This talk investigates the open-ended biographies and shifting meanings of material objects that passed from Jews to the non-Jewish Poles who helped them survive the Holocaust, and the challenges they create for their new owners, including museums. Such objects of exchange were a common part of the wartime economy and mediated processes of hiding Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. "Bartered" by desperate Jews trying to survive, “gifted” by grateful survivors who received help, or otherwise “inherited” by Christian Poles when their original Jewish owners were murdered, captured, or otherwise unable to return to claim their property, these objects serve as enduring, sometimes awkward traces of these experiences and transactions, and as entry points for exploring wandering object biographies, shifting notions of morality, and diverse vectors of memory in the long aftermath of World War II.

Erica Lehrer is a sociocultural anthropologist, historian, and curator. She is professor in the history department and held the Canada Research Chair in Museum and Heritage Studies (2007–2017) at Concordia University, Montreal, where she is also founding director of the Curating and Public Scholarship Lab (CaPSL). She is the author of Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places (2013); and co-editor of Terribly Close: Polish Vernacular Artists Face the Holocaust (2023); My Museum, A Museum About Me (2023); Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions (2016); Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland (2015); and Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places (2011), among others, as well as numerous articles. She is principal investigator on the international team project Thinking Through the Museum: A Partnership Approach to Curating Difficult Knowledge in Public (2021–2028).