Abstract:
There is no individual museum dedicated to the Łódź Ghetto in which
200,000 Jews were confined. However, there are institutions actively working to
preserve the memory of the Jewish community in Łódź. This article focuses on two
recently established museums in the city: the Radegast Station, founded in 2009, and
the Museum of Polish Children, established in 2021. The aim is to analyze the
mechanisms that led to the creation of these historical museums and explore their
specific functions. I am interested not only in how these institutions shape and
present the Jewish heritage, but also in the conceptualisation of the social role of
these institutions and the analysis of their presence in the public space. To achieve
this, I examine local micro-interactions within the current framework of Poland’s
politics of history. Given that nationalism is the predominant ideology of modernity,
my text demonstrates how nationalist discourses impact the commemoration of the
Łódź/Litzmannstadt Ghetto and influence the remembrance of Second World War.
