How do we contemplate social memory? 3GNY volunteer and graduate researcher Alex Rossen has considered this question a lot in his academic career. As a 3G who traces his heritage back to Poland, researching practices of memory in the country is a very personal line of research for Alex. His passion and expertise on the subject are informed by his family history, and by his extensive field experience in Poland. Alex is a Senior Warsaw Fellow at Humanity in Action. He is also the author of 'What Happens When Nationalism Seeps Into Holocaust History? Look to Poland,' published in the Forward in 2022, and 'Shatter the Cube: Challenging Historical Revisionism in Poland and the U.S.' written for Humanity in Action in 2023.
Join us on June 2 as Alex discusses his upcoming project: 'Radical Remembrance: a Socio-Political Genealogy of the Legacy of the Holocaust in Poland,' commissioned by the Council of European Studies as part of the 30th International Conference of Europeanists.
This conversation will be hosted and moderated by Professor Jody Russell Manning, lecturer and associate director of the Rowan University Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights. Jody specializes in the research of Holocaust history and memory, Polish-Jewish relations, and the ramifications of genocide for contemporary society. He was the first American intern at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum from 2005-2009. He is also the co-founder of the first International Graduate Students' Conference for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University.
Amidst a global shift in how diverse communities relate to the past, Alex uses a socio-genealogical approach to answer important questions about the arc of Holocaust memory practices in Poland’s social and political spheres. Poland has often been described as a traditionalist society facing a certain social upheaval as it attempts to reconcile its difficult past with the demands of the present. With his research, Alex aims to make more concentrated contributions to this understanding of Poland by investigating the role of leading right-wing actors in Poland in using violence, intimidation, and lawmaking to engender a narrow, nationalist interpretation of the Holocaust.