EHRI Webinar | Uncovering Emotional Contamination at Hospital No.1 in the Łódź Ghetto
Date and Time: Wednesday 4 November 2026, 3:00 PM CET
The term “Emotional contamination” describes residual feelings associated with a space where a negative or tragic event occurred to an individual or group either personally, historically, or politically. Emotional contamination affects people’s associations with these places and informs their willingness to spend time in them. In her work, Abigail Zola examines how the compilation of individual traumas in relation to the same site can cause emotional contamination that affects entire communities and cultures.
Łódź Hospital No.1 was constructed before Nazi occupation and later functioned within the confines of the Łódź Ghetto. Hours of survivor testimony highlight the complexity of this site. Jews imprisoned in the ghetto staffed the hospital from 1940 to 1944. Numerous survivors associate the hospital with respite and care, as many prisoners and their families were treated there. Others, however, remember the hospital as a touchpoint in their memory of the initial deportations to killing centers. Hospital No. 1 in Łódź is still standing, but has been abandoned and left in a state of decay.
Researcher Abigail Zola’s project, “Uncovering Emotional Contamination: Redefining the Process of Site-Specific Architecture” portrays how architecturally analyzing Hospital No. 1 allows for a deeper understanding of the structure’s impact on Łódź before, during and after Nazi occupation. It additionally provides spatialized documentations of survivor experiences necessary for future architectural intervention.
Abigail Zola sourced numerous documents including original floor plans of the hospital dating back to the 1920s, and utilized AI Whisper technology to translate and transcribe roughly 75 Polish oral testimonies from survivors from Łódź who had direct experiences in and around the hospital before and after occupation. Using this research, Zola was able to digitally model the hospital’s original architecture and urban context, as well as locate the specific spaces within and around the hospital survivors referenced in their testimonies. Mapping these narratives spatially and specifically allows for a clearer understanding of the role of architecture not only within areas of conflict, but also how victims and survivors of these atrocities associate their experiences with space.
Please join us for this EHRI Webinar on Wednesday 4 November 2026, 3:00 PM CET.
More info and Zoom details:
https://www.ehri-project.eu/ehri-webinar-4-nov-uncovering-emotional-contamination-at-hospital-no-1-in-the-lodz-ghetto/