Together with the “Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN” Centre in Lublin and HistoriaBEZKITU.pl, we invite you to another event in the “W Bramie o książce” series. The meeting will focus on Justyna Majewska’s book Mury i szczeliny. Przestrzenie getta warszawskiego (Warsaw, Jewish Historical Institute, 2024).
The event will take place on 13 February 2026 at 6:00 p.m. in the Sala Czarna, „Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN” Centre in Lublin, ul. Grodzka 21.
The discussion will feature Dr. Justyna Majewska (Jewish Historical Institute), Prof. Dariusz Libionka (State Museum at Majdanek; Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences), and Dr. Jakub Chmielewski (State Museum at Majdanek).
To understand the phenomenon of the Warsaw Ghetto, it is necessary to view it from multiple perspectives—above all those of its creators and inhabitants, that is, from both German and Jewish viewpoints […]. The relocation of residents to the ghetto was an event observed and discussed by the entire city. Being torn away from one’s previous place of life was a painful change, especially since in 1940 no one knew how long this new situation might last—one year, two, or three…
The title “walls and cracks” refers not only to the physical wall that the Germans began building in Warsaw in 1940 to divide the city into one side and the other. It also carries a metaphorical meaning. The bricks symbolize hunger, disease, fear, longing, humiliation, anxiety, violence, and ultimately death as experienced in the ghetto. The cracks represent attempts to reshape the oppressive space of the ghetto and to create alternative micro-worlds within it—points of civic resistance and spaces of acceptance.
(translated excerpts from the book)
Dr. Justyna Majewska is a cultural studies scholar, sociologist, and curator. Her doctoral dissertation examined the Warsaw Ghetto from the perspective of the sociology of space and time. She works in the Research Department of the Jewish Historical Institute and is also a member of the Center for Holocaust Research. She serves as managing editor of the journal Zagłada Żydów. Studia i materiały. She has been a fellow of EHRI and the Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. She was part of the curatorial team that prepared the permanent exhibition of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. She currently collaborates with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington as part of the Holocaust Justice Project. She is a member of research teams working on the Encyclopedia of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Lexicon of the Łódź Ghetto. She is the author of numerous articles and, together with Blanka Górecka, co-authored the scholarly edition of Chaim Aron Kaplan’s wartime diaries: Dziennik 1940, Part 1. Megila życia (2020).
For Mury i szczeliny…, the author received the Marian Turski Historical Award (2025) for “Best Debut in Scholarly and Popular Scholarship,” as well as the Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz Prize (2025).
A recording of the event will be available on the YouTube channel of the “Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN” Centre. The event will be held in Polish.
“W Bramie o książce”: A Conversation on Justyna Majewska’s Book “Mury i szczeliny. Przestrzenie getta warszawskiego”