This evening, organised by the Polish Cultural Institute and the Austrian Cultural Forum London, chaired by Julia Winckler (University of Brighton) accompanies the exhibition Traces and features two presentations:

Dr. Gerhard Wolf’s presentation is titled Germanisation and Annihilation – German policies in occupied Silesia. The presentation will concentrate on the area of occupied Silesia that was fully annexed by the German Reich during the attack on Poland. It includes the Bielsko-Biala area where the Hecker family lived. Dr. Wolf is DAAD Lecturer in Modern History, Centre for German Jewish Studies, University of Sussex. His most recent book is Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität: Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungs-politik in Polen (2012).

Professor Józef Niz˙ nik (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences) will present on The Social Construction of Memory: The Case of Memory of War in Poland. Prof. Niz˙ nik will focus on the processes of memory construction, referring to the memory of war in postwar Poland and the role which artistic representations of war have played in memory construction.