From Łódź to Litzmannstadt: German Pasts and Holocaust Sites in Post-Communist Poland

Since 1989, politicians and activists in the Polish city of Łódź have deployed the city’s German past in countervailing ways. On the one hand, the local search for a multicultural heritage has fostered the reemergence of the “Good German” narrative in tourism materials. On the other hand, renewed efforts in Łódź and in Poland more generally to stress German culpability for the Holocaust have contributed to the city’s privileging of the term Litzmannstadt Ghetto over Łódź Ghetto. Viewed from the perspective of local, national, and international agendas, the rediscovery of Litzmannstadt as a term and a concept reveals the interrelated and contested nature of German and Jewish legacies in contemporary Polish politics.