After the Plunder. The Afterlives of Jewish Personal Possessions in the Aftermath of the Holocaust

From the event series "1945. KriegsEnden - Perspektiven auf das Ende des Krieges und seine Bedeutung heute." a lecture by PD Dr. Magdalena Waligórska, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The plunder of Jewish personal belongings was the most widespread and tabooed aspect of genocidal dispossession. While historical research has given a lot of attention to the centralized Nazi state's takeover of Jewish assets, the history of mundane items of everyday use remains little known. Lecture in English. The focus of the series of events is the end, or rather the ends, of the Second World War 80 years ago. The plural "KriegsEnden" in the title refers not only to divergent perceptions and interpretations, continuities and ruptures or the "simultaneity of the non-simultaneous" around 1945, but also to the need to focus more strongly on perspectives from Eastern Europe and on Eastern Europe. As part of the lecture series, experts from academia and museum practice will provide a wide range of thematic insights into their latest work. A wide geographical range will also be covered, taking in both metropolitan areas and the peripheries of Poland, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria and Romania.