Majer Bałaban – pionier bibliografii historii Żydów w Polsce
Majer Balaban - the Pioneer of Bibliography of History of Polish Jews

Summary/Abstract: Majer Bałaban (1877-1942) was a leading researcher of the history of Polish Jews in the interwar period and the author of numerous bibliographical compilations on the history, culture and life of the Jewish community in Poland. In 1903 he published a literature review of the history of Jews in Poland (1899-1903) in Kwartalnik Historyczny. This is how M. Bałaban's public bibliographic activity began, the ultimate achievement of which was the “Bibliography of the History of Jews in Poland and Neighboring Countries 1900-1930”. Its first issue was published in 1939. The work was created with the participation of students from the University of Warsaw who attended Bałaban's seminar. The bibliography recorded the entire literature on the history of Jews in Poland and Polish Jews abroad -in neighboring states and other European and overseas countries. Territorially, it covers the historical borders of the Polish state. In terms of chronological range, the bibliography includes publications relating to the history of Polish Jews from the earliest times to 1930, published in the years 1900-1930. The bibliography registered works in Polish and foreign languages (German, English, French, Russian, Hebrew) regardless of where they were published. In terms of the description, each entry is usually just registered, although it is often supplemented with comments about the content of the works. The entire bibliography was to have a systematic layout, consisting of 25 main sections and a number of subsections. It was designed to be provided with an index of people and geographical names. The outbreak of World War II arrested the publication of subsequent issues. However, even before the publication of the first volume, the reaction of the Jewish scientific community to Bałaban’s work was enthusiastic. The fundamental importance of the Bibliography for the historiography of the Polish Jewish society is evidenced by the fact that the first issue was published in the form of a reprint in Jerusalem in 1978 by World Federation of Polish Jews.

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