Call for Articles for the journal Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały / Holocaust Studies and Materials 2024 from the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw. Deadline for submission of proposals: June 30, 2023

The twentieth issue of Holocaust Studies and Materials will be a jubilee one. Hence, it shall include summaries, overviews, and attempts to look at selected issues from the perspective of the 20 years. Nevertheless, its main theme shall be the HOLOCAUST and PSYCHOLOGY.

Janusz Korczak wrote the following in his diary:

“I feel content and discontent. I become angry, happy, anxious, indignant, I am eager to experience and to avoid experience, I am understanding but I call for punishment by God or man. [...] But all this is theoretical. Made to order. Flat, drab, customary, professional; I perceive things as if through a fog, with blotched, non-dimensional emotions. They seem to be beside me, not inside me. [...] Indolence. Poverty of feeling [...]." He already knows he must die. And what next? “Surely you cannot die more than once...?”

Aside the jubilee motifs, the 2024 issue shall be devoted primarily to psychological issues connected with the Holocaust. Focus shall primarily be on feelings and emotions, instead of the subject matter of memory, which already has an extensive reference literature. The issue intends to focus on the feelings and emotions felt there and then, namely the Jews' emotions and experiences in the sphere of the psyche during the Holocaust as well as on the emotional aspects of the Polish-Jewish relations during the occupation. The call is also interested in biographical and historical texts about the fate of Jewish psychologists/psychoanalysts during the Holocaust.

The primary sources can be personal documents — diaries, letters, and post-war memoirs and reflections.

Contributions are invited from a range of disciplines and perspectives. Suggestions of articles exploring the following key themes will be considered:

• Poles‒Jews: hopes, expectations, disappointments.
• Between hatred and/or hostility on the one hand and loyalty, friendship, and a sense of brotherhood on the other hand.
• Humiliation and shame.
• Life in hiding: between fear and boredom.
• Anger, wrath, despair, confusion, breakdown, surrender, powerlessness, dreams of revenge.
• Intuition, hunches, and dreams.
• How did the experience of the Holocaust affect contemporary psychology? What categories, concepts, and trends in contemporary psychology emerged based on the Holocaust experience or under the influence of Holocaust studies?

Proposals are also invited concerning psychological phenomena and psychological experiences during the Holocaust and the related issues as well as other proposals fitting in with the topic of the upcoming issue of our journal.

Read the Call for Articles or visit the journal's website for more info on dates and how to submit.