„Biografie składają się również z zapętleń”. Nieopowiedziane życie Ireny Gelblum

Author(s): Elżbieta Dutka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The article presents the book by Remigiusz Grzela entitled "Wybór Ireny" in the context of the contemporary controversies/debates about the biographies and the narrations about the Shoah. In this case the “biographical loops” result both from the life attitude of the female protagonists who are described as well as from the strategy that was embraced by the biographer. The messenger of the Jewish Combat Organisation disassociated herself from her past and created a new image and biography for herself. The writer is continuously poised between the truth that he intends to reveal and fiction – a mystification put forward by Irena Gelblum vel Waniewicz vel Conti Di Mauro. Thus a story emerged whose essence (and significance) consists not so much in familiarising the reader with the figure and the tragic experiences of one of the “scorched” ones but in the exhibition of the ethical and literary problems associated with an attempt at presenting such a story.

Karzeł, żaba i obcy, czyli surrealistyczna opowieść o Holokauście

Author(s): Gaweł Janik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The article attempts to indicate a change in the means of representing the Shoah. The latter is more and more frequently described with the use of the means suggested by popular culture. An attempt was made to reconstruct the evolution of the discourse of the Shoah, with special reference to the contemporary representations which were discussed on the basis of the example of the comic book genre. The subject of the Holocaust comic book was treated in a comprehensive manner by exploring its history, constitutive features and criticism. The comic book entitled "Achtung Zelig! Druga wojna" by Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz and Krystian Rosenberg was used as an example to illustrate the problem which is engaged in the article. Special attention was devoted to its genesis, its realisation of the features peculiar to the genre, its innovative nature and reception. There is an indication of the sources of the surreal convention which was employed by the Polish authors. This convention may have originated, among other things, from the occult roots of Nazism. The authors also mentioned the links between "Achtung Zelig!"… with cinematographic works such as "Hanna" by Joe Wright and "Zelig" by Woody Allen, as well as with Krzysztof Zalewski’smusical project of the same title. Moreover, the authors indicated the similarities between "Achtung Zelig!"… and "Maus" by Art Spiegelman in an attempt to evaluate the extent to which the employment and transformation of models used in the American graphic novel was successful in the case of the Polish comic book.

Recenzje: Rozmowa z (nie)obecnym. "Niepokoje. Twórczość Tadeusza Różewicza wobec Zagłady". Red. Piotr Krupiński. Warszawa, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2014

Author(s): Wojciech Browarny / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The review discusses a collection of articles entitled "Niepokoje. Twórczość Tadeusza Różewicza wobec Zagłady" (ed. Piotr Krupiński). Its author directs his attention above all to the dissertations and essays which engage the problem of the interpretative community in which the Różewiczian “traces” of this past are perceived. The text also features a question about the Polish narration (memory) of modernity, and, to be more specific, about the role of Różewicz’s works in the revelation and interpretation of the understatements, inconsistencies and adulterations. The review emphasises the authentic polivocality of the debate about the literary representation of the Holocaust in which the authors of the book participate.

Recenzje: Trzy książki w jednym tomie: historia, analiza i antologia życia kulturalnego w Buchenwaldzie. M. I. Sacha: "„Gdyście w obóz przybyć już raczyli...". Obraz kultury lagrowej w świadectwach więźniów Buchenwaldu 1937–1945" Bydgoszcz–Gdańsk

Author(s): Paweł Wolski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The text discusses Magdalena Sacha’s approach to the issue of cultural activity in death and labour camps in her book "„Gdyście w obóz przybyć już raczyli…”. Obraz kultury lagrowej w świadectwach więźniów Buchenwaldu 1937–1945". It consists of three parts: a historical introduction of major death and labour camps in the Third Reich, an analysis of the cultural production in Buchenwald and an anthology of poetry created in Buchenwald and HASAG-Leipzig camps. The author of the article argues that Sacha’s seemingly traditional approach to historiography is deeply involved in the methodology introduced by New Historicism.

Recenzje: W sidłach teorii. Aleksandra Ubertowska: "Holokaust. Auto (tanato) grafie". Warszawa, Instytut Badań Literackich PAN Wydawnictwo, 2014

Author(s): Bartłomiej Krupa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

"Holokaust. Auto (tanato) grafie", the most recent book by a distinguished Polish researcher of the literature of the Shoah, Aleksandra Ubertowska, engages the themes which the author herself considers peripheral. The researcher emphasises the instability of the texts that are analysed – essays, women’s writing and the autobiographies of the historians of the Shoah. The main reservations of the reviewer have to do with the lack of a precise indication of the things which lie at the heart of the discourse of the Shoah and of why the selected texts – and these include e.g. the works by Primo Levy and Jean Améry – were considered marginal. Ubertowska also indulges in quite far-fetched associations, and her argument stumbles along theoretical, excessively free-ranging though erudite considerations. In a number of cases there is also a lack of certain important contexts, e.g. a reference to the French feminist historiography. The author of the review also has a different opinion concerning the evaluation of certain phenomena – of Raul Hilberg’s research method or of constructing an analogy between the Jewish condition and the homosexual condition. However, the publication which is here discussed is at its best when the author speaks her own mind instead of resorting to the fashionable, alien, theoretical discourse.

Recenzje: Świat z deficytem czarów. Sylwia Chutnik: "W krainie czarów". Kraków, Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak, 2014

Author(s): Sylwia Karolak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The author discusses "W krainie czarów" (2014), the most recent collection written by Sylwia Chutnik. She indicates that the book features the themes which are familiar from the previous works of the writer: the matters associated with women, the history of Warsaw (its past and present), the Warsaw Uprising. However, the author of the review at the same time emphasises that "W krainie czarów" may be considered a unique entry in Chutnik’s literary oeuvre. It may be so not only due to the personal, almost confessional character of the eponymous story which opens the book but above all due to the fact that in "W krainie czarów" the Shoah assumes the importance of a separate theme, thus becoming apart from the Warsaw Uprising the second war area which is explored by the author of "Łączniczki".

Recenzje: Gry w Holokaust. Yann Martel: "Beatrycze i Wergili". Przeł. Andrzej Szulc. Warszawa, Wydawnictwo Albatros A. Kuryłowicz, 2010

Author(s): Monika Żółkoś / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

In a review of Yann Martel’s novel "Beatrice and Virgil", the work of the Canadian writer is presented through the pursuit of a new language of speaking about the Holocaust. This is a task which Martel as well as the protagonist of his novel, Henry, the author of a work about the Holocaust of the Jews, in which he futilely attempted to go beyond the sanctioned ways of writing about the Shoah, set themselves. In "Beatrice and Virgil" a crucial feature is the interpenetration of two orders – the problem of thematising the Shoah meets an animal theme, which is represented by "Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller", a story about an obsessive hunter, and through the art of preparing and stuffing the bodies of dead animals and transforming them into artistic exhibits. In Martel’s work, the master of taxidermy is also the author of a theatrical play about a sheass and an ape, Beatrice and Virgil, which became the victims of events which bear a striking similarity to the various scenes of the Shoah. The basic problem in the novel is not so much a problematisation of the Holocaust but the means of “linguifying” it and the position which may be asserted by the writers who present their Shoah-related narrations.

Recenzje: „Płacz genów”. M. Grzebałkowska: "1945. Wojna i pokój". Warszawa, Biblioteka Gazety Wyborczej, 2015. A. Janko: "Mała zagłada". Kraków, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2015

Author(s): Marta Tomczok / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

In her review the author compares the narrations about the war and the Shoah which were published in 2015: a report by Magdalena Grzebałkowska entitled "1945. Wojna i pokój" and "Mała zagłada" by Anna Janko. The basis of the comparison is constituted by the Shoah of the Jews as the common, although secondary theme of both books, its influence upon the social imagination and the rhetoric of both narrations. Apart from indicating the strong points of the narrations, which include an in-depth study of the archive materials associated with the end of the war (Grzebałkowska) or the presentation of the problem – which was hardly present in the writings devoted to the war and occupation in Poland (the pacification of the village Sochy in the Zamojszczyzna region in 1943, of which Janko’s family fell victim), Marta Tomczok directs her attention to the weaknesses of such discourse, especially in reference to "Mała zagłada". These weaknesses include: the intensification of the suffering of the recipient, effected through the juxtaposition in one book of the greatest massacres of children in the history of the world and the rhetoric of the Shoah transposed into the area of the stories about the war sufferings of the Poles. Janko presents both narrations, the Polish and the Jewish one, as mutually competitive.

Recenzje: (Pop)Historie polskich emisariuszy. Komiksy. "Kurier z Warszawy". Scen. M. Urbanek i M. Palka. Rys. B. Stefanowicz (...) "Jan Karski. Człowiek, który odkrył Holokaust". Scen. M. Rizzo. Rys. L. Bonaccorso. Przeł. A. Hołub...

Author(s): Krzysztof Lichtblau / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The review is devoted to two comic books about Polish emissaries who were active during the Second World War. The first one, "Kurier z Warszawy" by Mariusz Urbanek, Mateusz Palka (script) and Bartłomiej Stefanowicz (drawings), is the history of Jan Nowak-Jeziorański’s mission since 15 September 1939, when the latter was already on the front line, until the press conference with the journalists held in the Ministry of Information of Great Britain in 1945. The second one, "Jan Karski. Człowiek, który odkrył Holokaust", is the work of Italian artists: Marco Rizzo (script) and Lelio Bonaccorso (drawings). From this comic book we also learn about the tasks performed by the Polish war emissary, Jan Karski, until he reaches the United States and makes an account about the state in which his fatherland found itself. In both cases the authors used the memoirs of the emissaries which were published in book form. The aim of the review is to direct the reader’s attention to the changes which occur during the adaptation of such sources to comic books. One of such elements includes the introduction of images and the transposition of the narration from the verbal to the graphical plane. Another important category which is used in the review is the representativeness of the narration of testimony. The entirety of the considerations is summarised by a remark about the transformations of the contemporary comic books about the Holocaust and the location of the comic books which are discussed in this area.

Recenzje: Rekonstruowanie żydowskiego miasta. Nils Roemer: "German City, Jewish Memory. The Story of Worms". Waltham, Brandeis (...) Michael Meng: "Shattered Spaces. Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland". Cambridge, Harvard...

Author(s): Paweł Wolski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The text briefly compares two books: Nils Roemer’s "German City, Jewish Memory. The Story of Worms" and Michael Meng’s "Shattered Spaces. Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland". Both represent fascinating approaches to the process of the reconstruction of the Jewish identity as an important part of the European urban culture destroyed during WWII. By discussing these issues on the examples of Worms (Roemer) and Warsaw, Wrocław, Potsdam, Berlin (Meng) both, albeit in different ways, restore the Jewish identity of these cities not only by approaching the history of historical or architectural landmarks, but also by discussing some less material, discoursive memory markers such as mythology, tourism, politics etc.

The Discourse between Man and God: The Role of Faith in Holocaust Teaching

Author(s): Nitza Davidovitch / Language(s): English Issue: 12/2014

Holocaust teaching is a foundation for deepening Jewish identity. Despite the stated goals of the trips to Poland, studies involving participating youngsters indicate that Holocaust education per se does not significantly affect their sense of Jewish identity. Nonetheless, Holocaust teaching through the journey to Poland enhances participants’ self-concept as Israelis, possibly because their Israeliness is associated with emotions such as power, pride, and hope. In view of these findings, the aim of this study is to examine whether and to what degree faith plays a role in the Holocaust teaching that is part of public and public-religious schools’ efforts to reinforce Jewish identity.

NAZI “DIVIDE ET IMPERA”: COMPARING SOVIET AND YUGOSLAVIAN CASES IN 1941

Author(s): Kiril Feferman / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

The article scrutinizes Nazi Germany’s occupation policy in Yugoslavia and in the Soviet Union in 1941. Particular attention is given to the German application of “divide et impera” principle on the territories of formerly multinational states, whose ethnic groups fought to win occupier’s favours with varying success, meeting at the same time Germany’s demands, chiefly wide participation in destruction of the Jews as a condition to partake in Nazi geopolitical rearrangement of Europe.

Na marginesie listów Emanuela i Judyty Ringelblumów do Adolfa i Basi Bermanów. 25 listopada 1943 – 3 marca 1944

Author(s): Eleonora Bergman / Language(s): Polish Issue: 04/2015

Correspondence between the Ringelblum and Berman families remains a little used source of knowledge not just about the letter writers themselves but also about the subsequent fate of the people from the Oneg Shabat circle following the collapse of the April uprising. This collection of letters complements the documents produced by Emanuel Ringelblum in the ghetto, reflects his experience from the Trawniki camp, the assessment of various persons and their behaviour and various reflexions about them. The letters broaden our knowledge of the information encoding system used by Ringelblum required by the clandestine nature of his work. They also explain the origin of the famous letter to YIVO in New York, summing up the activity of Oneg Shabat.

Dwa spotkania z Emanuelem Ringelblumem

Author(s): Genia Silkes / Language(s): Polish Issue: 04/2015

Genia Silkes (1914-1984), a teacher and cultural activist, describes in this text, written in 1948, her two meetings with Emanuel Ringelblum. The first one occurred during a selection on 6 September 1942 and the second in the Restgetto during attempts to organize armed resistance in the ghetto. Genia Silkes’s text splendidly illustrates the evolution of the memory of the Holocaust in the first postwar years and the role played in it by Emanuel Ringelblum, a figure symbolic of both the murdered Jewish intellectuals and of civilian resistance in the Warsaw ghetto and, more broadly, in the time of the Holocaust.

Az emberiség hajótörése. Spanyol és murciai köztársaságpártiak a koncentrációs táborokban

Author(s): István Szilágyi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2016

Around the Bloc: Former Lithuanian Holocaust Site Now a Wedding Venue

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English Issue: 08/02/2016

Critics say the local NGO running the complex has to do a much better job of marking the past of the former concentration camp.

ČAS REVIZIJE ISTORIJE

Author(s): Slobodanka Ast / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 182/2015

Andrej Pančur, Judovska skupnost v Sloveniji na predvečer holokavsta ...

Author(s): Marjan Toš / Language(s): Slovenian Issue: 2/2012

Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Rebellious Consul: A Case Study

Author(s): Daniel Silva Perdigão / Language(s): English Issue: 09/2016

It is the intention of this article to objectively present the motifs and the out standing socio-cultural climate during the first years of the World War II, which determined the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, Aristides Sousa Mendes, a Righteous Among the Nations, to disobey the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs regulations by issuing thousands of visas, free of charge, to mainly Jewish war refugees in order to facilitate their flight from Nazi occupied Europe, using Lisbon as their departure harbor.

Restitution as the Legal Vacuum in the System of Law

Author(s): Jovan Krstić / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

One of the clear examples of the existence of legal gaps in the legislation of the Republic of Serbia is the problem of restitution of property of Holocaust victims, which is shown as a separate problem that remains unregulated. The academic community of experts deserves serious scientific criticism for tolerating legal gaps in the legal system. Criminological phenomena of hate crime and hate speech which in the past resulted in the adoption of racial laws, civil rights and confiscation of property and physical liquidation – Holocaust –are such unique instances of evil that they exceede the limits of one life span and affect generations to come, unprepared to deal with them due to the unwillingness of our generation to act preventively regulating social relations based on modern principles and standards in order to prevent recurrence of the past. This is considered to be the essential (symbolic) inadequacy of the security systems from the perspective of knowledge management and diplomacy. Wrong attitude of the academic community towards the problem of increasing the capacity within the security system to protect the public interest and towards thereform of the security system can be critically assessed through present profiling of the security community outside of executive power – in the judiciary, in the status of law enforcement agencies, although the nature of their work and the principle of secrecy is incompatible with the principle of transparency in the work of law enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, it is likely that all these problems will be crashing down on the future generations.