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Zofia Wóycicka

Scientific and social media profiles

Bio

I am an assistant professor at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Łódź and a researcher at the German Historical Institute Warsaw. I am also leading a research project at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Warsaw, NCN OPUS22 Help delivered to Jews during World War II and Transnational Memory in the Making (2022-2026). I studied history and sociology at the University of Warsaw and the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, and obtained my PhD in history from the School of Social Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw (2008). I have many years of experience working in museums as an educator at Polin (2007-2011) and as a curator at the House of European History in Brussels (2011-2015). I also worked as a researcher at the Centre for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences Berlin (2015-2019), where I coordinated one of the working groups of the HORIZON2020 research project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (UNREST). From 2019 to 2022, I was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute Warsaw. I am a member of the Polish-German Textbook Commission.



Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Interests


  • Memory Studies with a special focus on "Transnational Memory"
  • Memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust
  • Museum Studies
  • Polish and German contemporary history with a special focus on the Second World War and the early post-war period


 

Achievements


Bibliography (Selection containing only articles published within last 10 years)


Monograps

  • Przerwana żałoba. Polskie spory wokół pamięci nazistowskich obozów koncentracyjnych i zagłady 1944-1940, Warszawa: Trio 2009.
  • Etniczna polityka komunistów. Dwa casusy, Warszawa: Trio 2010 (with Agnieszka Nowakowska).
  • Arrested Mourning. Memory of Nazi Camps in Poland, 1944-1950, (series "Warsaw Studies in Contemporary History", eds. Dariusz Stola i Machteld Venken), Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2013. Open Access: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/48579/9783653038835.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y


 


Edited book and special issues

  • The Rescue Turn and the Politics of Holocaust Memory, Wayne State University Press 2024 (with Natalia Aleksiun and Raphael Utz).
  • Acta Poloniae Historica 128 (2023), Special issue: Mnemonic Wars in Poland (w Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska and Joanna Wawrzyniak).
  • Memory Studies 15(6), 2022, Special Issue: Mnemonic Wars: New Constellations (with Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska and Joanna Wawrzyniak).


Articles in peer-reviewed journals 

  • A Beech Tree for the Righteous: On the Interplay between Local, National and Transnational Memory Politics, Holocaust and Genocide Studies [accepted for publication].
  • W poszukiwaniu nowych sposobów na wyrażenie tego, co trudne do pojęcia. Muzea i miejsca pamięci poświęcone Zagładzie w XXI w., Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały 20 (2024), pp. 717-45. Open Access: https://zagladazydow.pl/index.php/zz/article/view/1067
  • The ‘Righteous’ as an Element of Transnational Memory Politics: The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust and the Memory of the Rescue of Jews during the Second World War, Acta Poloniae Historica 125 (2022), pp. 133-53. Open Access: https://apcz.umk.pl/APH/article/view/39352/32918
  • „Serdecznie dziękujemy za przybliżenie nam historii Polaków ratujących Żydów”. Recepcja polskich muzeów „Sprawiedliwych” w świetle wpisów w księgach gości – Apteka pod Orłem, Willa Żabińskich, Muzeum Ulmów, Teksty Drugie 4 (2020), pp. 88-212. Open Access: file:///Users/mac/Downloads/td-17200.pdf
  • Cultural Diplomacy in the War Museum: The Case of the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, History & Memory 2(31), 2019, pp. 78-116 (with David Clarke).
  • Global patterns, local interpretations: new Polish museums dedicated to the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 3(25), 2019, pp. 248-272.
  • War Museums and Agonistic Memory. A Report (with Stefan Berger, Anna Cento Bull, Cristian Cercel, Nina Parish, Małgorzata Quinkenstein and Eleanor Rowley), Museum Worlds 6 (2018), pp. 112-124. Open Access: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/museum-worlds/6/1/armw060109.xml 


Book chapters in collected volumes

  • ‘La mutevole immagine dei prigioneri dei campi di concentramento e la “stalinizzatione” della memoria polacca,’ in: Nicola Labanca (ed.), Ostaggio della guerra. Vittime civili del secondo conflitto mondiale, Rzym: Viella 2025, pp. 43-66.
  • ‘Archaeological Findings in the Permanent Exhibition in Sobibór,’ in: Martijn Eickhoff, Erik Somers, Jelke Take (eds.), Excavating Sobibor. Holocaust Archaeology between Heritage, History and Memory, Zwolle: W BOOKS 2024, pp. 167-82. Open Access: https://wbooks.com/winkel/geschiedenis/excavating-sobibor/
  • ‘Thank You So Much for Bringing Us Closer to the Story of Poles Rescuing Jews”: Reception of Polish “Righteous” Museums in the Light of Visitor Book Entries—Eagle Pharmacy, Żabiński Villa, Ulma Museum,’ in: Simacha Fishbane, Eric. M. Levine (eds.), Ha-Tov v’ha-Meitiv: Contemporary Scholarship in Jewish Studies. Essays in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Touro University, Touro University Press 2024, pp. 82-102.
  • ‘The Rescue Turn: An Introduction,’ in: The Rescue Turn and the Politics of Holocaust Memory, Natalia Aleksiun and Raphael Utz, Zofia Wóycicka (eds.), Wayne State University Press 2024, pp. 1-20. (z Natalią Aleksiun i Raphaelem Utzem).
  • ‘Von Madagaskar nach Sochy: Gibt es in Polen eine „multidirektionale Erinnerung“?’ in: Meron Mendel (eds.), Singularität im Plural. Kolonialismus, Holocaust und der zweite Historikerstreit, Bazylea: BeltzJuventa 2023, pp. 122-130.
  • ‘Von den „unglücklichen Lageropfern“ zu den „feinsten Söhnen des Vaterlandes“. Der Wandel des Bildes von ehemaligen KZ-Häftlingen und die „Stalinisierung“ der polnischen Erinnerung an den Zweiten Weltkrieg,’ in: Philipp Neumann-Thein, Daniel Schuch und Markus Wegewitz (eds.), Organisiertes Gedächtnis. Kollektive Aktivitäten von Überlebenden der nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2022, pp. 253-282.
  • ‘Memory Cultures of War in European War Museums,’ in: Stefan Berger, Wulf Kansteiner (wyd.), Agonistic Memory and Representations of War in Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave Macmillan 2021, pp. 69-114 (with Stefan Berger, Anna Cento Bull, Cristian Cercel, David Clarke, Nina Parish and Eleanor Rowley).
  • ‘Engaging with Sources, Museum Objects,’ in: Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method (the Resources), Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 2021 (online publication).
  • ‘Pamięć społeczna. Aktualne dyskusje i nurty badawcze,’ in: Sławomir Gawlas i Paweł Żmudzki (eds.) Symboliczne i realne podstawy tożsamości społecznej w średniowieczu, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 2017, pp. 102-120.
  • ‘Auf dem Weg zu einer gemeinsamen Erinnerung? Die Internationalen Auschwitz- und buchenwald-Komitees in den Jahren von 1952 bis 1989/1990,’ in: Enrico Heitzer, Günter Morsch, Katarzyna Woniak, Robert Traba (eds.), Von Mahnstätten über zeithistorische Museen zu Orten des Massentourismus?Gedenkstätten an Orten von NS-Verbrechen in Polen und Deutschland, Berlin: Metropol Verlag 2016.


Exhibition reviews

  • Das Museum des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Danzig, Historie: Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 17 (2017).


Research projects and grants

  • PI in the NCN OPUS22 Help delivered to Jews during World War II and Transnational Memory in the Making
  • Realizacja projektu badawczego NCN Miniatura2 „Rescue of Jews during the Second Wolrd War in narratives of European Museums"
  • Participation the the HORIZON2020 research project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (UNREST) – coordination of the WP “War Museums”
  • Grant NPRH for the English tranlation of my book Arrested Mourning. Memory of Nazi Camps in Poland, 1944-1950

Awards

- First Book Award of the Weekly „Polityki” for the book Przerwana

żałoba. Polskie spory wokół nazistowskich obozów koncentracyjnych i zagłady,

1944-1950 (2009)



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