Kingdom of Barracks. Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-Occupied Germany and Austria
Kingdom of Barracks. Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-Occupied Germany and Austria
Am 15. November 2023 um 18.30 Uhr findet in der Fachbereichsbibliothek Zeitgeschichte im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe *at the Library die Buchpräsentation "Kingdom of Barracks. Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-Occupied Germany and Austria" statt.
Eine Aufzeichnung wird in Phaidra abrufbar sein.
Programm:
Begrüßung
Markus Stumpf | Fachbereichsbibliothek Zeitgeschichte, Universität Wien
Einleitende Worte
Kerstin von Lingen | Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Wien
Zum Buch
Katarzyna Nowak | Forschungszentrum für die Geschichte von Transformationen (RECET), Universität Wien
Podiumsdiskussion
Katarzyna Nowak | Forschungszentrum für die Geschichte von Transformationen (RECET), Universität Wien
Kerstin von Lingen | Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Wien
Jannis Panagiotidis | Forschungszentrum für die Geschichte von Transformationen (RECET), Universität Wien
Im Anschluss laden wir zu Brot und Wein
About the Book
After World War II displaced more than sixty million people, Cold War politics opened global eyes and wallets to European displaced persons. The postwar experiences of more than three million forcibly displaced Polish people illuminate the painfully long process of reckoning with war and its fallout.
Drawing on rich primary material unearthed in over a dozen archives, Kingdom of Barracks depicts the texture of everyday life in refugee camps in post-World War II Europe within a panorama of the social and cultural history of the twentieth century. Western Allies and Polish social elites construed the camps as spaces for rehabilitating and “re-civilizing” refugees to prepare them for the reconstruction of
war-torn countries and a rebirth of the nation. On the ground, refugees lived in close proximity, sharing bug-infested barracks with people from other regions, social classes, and wartime experiences.
Taking a bottom-up perspective and exploring the formation of cultural identity in exile through the lenses of class, gender, body, and nationality, Katarzyna Nowak argues that Polish DPs’ experiences of displacement stimulated a personal and a collective revival understood in religious and national terms.
In an age of intensifying forced displacement, Kingdom of Barracks sheds new light on past experiences of war and migration that are still deeply relevant in the present.
About the author
Dr Katarzyna Nowak is a historian specialising in cultural and social history of the early Cold War. Having completed her PhD in 2018 at the University of Manchester, she held research posts at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies and the Central European University. She is currently working on her project Knocking on the Vatican’s Gates. Refugees, the Holy See, and the Spectre of Communism, 1945-1958 as a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Vienna.
Co-funded by the European Union under the Grant Agreement Nr.101053242 — GLORE — ERC-2021-ADG. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the ERC. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Kooperationspartner:
Fachbereichsbibliothek Zeitgeschichte, Universitätsbibliothek Wien
Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Wien
Forschungsschwerpunkt Diktaturen, Gewalt, Genozide, Universität Wien
Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Project COMREF-VATICAN
Forschungszentrum für die Geschichte von Transformationen (RECET), Universität Wien