Jagiellonian University) spoke about Holocaust Survivors and their testimonies at post-war trials in Kraków. She also mentioned that some of them had been accused of collaborating with the Nazis.

Oktawian Kuc (University of Warsaw) discussed witnesses taking part in the trials. He used the example of the trials of Arthur Greiser, Ludwig Fischer, Rudolf Hess, and others.

Panel VI: JHI Archive

The discussion was moderated by Zofia Trębacz (Jewish Historical Institute).

The panel focused on various themes associated with the collections held at the Jewish Historical Institute.

Hanna Abakunova (University of Alberta) discussed the role of early documentation in the reconstruction of ghetto experiences in occupied Ukraine.

Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak (Jewish Historical Institute) spoke about, among others, the memoirs of Róża Bauminger from the forced labor camp at the former State Munitions Factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna, taken over by the Hasag company during the war.

Luiza Nader (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw) discussed the oeuvre of Gela Seksztajn – an artist whose paintings and sketches form a unique collection among the materials assembled by the Oneg Shabbat group, the vast majority of which are written documents.

Panel VII: Local Histories

The discussion was moderated by Ian Rich (Wiener Holocaust Library).

The last panel focused on microhistory.

Greta Barak (Ghetto Fighters’ House) discussed the testimonies of children who survived the Holocaust and were deported to the area of Romania during the war. The witness accounts of those events were collected by Hersh Segal – a Jewish teacher who after the war recorded the testimonies of children who survived the deportation to Transnistria. In their accounts, the children describe their experiences in ghettos and camps in the years 1941–1944, as well as what they went through after the liberation.

Karolina Panz (Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences) spoke about mass atrocities committed in the Podhale region.

Aleksandra Kumala (Jagiellonian University) discussed the wartime experiences of Chrzanów Jews on the example of the recollections of Samuel Reifer, author of one of the most important testimonies to the lot of Jews in Chrzanów during the German occupation. He wrote down his account in 1946, soon after the end of the war.

Recordings from the conference are available on our YouTube channel:

International Conference "Documenting the Holocaust: Testimonies as Historical Evidence" | Day first

International Conference "Documenting the Holocaust: Testimonies as Historical Evidence" | Day second

The conference was organized within the framework of EHRI-PL and co-funded with resources from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for the task ‘Ongoing Activities of the Polish National Node of EHRI-PL – the EHRI-ERIC consortium, implemented by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute [JHI] for the years 2025–2027 in cooperation with national partners.’

Conference Committee:
Natalia Aleksiun (Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Florida)
Havi Dreifuss (Yad Vashem)
Barbara Engelking (Polish Center for Holocaust Research; Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences)
Éva Kovács (Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien)
Stephan Naron (Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies)
Christine Schmidt (The Wiener Holocaust Library)
Zofia Trębacz (Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute)

The conference is organized by The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute

In cooperation with

Partners of the conference

The conference is organized within the framework of EHRI-PL and co-funded with resources from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for the task ‘Ongoing Activities of the Polish National Node of EHRI-PL – the EHRI-ERIC consortium, implemented by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute [JHI] for the years 2025–2027 in cooperation with national partners.’

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Photo: Grzegorz Kwolek/JHI