Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2022 PIASA Anna M. Cienciala Award for the Best Edited Book in Polish StudiesThe majority of Poland’s prewar Jewish population who fled to the interior of the Soviet Union managed to survive World War II and the Holocaust. This collection of original essays tells the story of more than 200,000 Polish Jews who came to a foreign country as war refugees, forced laborers, or political prisoners. This diverse set of experiences is covered by historians, literary and memory scholars, and sociologists who specialize in the field of East European Jewish history and culture.
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Note on Translations, Transliterations, and Place Names
Antony Polonsky
Foreword
Katharina Friedla / Markus Nesselrodt
Introduction
Part One: History
Markus Nesselrodt
Who, When, and Why? Escaping German Occupation in 1939 versus 1941
Eliyana Adler
Children in Exile: Wartime Journeys of Polish Jewish Youth
Albert Kaganovitch
Together and Apart. Poles and Polish Jews in the War-Torn Soviet Union
Katharina Friedla
“I’m rushing with millions of others to the battlefield”—Jewish Soldiers in the Polish Army in the Soviet Union, 1943–1946
Wojciech Marciniak
Repatriation of Polish Catholics and Jews from Distant Parts of the Soviet Union in Polish-Soviet Relations (1944–1947)
Serafima Velkovich
Polish Citizenship as a Way to Freedom: How Soviet Jews Escaped the USSR Using Polish Documents
Miriam Schulz
The Deepest Self Denies the Face: Polish Jewish Intellectuals and the Birth of the “Soviet Marrano”
Gennady Estraikh
Hersh Smolar: A Polish Personage in the Soviet Jewish Cultural Scene, 1940s–1960s
Part Two: Memory
Natalie Belsky
Contested Memories: Soviet and Polish Jewish Refugees and Evacuees Recount Their Experience on the Soviet Home Front
John Goldlust
Neither “Victims” nor “Survivors”: Polish Jews Reflect on Their Wartime Experiences in the Soviet Union During the Second World War
Lidia Zessin-Jurek
A Matzeva Amid Crosses: Jewish Exiles in the Polish Memory of Siberia
Przemysław Kaniecki and Renata Piątkowska
Before, During, and After: The Objects and Archival Material in the POLIN Museum
Mark Edele
Epilogue
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Index of Places
Index of Names
