Douglas Ong

Commemorations over a Lost Home: The Examination of the Traumatic Memories of Expelled Kresy Poles from Lwów to Wrocław in Public Spaces

The proposed PhD dissertation examines the expulsion of the Poles from the Kresy during the years 1944-1955. The backbone of the dissertation examines the memory of the expulsion, formed by the forced resettlement of Poles from Lwów (today L’viv) to the city of Wrocław (formerly Breslau). The objective of the thesis is not to discuss the resettlement, but rather to investigate how and why following the fall of the Iron Curtain, a narrative of trauma about this resettlement emerged. Evidence for this narrative will be forensically dissected and discussed through the study of sites of memory such as museums and monuments together with other permanent and commemorative exhibitions. The proposed dissertation is also interested to juxtapose this case study with memories of the Holocaust in the broader Polish context, particularly by identifying and discussing the touch points between them.

Reviews

• Melchior, Inge. Guardians of Living History. An Ethnography of Post-Soviet Memory Making in Estonia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2020, 368 pp. H-Soz-Kult, November 12, 2021, www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-97260.

• “Bringing Wrocław into Poland: Analysis on the Kresy Expulsions’ Depiction in the Depot History Centre in Contemporary Poland,” 2nd Post-Socialist and Comparative Memory Studies (PoSoCoMeS) – Memory Studies Association (MSA) conference Post-Socialist Memory Cultures in Transition, Tallinn University, September 20-23, 2023.
• “The Commemorations over a Lost Home: The Examination of the Traumatic Memories of Expelled Kresy Poles from Lwów to Wrocław in Public Spaces,” Herder Institute Research Academy (HIRA) Colloquium, Herder Institute, Marburg, September 7-8, 2023.
• “Bringing Wrocław into Poland: The Expulsions from Kresy in the Depot History Centre,” joint lecture series Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Baltic Sea Region – Spotlight on Marine Governance and Environmental Change, University of Greifswald, July 13, 2023.
• Participation in the CEU Summer University Transdisciplinary Trauma Studies: Trauma Through Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, Central European University, Budapest, July 10-15, 2023.
• “The City as Meeting Point: How Wroclawian Museums Reshape Urban History by Representing Alternating Stories of Expulsion,” international workshop The Same Event? Morphologies, Reflections, Disseminations, organised by the IRTG Baltic Peripeties. Narratives of Reformations, Revolutions and Catastrophes, Institute for Cultural Research, University of Tartu, December 15-17, 2022.
• “An Old Home in a New: Remembrance of Post-Second World War Expulsions in Public Spaces,” 28th Biennial AABS Conference Baltic Studies at a Crossroads, organised by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), Seattle, WA, May 27-29, 2022.
• “An Old Home in a New: Remembrance of the Post-Second World War Expulsions in Public Spaces,” Baltic Geopolitics Graduate Seminar – Lent Term, Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge/online, February 25, 2022.
• “Gedenken an die verlorene Heimat: Auseinandersetzung mit traumatischen Erinnerungen von Polen, die von Lemberg nach Breslau vertrieben wurden, im öffentlichen Raum,” project presentation at the Mare-Pomerania-Confinium International PhD Workshop, International Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Department of History at the University of Greifswald, Interdisciplinary Centre for Baltic Sea Region Research (IFZO) at the University of Greifswald, Kulice, January 25-26, 2022.
• Participation in Cieszyn, Těšin, Teschen. One Region, One Culture?, Greifswalder Polonicum – Greifswald Polish Summer School, University of Greifswald/online, September 6-11, 2021.
• Participation in (Ze)Ukraine: Challenges of Hybridity, XXV. Greifswalder Ukrainicum – Greifswald Ukrainian Summer School, University of Greifswald/online, August 9-21, 2021.