Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewLehrer and Meng have done an admirable job both in obtaining essays from authors in a wide variety of disciplines and in making this material accessible to non-specialists.
* Studies in Contemporary Jewry *
Lehrer and Meng have edited an important interdisciplinary work, which should make an immediate impact on the field of Polish Jewish Studies.
* Religious Studies Review *
There has been a surge of interest in the history and lives of Polish Jews by Polish Gentiles and the descendants of Holocaust survivors in recent decades. . . This collection offers deep insights into and thoughtful analysis of this fascinating phenomenon. Highly recommended.
* Choice *
Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland evokes a revolution – the word is not too strong – in the possibilities, new goals, and shifting facts on the ground associated with Jewish history and lives in Poland today.
* Canadian Jewish News *
[T]he authors' understanding of the Jewishness of 'Jewish space' encompasses the plurality of Jewish expression. As the editors note, their approach seeks 'to break out of predetermined, normative views of Jewishness to explore how history and identity inform each other, raise questions about difference and solidarity, and recognize that Jewish culture is shaped in a field of interactions with other cultures.' From the vantage point of Poland, the editors see their work as part of a national discourse, looking to the construction of a new, post-communist Polish identity.May 2015
* Literary Review of Canada *
[This] collection is an important step toward deeper and clearer understanding of what Poland's Jewish spaces were, are, and may yet become.October 2016
* H-SAE *
The diversity and uniqueness of examples presented in 'Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland' make this book a significant contribution to Polish-Jewish memory studies.10/13/15
* Pol-Int *
Table of ContentsIntroduction / Erica Lehrer and Michael Meng
1. "Oświęcim"/ "Auschwitz": Archeology of a Mnemonic Battleground / Geneviève Zubrzycki
2. Restitution of Communal Property and the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland / Stanislaw Tyszka
3. Muranów as a Ruin: Layered Memories in Postwar Warsaw / Michael Meng
4. Stettin, Szczecin, and the "Third Space." Urban nostalgia in the German/Polish/Jewish borderlands / Magdalena Waligórska
5. Rediscovering the Jewish Past in the Polish Provinces: The Socio-Economics of Nostalgia / Monika Murzyn-Kupisz
6. Amnesia, Nostalgia, and Reconstruction: Shifting Modes of Memory in Poland's Jewish Spaces / Slawomir Kapralski
7. Jewish Heritage, Pluralism, and Milieux de Memoire: the case of Krakow's Kazimierz / Erica Lehrer
8. The Ethnic Cleansing of the German-Polish-Jewish 'Lodzermensch' / Winson Chu
9. Stony Survivors: Images of Jewish Space on the Polish Landscape / Robert L. Cohn
10. Reading the Palimpsest / Konstanty Gebert
11. A Jew, a Cemetery, and a Polish Village: A Tale of the Restoration of Memory
Jonathan Webber
12. The Museum of the History of Polish Jews: A Post-War, Post-Holocaust, Post-Communist Story / Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Epilogue: Jewish Spaces and their Future / Diana Pinto
Notes
Contributors
Index
