Polish Jewish Re Remembering

The title of this monograph, ‘Polish-Jewish Re-Remembering’, refers to the post-1989, thirty-year-long process of reviving attention to Polish-Jewish relations in historical, cultural, and literary studies, including the impact of Jews on the development of Polish culture, their presence in Polish social life, and the relationships between Jews and non-Jews in Poland. The book consists of four parts: the first focuses on Polish, Jewish and Polish-Jewish Literature (dealing mainly with pre-1939 literary works); the second, on the post-war literary output of the Polish-Jewish writer Arnold Słucki (1920–1972); the third, on Polish-Israeli literary images in the works of writers who were active in Israel (1948–2018); and the fourth, on recent (after 2000) Polish Holocaust literature.

"The title of this monograph, 'Polish-Jewish Re-Remembering', refers to the post-1989, thirty-year-long process of reviving attention to Polish-Jewish relations in historical, cultural, and literary studies, including the impact of Jews on the development of Polish culture, their presence in Polish social life, and the relationships between Jews and non-Jews in Poland. The book consists of four parts: the first focuses on Polish, Jewish and Polish-Jewish Literature (dealing mainly with pre-1939 literary works); the second, on the post-war literary output of the Polish-Jewish writer Arnold Słucki (1920-1972); the third, on Polish-Israeli literary images in the works of writers who were active in Israel (1948-2018); and the fourth, on recent (after 2000) Polish Holocaust literature"--

Memoirs of a Jew born in 1920 in Warsaw; in 1930 he and his parents emigrated to the USA. Ch. 5 (pp. 115-143), "On the Edge of the Volcano, " contains, inter alia, recollections of and reflections on antisemitism in Poland in the 1920s.

Kolbuszowa is gone now. Before World War II it was a thriving, small Polish town of 4,000 people, half Polish Catholics, half Jews, where family and the traditional ways of life were strong. It was the town where Norman Salsitz was born, in 1920, the last of nine children. It was the town he helped to destroy, forced by the Nazis in 1941 to assist in the brick-by-brick destruction of the Jewish ghetto in which his family lived. Salsitz was later sent to a German work camp, but escaped into the woods to live and later to tell his story of Kolbuszowa to Richard Skolnik. Salsitz speaks to us both as an exceptional witness to everyday events in the town and as a shrewd observer of the broader landscape. Colorful details bring the people, the customs and habits, both religious and secular, back to life. He conveys how painful it often was to be Jewish in Poland even before the war. Despite the persecution, he evokes the dignity and strength of the Jewish way of life among the peasant and professional classes alike. This memoir is also a vivid portrait of childhood and adolescence. Engaging if not always well-behaved, Salsitz was an entrepreneur from an early age. Among his many business ventures was the planting of peach trees to have fruit to sell. His youthful dreams ended abruptly, forever, with the arrival of the German troops. He was never to taste the fruit of his own trees.

This exploration of the texture of contemporary Polish-Jewish relations has its origins in the author's haunting experience of growing up Polish and Jewish in Warsaw in the 1960s. It began with questions about silence: the silence of Jewish parents and the silence of once-Jewish towns, the silence in Auschwitz and the silence about anti-Semitism. But when the author went to Europe in 1983 to work on the project that resulted in this book, Poland was in the midst of preparation for a grand commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. From all parts of the political spectrum came calls to remember and to honor Polish Jews, to reexamine and to reassess the past. In effect, Poland was inviting the Jew into its household of memories. What did such an invitation mean? And what accounted for the timing? This vividly written account of the people, the politics, the goals, and the obstacles behind words of remembrance in Poland is an example of cultural sociology at its best. The author draws on a combination of textual readings, interviews, and historical analyses. The book's main strength, is its continuous dialogue between analyst and insider, between knowledge and experience. Into a field where cognitive and emotional imprints make all the difference, the author brings unique appreciation of the power they hold; she has shared them. Into a field where partisanship -so often passes for objectivity, she brings openly stated commitment. And into a field where particularism of concerns so often deadlocks understanding, she brings much-needed broadening of vision. Students of modern Jewish history will find this volume an informative analysis of the past and present roles assigned to the Jew in Poland. Students of contemporary Poland will find new perspectives on its struggles for a democratic society. And for those concerned with how one reconciles one's self and one's history, Neutralizing Memory offers an empirically based reflection on the construction and deconstruction of remembrance.

"Richard Lukas presents the eyewitness accounts of these and other Polish Christians who suffered at the hands of the Germans. They bear witness to unspeakable horrors endured by those who were tortured, forced into slavery, shipped off to concentration camps, and even subjected to medical experiments. Their stories provide a somber reminder that non-Jewish Poles were just as likely as Jews to suffer at the hands of the Nazis, who viewed them with nearly equal contempt.".

“What! Still Alive?!” offers a powerful and deeply affecting examination of the complex memories of Jewish survivors returning to their homes in Poland after the Holocaust. These survivors left unparalleled testimonies of their first impressions with the Jewish historical commissions from 1944 to 1950. As many survivors found they were no longer welcome by their Polish neighbors, they chose to settle in the new state of Israel. Again, these surviving Jews left testimonies describing their postwar returns. In “What! Still Alive?!,” Rice investigates the transformation of survivors’ memories from the first account after their initial return to Poland and later accounts, recorded at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem between 1955 and 1970. Through close readings of these firsthand narratives, Rice traces the ways in which the passage of time and a changing geopolitical context influenced the survivors’ memories.

Since the Holocaust, traces of memory are virtually all that remain in Poland today after more than eight hundred years of Jewish life there. This remarkable album, published on behalf of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, offers a sensitive way of looking at that past. Based entirely on arresting, present-day colour photographs of Polish Galicia, it shows how much of that past can still be seen today if one knows how to look and how to interpret what one sees. The traces of the Jewish past in Polish Galicia can be approached from many angles. Jewish life in Poland was in ruins after the Holocaust, and so too were most of its synagogues and cemeteries. Much evidence of ruin remains, but, astonishingly, there are also traces that bear witness to the great Jewish civilization that once flourished there-synagogues and cemeteries of astounding beauty in villages and small towns as well as in the larger cities. One can also see the exact locations where the Germans murdered the Jews of Galicia in the Holocaust: not only in the infamous death camps and ghettos, but also in fields, in forests, and in rivers. The Germans tried to destroy even the memory of the Jews in Poland, and to a very great extent they succeeded; then came forty years of communism, including the antisemitic campaign of 1968. But now that Poland is once again part of a multicultural Europe, the great Jewish civilization that once flourished on Polish lands is increasingly being memorialized, by local Poles as well as by foreign Jews. Synagogues and cemeteries are being renovated, monuments are being erected, museums are being set up, pilgrimages are taking place, festivals of Jewish culture are being organized, books about Jews are being published, and there are once again rabbis and kosher food. So the traces of memory include how the past is being remembered in Poland today, and the people doing the remembering. Given all these perspectives, the contact with contemporary realities involves a complex emotional journey: grief at a civilization in ruins; pride in its spiritual and cultural achievements; anger at its destruction; nostalgia for a past that is gone; hope for the future. Considering each element in turn and offering cultural insights and information to support each of these responses, the combination of photos and text in this book not only informs but also suggests both how to make sense of the past and how to discover its relevance for the present. The seventy-four photographs are all fully captioned, with additional detailed background notes to explain and contextualize them. The idea is to help people understand the Jewish civilization of Polish Galicia in its local context on the basis of what can still be seen there today. People who have family connections with Polish Galicia will find this an invaluable sourcebook on their own heritage, but its innovative approach to understanding the past will appeal to anyone concerned with questions of history, memory, and identity, and how photography can make the past accessible. Published for the Galicia Jewish Museum, Krakow, by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization and Indiana University Press