We cordially invite you to a promotional meeting for the book Where the World Ended by Paulina Włodawer (1914–2006), published by the Sybir Memorial Museum and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
Date: 11 April 2025, 6:00 p.m.
Venue: The Ludwik Zamenhof Centre
Free admission
The author of the latest volume in the Memoirs and Testimonies series was a Polish Jew, a graduate of the University of Warsaw, and a resident of Warsaw. In the autumn of 1939, like thousands of other Jews, Paulina and her husband Artur fled eastward from Poland. They stayed for a longer period in Łuck. In June 1940, during the third mass deportation, they were deported to Siberia. They returned to Poland in late spring 1946.
Paulina Włodawer began writing her memoirs more than forty years after leaving Warsaw in 1939. By that time, she was already a distinguished biochemist and, since 1966, a professor. She was living in Sweden, where she had emigrated with her husband in 1968. She wrote her wartime memoirs for her son Alexander, who is today also a highly regarded scientist.
In the introduction to Where the World Ended, Anna Pyżewska, a researcher in the Scientific Department of the Sybir Memorial Museum, writes:
“Interestingly, while writing her memoirs, Paulina Włodawer does not focus on the most tragic experiences, nor does she dwell on suffering or pathos in recounting her story. She writes in a factual and precise manner, though her memoirs also contain passages filled with deep emotion. Moreover, they include a sense of humor, and some fragments are even anecdotal. Written many years after the events described, her memoirs reveal a great distance from what Paulina Włodawer, her husband, and their loved ones experienced during the Second World War. They reflect a kind of reflection that comes after years of experience, thought, observation of the world, and internal dialogue,” she concludes.
Participants in the promotional meeting will include:
– Alexander Włodawer – son of Paulina and Artur Włodawer, an internationally recognized authority in molecular biology and crystallography. A graduate of physics at the University of Warsaw, he has lived abroad since 1968, primarily in the United States. Despite residing in the U.S. for many years, he continues to maintain close ties with scientific institutions in Poland.
– Anna Pyżewska – researcher in the Academic Department – President Seweryn Nowakowski Research Institute of the Sybir Memorial Museum in Białystok. Her research interests include the Holocaust and the rescue of Jewish populations in north-eastern Poland during the Second World War, as well as the fate of Jews deported to the Soviet Union. She edited and academically prepared Paulina Włodawer’s book Where the World Ended.
– Przemysław Kaniecki, PhD – curator in the Collections Department of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, assistant professor at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw, specializing in contemporary Polish literature and culture.
– Marcin Zwolski, PhD – historian, Head of the Scientific Department – President Seweryn Nowakowski Research Institute of the Sybir Memorial Museum, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Zesłaniec.
Welcome!
