Tonia Lechtman was a Jew, a loving mother and wife, a Polish patriot, a committed communist, and a Holocaust survivor. Throughout her life, these identities brought her to multiple countries – Poland, Palestine, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel – where she lived on the margins of society during some of the most pivotal and cataclysmic decades of the twentieth century.
This roundtable will discuss Anna Müller’s book, which is not a mere biography of a remarkable woman, but also offers a view of the troubled history of twentieth-century Europe.
The roundtable features Karolina May Chu, moderator (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Marci Shore (Yale University), Joanna Sliwa (Jewish Claims Conference), Anna Hájková (University of Warwick), Jadwiga Biskupska (Sam Houston State University), Małgorzata Fidelis (University of Illinois Chicago), John Bukowczyk (Wayne State University, editor of the Polish and Polish-American Studies Series from Ohio University Press), and Anna Müller.
Anna Müller holds an MA from the University of Gdańsk, Poland, and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. She is an Associate Professor and the Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professor in Polish, Polish American, and Eastern European Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Previously, she was a curator for the Museum of the Second War in Gdańsk, preparing exhibitions on the Holocaust, the concentration camps, forced labor, and eugenics. She is the author of If the Walls Could Speak. Inside a Women’s Prison in Communist Poland (Oxford University Press, 2018) and An Ordinary Life? The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918-1996 (Ohio University Press, 2022).
The talk is co-sponsored by the Polish Studies Association, the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the University of Pittsburgh’s History Department.
Through May 23, 2023, discounted books are available at www.ohioswallow.com, using the promo code TONIA.
