My name is Frankee Lyons, and I am an historian of migration, identity, and national belonging situating postwar Polish Jewish life within global Cold War migration and geopolitical networks.
I earned my PhD in Modern Eastern European History from the University of Illinois Chicago and my BA in History from the George Washington University. As a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow, I work on my monograph project What Homeland? Polish Jewish Migration and the Global Cold War.
You can read more about my monograph and dissertation projects below:
What Homeland? Polish Jewish Migration and the Global Cold War
A decade after the Second World War, thousands of Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust in the Soviet Union remained there. Between 1956 and 1960, in a period known as the ‘Second Repatriation,’ over 40,000 of these individuals moved from the Soviet Union to Poland. At the same time, following the introduction of an exit-only visa to Israel, about 50,000 Jews emigrated from Poland by the early 1960s.
What Homeland? traces the global journeys of these Jewish migrants from the Soviet Union to Poland and their migration onward through Europe and Israel (and, in many cases, back again). Amid the solidification of new Cold War nationalisms following Stalinism and the emergence of the State of Israel, Jewish migrants often found themselves between ‘homelands’ to which they did not feel they fully belonged. This monograph emphasizes both the agency and precarity of these individuals as they navigated nationalisms, political upheaval, spatial displacement, and cultural exchange in the global Cold War.
Jewish Belonging on the ‘Polish Road to Socialism:’ Migration and the Re-Making of Polish Jewry, 1956-60
My doctoral dissertation Jewish Belonging and the ‘Polish Road to Socialism:’ Migration and the Re-Making of Polish Jewry, 1956-60 examines Jewish experiences of the Polish Thaw and new migration policies generated between 1953 and the early 1960s. This project highlights Jewish voices ‘from-below’ that rose to the surface during the Polish Thaw, recovering the vibrancy of the postwar Jewish minority in Poland and its hopeful visions of the future after Stalinism. I argue that Polish Jews redefined their communities, cultures, and identities in this period as a result of migration and diasporic connection made possible by the Thaw’s liberalization.
Jewish Belonging and the ‘Polish Road to Socialism‘ received the UIC Department of History’s Leo Schelbert Dissertation Prize (awarded to the best dissertation defended in an academic year) and the University of Illinois Chicago’s university-wide Outstanding Thesis and Dissertation Award (awarded annually to one dissertation in the Arts & Humanities division).
This research was funded by the U.S. Fulbright Program, Title VIII Grant Program, Auschwitz Jewish Center, the JDC Archives, and the Kościuszko Foundation.
In additional to my monograph What Homeland? and dissertation Jewish Belonging on the ‘Polish Road to Socialism,’ I am developing other research projects and articles:
Global Jewish Encounters at the Fifth World Festival of Youth and Students
Hundreds of young Jewish delegates, including over three hundred from Israel alone, attended the Fifth World Festival of Youth and Students in Warsaw in 1955. Using Polish security documents, Israeli diplomatic files, personal letters, and newspapers, this project examines their experiences as Polish authorities actively tried to engage with Jewish delegates by advertising the revival of Yiddish culture, organizing meetings between Jewish groups, and surveilling their activities. This project demonstrates that the festival put Poland at the center of postwar global Jewish networks and helped establish the perimeter and limits of the country’s early post-Stalinist openness.
Reading Kwitko in Warsaw: Jewish Belonging Between the Polish Thaw and the Shadow of Sovietness
In 1959, Yiddish writer Naftali Herts Kon moved from the Soviet Union to Poland and ‘believed he was entering the free world.’ Why? The Thaw in Poland saw the emergence of community infrastructure for Jewish life that specifically supported and appealed to Soviet repatriates by incorporating elements of Soviet culture. This study investigates dimensions of Soviet identity among repatriates with a focus on cultural production through literature and visual arts. Using cultural sources, newspapers, and security documents, I examine identity formation among migrants caught in the Soviet periphery between two states in a moment of political change, thereby deconstructing the idea of a singular ‘Soviet Jewry’ or ‘Polish Jewry.’
‘Productivizing’ Polish Jewry: Competing Visions for the Jewish Future, 1957-1967
After a period of expulsion during Stalinism, in 1957 the Polish government invited international Jewish humanitarian groups like the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), and the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training (ORT) to re-enter Poland. The mission of these organizations was to support Jewish repatriates from the Soviet Union, but each differed in its priorities and views of the Polish Jewish community. This article considers debates between international groups and the domestic Socio-Cultural Association of Jews in Poland regarding emigration, settlement, and socialist productivization as well as the influence of these debates on Polish Jewish self-perception.
