Remembering a Vanished World: A Jewish Childhood in Interwar Poland

Abstract

New York and Oxford: Berghahn Book, 2001. 204 pp. $19.95. It would be hard find a more biased reviewer of Hamerow's book than myself. The author born on August 24, 1920, in Warsaw, during that great, fierce debate, at what was also a critical moment in history of newly established Polish Republic (p. 3). I was born on August 22, 1945, in Krakow, at what was also a critical moment in history of Poland. The author was brought United States by his parents at age of ten. I came United States at age of 39, as a parent of two sons at ages of fifteen and five. The author is a historian, I am a sociologist. He wrote book with the hope that it might in a small way help broaden common perception of way of life of East European Jewry...[and] tried emphasize those recollections that might some extent throw light on in which he grew up (p. x). I read book through screen of my personal experiences of a Polish Jew and couldn't help being overflown by my own memories of my Jewish childhood in postwar Poland. First, I want offer some remarks related Hamerow's use of concept of a vanished world. He says, But about which I am writing, of Polish Jewry, and indeed of East European Jewry as a whole, not as result of a gradual historical evolution but within space of a few years, amid an outburst of genocidal fury exceeding in intensity anything previously experienced (p. ix). If by vanish he means disappear quickly and completely, then I must not be here. However horrific destruction of Polish Jewry and East European Jewry as a whole actually was, we haven't yet and our world hasn't either. The book is a story of one individual life, first ten years of such life, remembered sixty years after a permanent relocation hundreds of miles away from where it occurred. In 1986, Hamerow visited Otwock, town where he grew up before he immigrated United States in 1930, and right there he realized that [t]he past was dead, dead beyond recall (p. 151). Throughout his book, he describes in great detail various elements of of his family, such as aspiration identify as members of upper middle class, emphasis on education and development of artistic talents, role of a matriarch in household, ability cope with migrations and their consequences, support for liberal ideologies, or secularization of worldview. The descriptions of life Hamerow provides, page after page, are a mirror reflection of family culture maintained by Jews who lived in post-war Poland. I can say that his life is a matrix for mine or mine is almost a carbon copy of his. And, best of my knowledge, same values and norms, ideals and ideas, beliefs and patterns of gender roles, etc. can be found in families of Eastern European Jews born after war, and today, also in some families established by their children. Like author, we also to learn languages and play an instrument, spent most of our time reading and expanding our intellectual horizons, and were not required be athletic or get involved in any sport activities. We also spent most of our childhood interacting with adults and had very few friends among our peers. We were raised be emotionally ready for an attack by some not-quite-well-defined people and lived in anticipation of emigration from Poland at a not-quite-well-defined time and a mis-imagined place. …