History Of Polish Jews Research Articles

Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust by Natalia Aleksiun

Reviewed by: Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust by Natalia Aleksiun Helene Sinnreich (bio) Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust By Natalia Aleksiun. London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2021. 329 pp. Natalia aleksiun's new monograph, conscious history: polish jewish Historians before the Holocaust, makes the compelling case that through an examination of the early historians of Polish Jewry, one gains an understanding of Jewish experience in the Second Polish Republic. According to Aleksiun, this is because not only were these scholars formed by the time in which they wrote and lived, but also that as scholar-activists they helped shape interwar Polish Jewry. Aleksiun begins and ends her analytical volume with storytelling, which wraps herself and contemporary scholars of Polish Jewry into the long history of Polish Jewish historians, which she canonizes in her important contribution to the field. She brings readers on a journey of the evolution of professional writing about the history of Polish Jews, starting with her chapter "Historical Beginnings," in which she provides a rich history of the scholars who preceded and influenced the post-World War I community of university-educated Jewish historians. This early group "embraced history as an important political and cultural tool for improving the status of the Jews and for strengthening communal self-awareness" (61). Aleksiun then introduces us in the aptly named chapter "The Making of Professional Polish Jewish Historians" to a new cohort of scholars, the main focus of the volume, whose university training led to their professional approach to the field of Polish Jewish history. They rejected Jewish apologetics and embraced "the creation of a national Jewish historiography in accordance with academic standards of critical scholarship" (63). As scholars in a freshly emerged state where nationalism helped forge the historical narrative being formed in Polish universities, these scholars created a place for Polish Jewry in the new national narratives. However, as Aleksiun informs, even as these academics saw themselves as part of the academic project of national history formation, their marginal status as Jews made placement in university positions difficult. This led these men to take positions in the public sphere and disseminate their conceptions of Polish Jewish history into the wider Jewish community. In their roles [End Page 206] as teachers, journalists, and religious leaders, they imbued those within their sphere of influence with their conception of collective Polish Jewish identity. They created curricula for Jewish schools; they discussed their conceptions of the history of Polish Jewry from the pages of newspapers and pulpits. As a result, these historians became extremely important in the formation of Jewish Polish identity in interwar Polish Jewish communities. As Aleksiun notes, Polish Jewish history, which was studied almost exclusively by Jews, ended up influencing those Jews and the members of their community. Aleksiun grapples with "the questions raised by historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi in Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, probing within the Polish context his idea that in modern times a secularizing and consciously Jewish intelligentsia takes on history-writing as a profoundly Jewish act" (11–12). These scholars became Jewish actors on their communities. Ultimately, however, it was these same Jewish historians equipped in university settings with the tools of professional historians who set to work to write the first histories of the Holocaust in Poland. In ghettos, in hiding, and in occupied cities, they compiled the documents utilized later to tell the story of their community's devastation. They composed the first narrative and analytical histories of Jewish experience during the Holocaust. Ultimately, many died during the war, but as Aleksiun informs in her "Epilogue," their work lives on as a deep influence on those writing on the Jews of Poland today. [End Page 207] Helene Sinnreich Helene Sinnreich is director of the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is a scholar of Jewish experience during the Holocaust and European Jewry. Sinnreich serves as the coeditor in chief of the academic journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Oxford University Press) and was the founding editor of the Journal of Jewish Identities (Johns Hopkins University Press). Sinnreich obtained her PhD and MA from...

There Is a Polish-Jewish History beyond the Holocaust

Abstract Responding to the provocative question whether there is Polish history beyond the Holocaust, this article gives several reasons for an affirmative answer. First, if there is a history of Polish Jews beyond the Holocaust, and there is a lot, there is at least as much of a general history of Poland, of which the history of Polish Jews makes an integral part. Second, the history of the Holocaust, at least a good such history, requires the pre-Holocaust history of Jews and of their non-Jewish neighbors: we cannot understand their wartime choices without their prior experiences. Third, by the sheer numbers of Jews who had lived and were killed in Poland, often in sight of their non-Jewish neighbors, the Holocaust is part of the history of Poland more than of other countries. This observation aims not only to strengthen the second argument above, but to point at various consequences of the centuries-long geographic concentration of Jews in Poland and of its abrupt and horrible end.

Resources Concerning the History of Polish Jews in Castle Court Records of the 17th and 18th Centuries in the Central State Historical Archives in Kyiv and Lviv

The article presents types of sources which have thus far not been used, castle court books kept in the archives of the Ukrainian cities of Lviv and Kyiv. The author emphasizes the importance of these sources for research on the history and culture of Polish Jews in the 17th and 18th centuries. He also specifies the types of documents related to Jewish issues authenticated in these books (e.g. manifestations and lawsuits, declarations of the Radom Tribunal), as well as current source publications and internet databases containing selected documents from Ukrainian archives.

Archaeological fever: situating participatory art in the rubble of the Warsaw ghetto

ABSTRACTThe essay critically examines the participatory excavation project The Cut (2015) performed in the former ghetto area of Warsaw in relation to the artists-in-residence program administered by POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. By investigating the spatial, social and historical framing of the artistic intervention and the discourses it mobilizes, the author contests the underlying presumption that participatory art inherently produces democratic and positive social and spatial relations. The author argues that unaddressed socio-historical contexts of Polish-Jewish relations in such art genres may lead to re-production of the oppressive patterns of culture that include exclusion and appropriation.

POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

The Golden Mean Principle. A Handful of Comments on the Currently Dominant Discourse on ‘Polish-Jewish Relations’

The article attempts to deconstruct the dominant Polish discourse regarding the ‘Polish-Jewish relations’. Its central ϐigures are: the logic of the golden mean as a tool to reach historical truth, symmetrisation of Polish and Jewish wrongs and faults, and hospitality as the prevalent attitude of Poles towards Jews. The authors show its opinion forming power using three examples: a review of Paweł Pawlikowski’s film Ida, the reception of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and a discussion on the Righteous monuments, which were to be erected in Warsaw.

A Work for the Jewish Soul of Warsaw, Old and New

In 2015, Lukas Ligeti created a site-specific, audience-interactive performance work while in residence at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Based on interviews with residents of Warsaw, the piece examined aural memories of Jewish life in the city, tracing the extermination and re-emergence of the Jewish community through speech and songs as well as creative musicians’ reimaginings of these memories, with computer technology as a mediator.

Mixed Metaphors in Muranów: Holocaust Memory and Architectural Meaning at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Since it opened in 2013, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw has been widely praised by journalists and scholars for its permanent exhibition and striking architecture. Built on the site of the former Warsaw ghetto established by the Nazis in World War II, the museum has been identified as a symbol of improved Polish–Jewish relations in the wake of the Holocaust. Few commentators, however, have delved deeply into the complexities of the museum’s architectural relationship to the Holocaust. This essay traces the long discussion surrounding the architectural symbolism of the museum – from its inception up to its recent completion – in order to illustrate how the Holocaust continues to pose major challenges to architects as they wrestle with the task of building after Auschwitz.

Polin: From a “Here You Shall Rest” Covenant to the Creation of a Polish Jewish History Museum. An interview with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

Abstract This article consists of an interview with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, chief curator of the core exhibition of the newly opened POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Among other subjects, the conversation touches on the philosophy underlying the creation of the museum and the way it presents its subject as well as ways in which POLIN differs from others museums of Jewish and Polish history. Its location in Warsaw, both a leading historic center of Jewish civilization and a site of Jewish martyrdom, is stressed. The museum is described as “a kind of act of recovery,” and the hope is expressed that it will strengthen the recent revival of Jewish life and culture in democratic Poland.

A report from XIX Schizophrenia Forum Conference in Warsaw

Abstract On 10-11th March in Warsaw, in the Conference Center Muranow, there was held a scientific conference “Schizophrenia-Forum”, organized for the nineteenth time. In this edition, particular attention was paid to educational aspects, by virtue of the fact that among the participants of the Conference there was a large number of young physicians specializing in psychiatry. The formula of the two-day Conference based on the experts’ debates in a particular way affected the participants, so the conference was very interesting, it enabled the exchange of experiences and reflections on the problems of schizophrenia. The conference was attended by leading scientists and clinicians, for example: Marek Jarema, Janusz Rybakowski, Andrzej Czernikiewicz, Jerzy Samochowiec, Dominika Dudek and others, which is why it allowed to enrich the knowledge of the diagnosis and treatment of psychotic disorders and good presentation of mature clinical thinking. The organizer of the Conference was the Foundation III Department of Psychiatry, “Syntonia” and the guest of honor was Dr. Peter Falkai - Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. The lecture by Professor Falkaia entitled Schizophrenia treatment guidelines, at a plenary lecture, was presented in English, translated simultaneously, and was divided into parts: the characteristics of schizophrenia, guidelines for pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia, pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia - states of acute pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia - long-term treatment, side effects of long-term pharmacotherapy and conclusions. After a two-day Conference the hugely popular workshop sessions took place. They were addressed to physicians during specialization. All workshop sessions were very popular, as well as the entire conference, which became a forum for the exchange of information, ideas and experiences, sometimes intriguing, inspiring and innovative but never blank. At the end of the Conference the certificates were distributed and there was the opportunity for guests - visiting the permanent exhibition “1000 years of history of Polish Jews,” Polin, located at the Conference Centre Muranow. XIX Conference on Schizophrenia Forum 2016 was an interesting event cognitively and it maintained a high level of scientific and substantive jurisdiction important events in Polish psychiatry.

Exhibit Review: A 1,000-Year History of Polish Jews, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Poland

Exhibit Review: A 1,000-Year History of Polish Jews, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Poland

2015 Marshall Sklare Award Lecture—An Ethnographer in the Museum: Reflections from POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

2015 Marshall Sklare Award Lecture—An Ethnographer in the Museum: Reflections from POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Reguła złotego środka. Kilka uwag na temat współczesnego dominującego dyskursu o „stosunkach polsko-żydowskich”

Tekst jest próbą dekonstrukcji polskiego dyskursu dominującego w temacie tzw. stosunków polsko-żydowskich. Centralne figury tego dyskursu to logika złotego środka jako narzędzia dochodzenia do prawdy historycznej, symetryzacja polskich i żydowskich krzywd oraz win, a także gościnność jako powszechna postawa Polaków wobec Żydów. Autorzy pokazują opiniotwórczą siłę oddziaływania tego dyskursu na trzech przykładach: recenzji filmu Ida Pawła Pawlikowskiego, recepcji Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Polin oraz dyskusji o pomnikach Sprawiedliwych, które miały stanąć w Warszawie.

Inside the Museum: Curating between hope and despair: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

The reception of the core exception of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened in Warsaw on 28 October 2014, is the focus of this essay. While eschewing a master narrative, the exhibition is guided by metahistorical principles and a distinctive approach to mode of narration. Both have proven controversial as evidenced by answers to the following questions. What is the difference between a history of Polish Jews and a history of Polish Jewish relations? What is the most important period in the history of Polish Jews? Can visitors be trusted to draw the proper conclusions from a multi-voiced narrative based largely on quotations from primary sources, supported with scholarly commentary? Is a museum whose core exhibition features relatively few original objects a museum? What is the role of intangible heritage in such a museum?

The Square of Polish Innocence: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and its symbolic topography

The text refers to the space around the Nathan Rapoport’s Monument to the Fighters and Martyrs of the Ghetto and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN in Warsaw (Poland). The site of death – at the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto – has now become a site overloaded with other symbolic messages. Two main symbolic centers (the 1948 Monument and the 2013 Museum) are today encircled by ten other, additional memorials. The message emerging from the content as well as the proportion of commemorations is that Polish solidarity with the Jews was a fact and it stood the test of terror and death brought by the Germans. Although it does not undermine the veracity of the few and isolated exceptions, such a version of events is drastically different from the actual facts. Both symbolic centers are perceived as emblems of Jewish minority narrative. Additional artefacts are a message formulated by the Polish majority. They constitute a kind of symbolic encirclement, block. Emphasizing the dominant majority’s version of the events in this place is in fact a symbolic pre-emptive action. It is meant to silence the unwanted narrative or suppress even the mere possibility that it might emerge. What turns out to be at stake in the dominant Polish narrative about the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations is the image of Poland and the Poles. This shows not only the topographic and symbolic situation but also the socio-cultural context of the functioning of the new Museum.

“Objective, not neutral”: Joseph Wulf, a documentary historian

ABSTRACTThis biographical sketch of Joseph Wulf (1912–74), one of the most important Polish-Jewish survivor historians, outlines his career after the liberation of Auschwitz. It covers his activities as a key figure in Poland's Jewish Historical Commission, his emigration to France and the establishment of a Centre for the History of Polish Jews in Paris, and his later move to West Berlin. In the 1950s, Wulf was the first historian to publish books on the Shoah in German. In the years prior to his suicide in 1974, he was greatly preoccupied by the question of how best to enlighten the Germans about the history of National Socialism, an issue that involved a number of disputes with German historians.

Kwietniowe gadanie. Polskie flagi nad gettem

W kwietniu 2013 r. przypadła 70. rocznica powstania w getcie warszawskim i stała się ona istotnym wydarzeniem dyskursywnym. Na temat powstania głos zabrali przedstawiciele polskich elit symbolicznych, co pozwoliło dobitnie się przekonać, z jaką dominującą narracją o powstaniu w getcie warszawskim mamy obecnie do czynienia. Ponadto w tym „odświętnym” czasie toczyły się dyskusje, które samego powstania wprawdzie bezpośrednio nie dotyczyły, ale prowadzone były właśnie w kwietniu 2013 r., współtworząc okołorocznicowy dyskurs publiczny. Doszło do nich w efekcie rozmowy z Krzysztofem Jasiewiczem, zamieszczonej w magazynie „Focus Historia Ekstra”, projekcji niemieckiego serialu Nasze matki, nasi ojcowie, zapowiedzi erygowania pomnika poświęconego polskim Sprawiedliwym nieopodal Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich oraz treści wywiadu, jakiego Elżbieta Janicka udzieliła Polskiej Agencji Prasowej. Wszystkie te dyskusje pokazały, jakie są reguły publicznego mówienia o postawach Polaków wobec Żydów w czasie Zagłady, które tematy wciąż pozostają spowite tabu, a zarazem jak kształtuje się mapa świętych miejsc w polskiej pamięci zbiorowej.