„Polecieć tam, gdzie nie ma getta, szopu…” Dziennik Rutki Laskier między nekroestetyką a nekropolityką

Author(s): Marta Tomczok / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14/2018

In this article I describe the phenomenon of the false historical object in Holocaust research by analyzing the three Polish editions of Rutka Laskier’s diary (with particular attention paid to the latest one). I show that a false historical object is a result of the loss of material/physical contact with the historical source and that it attempts to substitute the document. This is why editions of certain novels stylized as personal document literature eagerly imitate the old texts both in the visual layer (the reader is faced with the manuscript’s facsimile, sepia-colored paper, and old photographs) and in the layer of the events presented (in the novel its author does not always specify that it is fiction). This essay also presents the key mistakes made while rewriting Laskier’s diary by its publisher; analyzes the visual and material layer of its third edition (which follows the ‘not a single page without a photograph’ rule) in reference to the rules adopted by the Polish Center for Holocaust Research and the Jewish Historical Institute for editing diaries (particularly those written by adolescent girls); and discusses the conceptions of necroesthetics and necropolitics, derived from new humanities, in the context of the practical aspect of the popularization of the diary, the history of how it was transported, and the interest taken in its author (particularly her appearance). In the part devoted to the conclusions Tomczok wonders why this type of practices is not accompanied with deepened scholarly reflection and why there is a marked quantitative and qualitative difference between the scholarly editions of Laskier’s diary and those addressed to the general audience.

„Proszę Pana Ministra o energiczną interwencję”. Aleksander Ładoś (1891–1963) i ratowanie Żydów przez Poselstwo RP w Bernie

Author(s): Agnieszka Haska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 11/2015

During World War II the Polish legation in Bern provided considerable help to Polish Jews in Switzerland and occupied Poland, not only through 􀏐inancial and material support, but also its engagement, for instance, in the campaign to aid Jews in Shanghai by offering its diplomatic channels to various organisations and mediation in obtainment of South American documents. Those activities would have been impossible without the support, engagement, and efforts of legate Aleksander Ładoś and his subordinates. The article discusses Ładoś and the role of the Polish legation in Bern in rescuing Jews.

„Religia kosmicznego uniesienia”. Kabalistyczne źródła żydowskiej teodycei „po Auschwitz”

Author(s): Katarzyna Kornacka-Sareło / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, Jewish philosophy after Auschwitz, Jewish theodicy,cosmic religion

„Semmi sem szörnyûbb számomra annál, hogy vitatkoznom kell olaszságomról”. A fasizmus antiszemitizmusa a faji törvényektôl a Salòi Köztársaság

Author(s): Gábor Andreides / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2013

Amikor 1940 nyarán a fasiszta Olaszország is belépett a második világháborúba, nagyon sok olasz zsidó levélben fordult Benito Mussolini kormányfőhöz, vagy egyenesen az uralkodóhoz, III. Viktor Emánuelhez kérvényezvén, hogy önkéntesként részt vehessenek a háborús küzdelmekben. Az írások keserű hangvétele arról a fájdalomról és csalódottságról tanúskodott, amely az olaszországi zsidóságot érte az antiszemita politika meghirdetését és a faji törvények elfogadását követően.

„Senki sem volt Auschwitzban.” Katja Nicodemus beszélgetése Claude Lanzmann filmrendezővel

Author(s): Claude Lanzmann,Katja Nicodemus / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2016

„Skarby naszej przeszłości”. Muzea żydowskie w Polsce

Author(s): Renata Piątkowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 32/2013

Before World War II three Jewish museums existed in Poland: Mathias Bersohn Museum of Jewish Antiquities, opened in 1910 in Warsaw; the Museum of the Jewish Kehilla in Lviv, opened in May 1934; the Museum of Jewish Art opened in 1935 at the YIVO Institute in Vilnius. The outbreak of the war interrupted the activities of Jewish museums in Poland. The Third Reich and the Soviet Union, for obviously different ideological reasons, were not interested in preserving such institutions. The Germans confiscated the collection of the Bersohn Museum; in spring of 1940 it was carried off and pillaged. Its fate remains unknown. The Soviet occupational authorities closed down the museum in Lviv. In the years 1939–1941 the Art Museum in Vilnius continued, albeit with difficulties, its activities, first under the Lithuanian regime and then under the Soviet occupation. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union the most valuable items from the collection of the YIVO Museum were carried off to Frankfurt. The last attempt of those long-lasting efforts to preserve the national Jewish heritage was the idea of the Jewish Museum proposed after World War II by the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts but it was not implemented.

„So kommen die Juden in Europe zurück“. Antworten auf den Holocaust in der Lyrik polnischer Juden 1941–1948

Author(s): Magdalena Ruta / Language(s): German / Issue: 13/2015

The article examines Yiddish-Polish writers’ response to the Holocaust in their poetry written in the years 1941-1948 and published in Poland in the early postwar years, when the country enjoyed relative political freedom. Special attention is given to a highly interesting theme appearing in the wartime lyrics written by Jewish survivors in the East (like B. Heller, H. Rubin, R. Żhikhlinsky, A. Zak), i.e. their call to arms addressed to the Jews living in Nazi-occupied Poland. The refugees could not bear the thought that whole masses of Jews died without putting up a fight in the ghettoes and camps in the West. It was probably this helplessness that evolved into their poetic appeal addressed to their ghettoized brethren, their call for resistance and punishment of the Nazi German murderers. Interestingly, the works of some writers who survived in the ghettos (such as Y. Shpigl, Y. Katsenelson and others), prove that ghettoized Jews who were tormented by the “docile death” complex also dreamed about being involved in an armed struggle against the Nazi Germans, but were aware of their weakness in the face of a much stronger enemy. Immediately after the war, this discrepancy of experience and knowledge led to a serious lack of understanding between those Jews who had survived in Poland and those who had survived in the East. The article examines these difference of experiences as it is reflected in the poetry.

„STARAJCIE SIĘ O DOBRE IMIĘ, O SPOKOJNOŚĆ SUMIENIA” – TESTAMENT TEKLI KRONENBERG

Author(s): Anna Dybała-Pacholak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 42/2018

The main goal of publishing this source is to make available a document of the type that remains unexplored and unrecognized, especially within the field of Jewish studies. The nineteenth-century testament of Tekla Kronenberg deepens our knowledge about the Kronenberg family in general and its female members in particular. In notary deeds we find primarily male testaments. It is therefore relevant to publicize a female testament which may prove helpful in historical research on women. It is possible to examine this document from various perspectives, such as the value of charity, the attitude toward converts, the extent of social bonds (what things were left and to whom? were inheritors mainly male, or female?). In addition, an analysis of the means of expressing emotions regarding particular persons mentioned in the testament enables us to make a quality assessment of family bonds. As a result, it sheds new light on a Jewish family’s life.

„Sulle palme ti ho scolpito…” L’uso di Isaia 49,16a nel 2 Baruch 4,2.

Author(s): Jolanta Judyta Pudełko / Language(s): English,Italian / Issue: 61/2/2014

The interpretation of the biblical books started already in the Bible itself, in which one can easily notice the plethora of quotations, allusions to and echoes of other biblical texts. This study analyzes theQUOTATION of Isaiah 49:16a found in the apocryphal Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch. By analyzing the immediate context of this verse in the Book of Isaiah, its form and historical background, the meaning of the text within its original context is reveled. Then a similar analysis applies to the form and the historical context of this verse within its new context, namely in 2 Baruch 4:2. The confrontation yields a significant number of possible interpretations and applications of this Isaianic text within its new context.

„To było między pierwszą a drugą”. Zabójstwo Róży Berger podczas pogromu w Krakowie 11 sierpnia 1945 r.

Author(s): Łukasz Krzyżanowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 15/2019

Róża Berger is the only confirmed casualty of the Krakow pogrom, which took place on 11 August 1945. The woman died in her own apartment at Wolnica Street 4. The press did report on her death, but the exact circumstances of the crime remain unknown. New light on those events has been shed by a folder containing files of the investigation launched in August 1945 against Citizens’ Militia officer from MO Station II in Krakow. These documents not only provide detailed information about the circumstances of Róża Berger’s death, but also make it possible to reconstruct the atmosphere of the pogrom conducted in the vicinity of the building where the murder was committed. Supplemented with information from archival files, the documentation discovered also makes it possible to paint a group portrait of MO policemen from a station located 80 kilometers from the crime scene.

„To nie była Ameryka”. Z Michaelem Charlesem Steinlaufem rozmawia Elżbieta Janicka (Warszawa – Nowy Jork – Warszawa, 2014–2015)

Author(s): Elżbieta Janicka / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3-4/2015

Born in Paris in 1947, Michael Charles Steinlauf talks about his childhood in New York City, in the south of Brooklyn (Brighton Beach), in a milieu of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors. His later experiences were largely associated with American counterculture, the New Left, an anti-war and antiracist student movement of the 1960s (Students for a Democratic Society, SDS) as well as the anticapitalist underground of the 1970s (“Sunfighter”, “No Separate Peace”). In the 1980s, having undertaken Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, Steinlauf arrived in Poland, where he became part of the democratic opposition circles centred around the Jewish Flying University (Żydowski Uniwersytet Latający, ŻUL). In the independent Third Republic of Poland, he contributed to the creation of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Michael C. Steinlauf’s research interests focus on the work of Mark Arnshteyn (Andrzej Marek) and of Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, Yiddish theatre as well as Polish narratives of the Holocaust. The latter were the subject of his monograph Bondage to the dead: Poland and the memory of the Holocaust (1997, Polish edition 2001 as Pamięć nieprzyswojona. Polska pamięć Zagłady). An important topic of the conversation is the dispute concerning the categories used to describe the Holocaust, including the conceptualisation of Polish majority experience of the Holocaust as a collective trauma. Controversies also arise in connection with the contemporary phenomena popularly conceptualised as the “revival of Jewish culture in Poland” and “Polish–Jewish dialogue.” Another subject of the conversation is Michał Sztajnlauf (1940–1942), Michael C. Steinlauf’s stepbrother. The fate of the brothers was introduced into the canon of Polish culture by Hanna Krall’s short story Dybuk (1995, English edition 2005 as The Dybbuk) and its eponymous stage adaptation by Krzysztof Warlikowski (2003). Looking beyond artistic convention, the interlocutors try to learn more about Michał himself. This is the first time the readers have an opportunity to see his photographs from the Warsaw Ghetto. The conversation is illustrated with numerous archival materials from periods before and after World War Two as well as from German-occupied Poland.

„To nie jest poezja w całym słowa tego znaczeniu”. Pieśni żałobne getta Izabeli Gelbard

Author(s): Sylwia Karolak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 32/2018

The main purpose of this article is to analyse the reception of Izabela Glebard’s (Czajka-Stachowicz’s) works, with particular emphasis on her only book of poety Pieśni żałobne getta. At first Gelbard intentionally chooses poetry, but after the experience of World War II, she leaves it completely and replaces by prose. The root cause of this state of affairs is the war trauma. Very important is also the critical attitude of the writer to her poems. These works have not been appreciated by literary critics who treat them as a document and testimony rather than a valuable poetry. It seems that the Gelbard poems, like all her works, are waiting for a new, contextual reading.

„TO WAS TUTAJ TAK STRASZNIE BIJĄ? […] NIE, NAS NIE. TYLKO ŻYDÓW”: ŻYDZI W OBOZIE NA MAJDANKU W ŚWIETLE RELACJI POLSKICH WIĘŹNIÓW

Author(s): Marta Grudzińska,Marta Kubiszyn / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 42/2018

The article draws on a source material from The State Museum Majdanek Archives, a collection of video testimonies recorded in 1987–1989, to develop a fuller picture of social relations among prisoners of different ethnic backgrounds at the Majdanek Concentration Camp. From the fall of 1941 through July 1944, Majdanek functioned as a killing center and a concentration camp for about 150,000 prisoners from different European countries. Drawing on video testimonies as a type of oral history, the article traces the perception of Jews in the camp by Polish prisoners, their social interactions, and the interethnic social boundaries shaped by camp life.

„Trzeba mu jedną posłać, bo jakiś złotnik czy też kanadziarz”. Sprawa strażnika Stałej Ochrony Obozu Oświęcimskiego

Author(s): Piotr Trojański / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 11/2015

The text discusses the court 􀏐iles of the trial of an Oświęcim Camp Security guard, who in 1946, while on duty, shot an individual suspected of profaning remains of victims of the Auschwitz camp. This case remains the only known and such well documented instance of a killing of a ‘Canada man’ (Kanadziarz) by an employee of the Auschwitz Museum. The documents were produced by the Magistrate’s Court in Oświęcim, the Regional Court in Wadowice, and the Appellate Court in Cracow, where the security guard stood trial. The procedural materials, which include reports on interviews with witnesses and the defendant, the sentences passed by the two instances and their interpretations, and the appeals, are stored in the Archive of the Cracow Branch of the Institute of National Remembrance. They show how the territory of the former camp in Auschwitz was protected during the 􀏐irst years after its liberation. Moreover, they are a valuable source when it comes to research on profanation of remains of victims of the Holocaust and the former concentration camps.

„Túl kell éljem ezt a borzalmat, hogy a poklok poklát túlélô elmesélje”– gondolatok az európaiságról a soá egy „hivatásos mesélôvé” lett túlélôje ...

Author(s): Júlia Vajda / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2012

Elbeszélônk 1920-ban született egy Budapesttôl nem messze fekvô kisvárosban. Apja, aki ugyan a család szegénysége okán a 8 gyerek közül legnagyobbként egyedül nem tanulhatott, mire gyerekei a húszas évek elején megszülettek – Panninak két iker húga van – komoly egzisztenciát teremtett: jól menô fa- és építôanyag kereskedése van, s gyerekeit, a polgári iskola elvégzése után egy bécsi magánintézetbe küldi tanulni.

„Und der Ewige fügte es …“ Hebräische Quellen zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg

Author(s): Martha Keil / Language(s): German / Issue: Suppl./2011

Kurz nach dem Friedensmahl in Nürnberg am 25. September 1649 stellte ein Zeitgenosse fest, dass der Westfälische Frieden „den dreißigjährigen Krieg nachgehends erfreulich geendet“ habe. Die ,Schlusshandlung‘ mit der Unterzeichnung der Friedensverträge sei „hauptsächlich eine Göttliche Gnaden-Schenkung“. Die Bezeichnung ,Dreißigjähriger‘ für diesen Krieg erfolgte also nicht mit langem zeitlichen Abstand, sondern aus der aktuellen Perspektive: Den Überlebenden war schmerzlich seine ungewöhnlich lange Dauer und Härte bewusst. Die Brutalität und Zerstörung hatten ein bis dahin kaum bekanntes Ausmaß erreicht und die traumatisierten Opfer bedurften der kollektiven wie auch der persönlichen Aufarbeitung. Juden wie Christen in ihrem streng religiös geprägtenWeltbild fanden in den Gräueln die Bestätigung des biblischen, insbesondere prophetischen Deutungskonzepts, dass das Leiden die Strafe für die eigenen Sünden darstelle und sich Gott dafür der Kriegsgewalt und ihrer Vollzieher bediene.

„UND SALOMO HAT IHM EIN HAUS GEBAUT“ (APG 7,47): KONZEPTE VOM WOHNEN GOTTES IM LUKANISCHEN DOPPELWERK

Author(s): Heike Hötzinger / Language(s): German / Issue: 1/2015

This article examines concepts of places of God’s presence in Luke-Acts. As Luke-Acts aims the narration of the proclamation of the gospel with its roots in God’s history with Israel “to the end of the earth” (Luke 2:30-32; Acts 1,8) geographical and religious boundaries are crossed. Therefore questions about religious identity arise constantly as e.g. the reflection about the significance of the temple as God’s place. So the Gospel of Luke presents the temple on the one hand side as a place of God’s presence and thus as a centre of religious identity, on the other hand side as a place of struggling for religious identity. Acts also draws this two-sided picture and shows alternative concepts of God’s dwelling that base in God’s being. For example Acts 6:1-8:3, that marks the threshold to the proclamation outside of Jerusalem, pleads a relativisation of the significance of the temple and at the same time God’s universal presence, particularly mediated by the Son of Men Jesus exalted at God’s right hand side in heaven.

„W imię naglących potrzeb literatury narodowej”. Tłumaczenie i żydowski nacjonalizm kulturowy w Europie Wschodniej

Author(s): Kenneth Moss / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 29/2014

This essay examines the rhetoric and practice of translation in the Russian Empire’s Hebrew and Yiddish cultural communities and focuses on the intriguing fact that by 1917, many of the writers, critics, intellectuals, and publishers committed to a Jewish nationalist vision of Hebrew or Yiddish cultural renaissance were convinced that a massive program of literary translation was their most essential task. The study reconstructs the guiding translation program of this divided intelligentsia, which posited a universal canon of European and even world literature that had to be incorporated whole into Hebrew and Yiddish literature systematically and rapidly, without any sort of Judaization or popularization, and with an emphasis on the expansion of the expressive capacities of the target language and its writers. The essay traces how this commitment was expressed and embodied in translation theory, practices of selection and publishing, and in several acts of translation themselves. It further demonstrates how this translation program and its practices were linked to a larger vision of programmatic ‘de-Judaization’ or ‘de-parochialization’ of Hebrew and Yiddish culture propounded by some of the most committed Hebraists and Yiddishists in Russia. Finally, it argues that this translation program expresses a more general and seemingly paradoxical variant of East European Jewish cultural nationalism which held that a modern Jewish national culture could only be truly worthwhile and compelling to modern creators and consumers if it was universal in its expressive potentials and demarcated from other national cultures by language rather than content.

„Wojna u bram” Szełomo ben Aharona z Poswola (polski przekład „Wstępu”)

Author(s): Sebastian Kubicki / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2016

The article presents a Polish translation of the Introduction to War at the Gates (hebr. לחם שערים) Shelomo ben Aharon of Poswol, a Karaite learned man and cleric from the late 17th and early 18th century, better known as the author of a text entitled Uczynił sobie lektykę (Hebr. אפריון עשה לו). The author of the article briefly described the whole text (presenting a Karaite halakha in respect of the differences compared to the Rabbinic halakha – this is the main part of the work, written in the responsa style), rather than the poetic Introduction alone, although this is the part that received an in-depth analysis. In addition to that, the article contains a brief biographic and intellectual portrayal of the author of both these treatises.

„Zaczęłam filozofować, rozmyślać, szukać odpowiedzi na dręczące mnie kwestie”. Wspomnienia Edwardy (Etli) Bomsztyk: biografia, emancypacja, polityka

Author(s): Piotr Laskowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 23/2017

This paper presents three autobiographical accounts by Etla (Edwarda) Bomsztyk (1899–1973), a Jewish house maid. Two of these unique testimonies (one published in Yiddish in 1959, the other recorded in Polish in 1966) focus on Bomsztyk’s political activity. This activity encompasses organizing domestic servants into unions in Warsaw in the 1920s, membership in the Bund and the Communist Party of Poland, and political imprisonment. The third account, written in Polish in 1953 and never before published, sits outside any institutional context. This consists in a personal narration on childhood in a small-town Jewish family, migration to Warsaw, poverty and suffering, first readings, loneliness and revolt. The aim of this paper is to reveal the tension that exists between these three texts. That is, between two accounts of political militancy on the one hand, and with early experiences that, though a prerequisite for Bomsztyk’s later political engagement, nevertheless could not be fully articulated within communist party discourse.