ABSTRACT Holocaust killing sites in Eastern Europe are of increasing interest to scholars and the public. This article analyzes the production of video testimonies in situ to consider the question of witnessing the Holocaust in Belarus, where mass graves of Jews are at once ubiquitous and invisible. Foregrounding the French organization Yahad–In Unum's efforts to identify and memorialize these killing sites, the article proposes a spatially aware reading of the audio-visual historiography produced in the former Pale of Jewish settlements. Place here functions as both a trigger of memory and a reminder of the nature of the genocide in Belarus as embedded in a larger context of violence and destruction. Confronted with a unique set of spatial parameters, viewers of these video testimonies are exposed to the legacies of the atrocities in the present and encouraged to develop an understanding of the Holocaust that recognizes its social and environmental repercussions.

ABSTRACT The reemergence of the Polish state after 130 years of foreign rule (from 1795 to 1918) was the most obvious example of the triumph of the principle of nationality in the post-First World War settlement. The new state, with a population of nearly 26 million, was the largest and most powerful in East Central Europe, and there was a widespread feeling that, with the shedding of foreign rule, Poland would soon be able to take its place as a highly developed European country. This article reflects on the conditions that made possible the emergence of this state, and what effect independence had on the Polish Jewish community, at the time the world's second-largest Jewish community (after the United States).

ABSTRACT An examination of anti-Jewish violence on the part of Polish troops stationed in Bobruisk (Bel: Babruǐsk; Pol: Bobrujsk) between 1919 and 1920 puts into relief the interconnectedness of antisemitism and Polish nationalist discourse at the time of the consolidation of the Polish state. The relationship between Polish forces and the town's majority — Jews — reflects both Poland's colonial ambitions in the East and the emerging political vision of the future Polish state, in which ethnic minorities were to be second-class citizens. This article analyzes Jewish, Soviet, and Polish sources from the period, discussing both symbolic and actual violence against the Jews. Placing the events in Bobruisk in the wider perspective of the wave of pogroms that accompanied the advance of Polish troops in the so-called Kresy, Poland's eastern borderlands, it uses the micro-scale of one town to shed light on the factors that triggered the antisemitic violence.

ABSTRACT Simon Dubnov is considered the father of Russian Jewish historiography without rivels or peers. An examination of his memoir shows that he intentionally fought with his colleagues and belittled their contributions. The author of this essays tries to answer why and how Dubnov did this.

ABSTRACT Although officially designated as representative, self-governing bodies, the Jewish councils (Judenräte) set up in Nazi-controlled territories were essentially tasked with carrying out orders issued by the regime, with at best limited possibilities of mitigating harmful measures against the Jews. This essay, which describes and also notes differences between the Judenräte in eastern and western areas of the present-day Vitebsk region of Belarus, is based on data from Belarusian, Russian, and Israeli archives, supplemented by witness testimonies collected by the author. 1

ABSTRACT This article discusses Polish nationalists’ fear of “Judeo-Polonia,” a notion that emerged before the First World War, gained considerable traction during the war itself, and then began to morph into “Judeo-Communism” by war's end. Focusing on Warsaw, the article discusses the significance of population movements and demographic shifts, the appearance of new opportunities for political competition based both on identity politics and the prospect of an independent Poland, and the preordained failure of the new state to accommodate more than one national group after 1918.

ABSTRACT With the reestablishment of independent Poland in 1918, women were given the right to vote. This progressive step reflected the hopes to create “a new world” within the Polish state. Two Jewish socialist parties, the Bund and Poalei Zion, were well aware of the changing political and social realities and adapted their political programs. The parties adopted a progressive approach toward women's status both in the private and the public spheres. As socialist Jewish parties, their main focus was Jewish women workers who suffered from “triple suppression” – as workers, as women and as Jews. On the surface, Jewish socialist parties demanded equal rights for all women. However, in this article I will argue that, in practice, the parties’ relation to the question of women equality was ambivalent. Notwithstanding the progressive agenda that was propagated, the traditional “sex role” of women was preserved in the parties' inner circles.