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Book SynopsisAlthough the reconciliation of Jewish and Polish memories of the Holocaust is the central issue in contemporary Polish–Jewish relations, this is the first attempt to examine these divisive memories in a comprehensive way. Until 1989, Polish consciousness of the Second World War subsumed the destruction of Polish Jewry within a communist narrative of Polish martyrdom and heroism. Post-war Jewish memory, by contrast, has been concerned mostly with Jewish martyrdom and heroism (and barely acknowledged the plight of Poles under German occupation). Since the 1980s, however, a significant number of Jews and Poles have sought to identify a common ground and have met with partial but increasing success, notwithstanding the new debates that have emerged in recent years concerning Polish behaviour during the Nazi genocide of the Jews that Poles had ignored for half a century. This volume considers these contentious issues from different angles. Among the topics covered are Jewish memorial projects, both in Poland and beyond its borders, the Polish approach to Holocaust memory under communist rule, and post-communist efforts both to retrieve the Jewish dimension to Polish wartime memory and to reckon with the dark side of the Polish national past. An interview with acclaimed author Henryk Grynberg touches on many of these issues from the personal perspective of one who as a child survived the Holocaust hidden in the Polish countryside, as do the three poems by Grynberg reproduced here. The ‘New Views’ section features innovative research in other areas of Polish–Jewish studies. A special section is devoted to research concerning the New Synagogue in Poznan, built in 1907, which is still standing only because the Nazis turned it into a swimming-pool. CONTRIBUTORS: Natalia Aleksiun, Assistant Professor in Eastern European Jewish History, Touo College, New York; Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, Head, Section for Holocaust Studies, Centre for European Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków; curator, International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum; Boaz Cohen, teacher in Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Shaanan and Western Galilee Colleges, northern Israel; Judith R. Cohen, Director of the Photographic Reference Collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC; Gabriel N. Finder, Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia; Rebecca Golbert, researcher; Regina Grol, Professor of Comparative Literature, Empire State College, State University of New York; Jonathan Huener, Associate Professor of History, University of Vermont; Carol Herselle Krinsky, Professor of Fine Arts, New York University; Marta Kurkowska, Lecturer, Institute of History, Jagiellonian, University, Kraków; Joanna B. Michlic, Assistant Professor, Holocaust and Genocide Program, Richard Stockton College, Pomona, New Jersey; Eva Plach, Assistant Professor of History, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada; Antony Polonsky, Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC; Alexander V. Prusin, Associate Professor of History, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro; Jan Schwarz, Senior Lecturer, Department of Germanic Studies, University of Chicago; Maxim D. Shrayer, Professor of Russian and English, Chair of the Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages, Co-Director, Jewish Studies Program, Boston College; Michael C. Steinlauf, Professor of Jewish History and Culture, Gratz College, Pennsylvania; Robert Szuchta, History teacher, Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz High School, Warsaw; Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Lecturer in Cultural Anthroplogy, Warsaw University; Chair, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Collegium Civitas, Poland; Scott Ury, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University; Bret Werb, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC; Seth L. Wolitz, Gale Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Texas at Austin.
Table of ContentsNote on Place Names Note on Transliteration PART I: MAKING HOLOCAUST MEMORY Introduction GABRIEL N. FINDER Memento Mori: Photographs from the Grave GABRIEL N. FINDER AND JUDITH R. COHEN The Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, 1944–1947 NATALIA ALEKSIUN Who Am I? Jewish Children’s Search for Identity in Post-War Poland, 1945–1949 JOANNA B. MICHLIC Jewish Collaborators on Trial in Poland, 1944–1956 GABRIEL N. FINDER AND ALEXANDER V. PRUSIN Auschwitz and the Politics of Martyrdom and Memory, 1945–1947 JONATHAN HUENER A Library of Hope and Destruction: The Yiddish Book Series Dos poylishe yidntum (Polish Jewry), 1946–1956 JAN SCHWARZ Rachel Auerbach, Yad Vashem, and Israeli Holocaust Memory BOAZ COHEN Holocaust Memorialization in Ukraine REBECCA GOLBERT Jedwabne and Wizna: Monuments and Memory in the Lomza Region MARTA KURKOWSKA So Many Questions: The Development of Holocaust Education in Post-Communist Poland JOLANTA AMBROSEWICZ-JACOBS From Silence to Reconstruction: The Holocaust in Polish Education since 1989 ROBERT SZUCHTA What Story to Tell? Shaping the Narrative of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews MICHAEL C. STEINLAUF Bearing Witness: Henryk Grynberg’s Path from Child Survivor to Artist (An Interview with Henryk Grynberg) JOANNA B. MICHLIC PART II: NEW VIEWS ‘On the Gallows’: The ‘Politics of Assimilation’ in Turn-of-the-Century Warsaw SCOTT URY Shabes, yontef un rosh-khoydesh: A Close Analysis of the First Line of Goldfadn’s Song SETH L. WOLITZ Józefa Singer, the Inspiration for Rachela in Stanislaw Wyspianski’s Wesele, 1901 REGINA GROL Introducing Miss Judaea 1929: The Politics of Beauty, Race, and Zionism in Inter-War Poland EVA PLACH Shmerke Kaczerginski, the Partisan-Troubadour BRET WERB You from Jedwabne JOANNA TOKARSKA-BAKIR PART III: THE NEW SYNAGOGUE OF POZNAN The Synagogues of Poznan CAROL HERSELLE KRINSKY The Dedication of the New Synagogue in Poznan (Posen) ANTONY POLONSKY PART IV: DOCUMENT A Selection from Part 1 of Lev Levanda’s Seething Times MAXIM R. SHRAYER Notes on Contributors Index
