Modernity and the Holocaust
Review of: Zygmunt Bauman "Modernity and the Holocaust"; Polity Press, Cambridge 1989. by: Mojmir Križan
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Review of: Zygmunt Bauman "Modernity and the Holocaust"; Polity Press, Cambridge 1989. by: Mojmir Križan
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The Third Reich’s policy towards the Sinti and Roma people was based on racist theories claiming the superiority of the German nation over other nations. The rule of the National Socialists in Germany systematically eliminated the Sinti and Roma people from all areas of public life. They were regarded as a socially unassimilated group prone to criminal activity. Consequently, the Roma and Sinti people were refused the right to live and were subject to compulsory sterilisation and systematic extermination during World War II. It was in German-occupied Poland that the extermination was carried out to the greatest extent. Losses among the Roma and Sinti people have not been precisely estimated yet. Approximately at least 250,000 lost their lives in ghettos, concentration camps and outside the camps.
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Jürgen Stroop, the SS general who led the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto and the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April–May 1943, was convicted by a Polish court in 1951 and executed in 1952. Bernard (Ber) Mark (1908–1966), Holocaust historian and director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, provided expert testimony for the prosecution at Stroop’s trial. Mark felt constrained to graft a communist-inflected narrative onto his account of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and to shoehorn it into his expert testimony in court and then into his interpretation of the trial for a Jewish audience. He did his best to give the Jewish Fighting Organization, which spearheaded the uprising, and its Jewish fighters their due at a time when expression of unvarnished appreciation for Jewish heroism was risky, even while he was paying overrated tribute to the communist underground for its assistance to the Jewish rebels during the uprising. But he always stopped short of the line between conformity to and defiance of the communist regime.
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Michał Borwicz was a Polish poet, prose writer, and a publicist of Jewish origins. During the Nazi occupation he was resettled to the Lvov getto, and in the years 1942–1943 he was imprisoned in the Janowska concentration camp. He managed to escape and next he was active in the resistance movement. After the war as a director of the Jewish Historical Commission in Kraków he tried to collect and publish testimonies of the Holocaust survivors. In 1947 he decided to emigrate to France. In 1953 Borwicz defended his doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne. The dissertation was published the same year. It presents writings of people “condemned to death” under Nazi occupation, and is considered a pioneer study of literature and writing practices in the camps and ghettos. Unfortunately the singularity of the author and the strength of his work are still underestimated.
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This article regards the existential experience of Holocaust victims and the psychological and cognitive mechanisms in confrontation with the first news about the functioning of the death camps. It analyzes the testimonies of Jews from over 40 towns and small towns in the General Government regarding the gradual influx of news about the Holocaust and the consequent reactions. Initially, the hearsay came mostly from afar, and then from increasingly close localities. The Poles were the source of that (imprecise) information about the lot of the deported Jews, while in certain localities appeared escapees from the death centers who gave accounts of what they had witnessed. That hearsay and those testimonies met with different reactions – from despair, through denial, suppression, and resignation, to attempts to save one’s life. This article devotes special attention to a reflection on the possibility of death of oneself and one’s family as well as the phenomenon of denial and pushing the news about the Holocaust away from oneself.
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Information about the extermination conducted in the Chełmno nad Nerem death center reached the Łódź ghetto in the spring of 1942. An important link in the information transmission chain was Grabów, reached by the first escapees from Chełmno. Rabbi Jakub Szulman played a large role as he started sending letters with information about the crime obtained from the escapees. The letters he wrote reached Łódź together with people resettled from the provincial ghettos of Wartheland, from whom the Łódź ghetto residents heard a confirmation of the information about the purpose of the Chełmno nad Nerem center. The information flow was also affected by the information blockade campaign conducted by the Germans followed by a misinformation campaign regarding the actual lot of the people deported to Chełmno.
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The Treuhändstelle in Chełm administered real estate in the city (for some time a city with city rights) and in the Chełm country district. In 1940 their joint office was at Orlicz-Dreszera Street 6. The former Treuhändstelle were probably subordinate to the district Treuhänder. The Chełm Treuhändstelle took over more than 600 houses from their Jewish owners, with participation of the municipal authorities, including pre-war Polish clerks. The Germans made a profit on that property, at the expense of the Jews. Ordinary inhabitants of Chełm, various institutions, and Catholic priests sought to trade that real estate.
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Men’s circumcision is in many countries considered as a hygienic-cosmetic or aesthetic treatment. However, it still remains in close connection with religious rites (Judaism, Islam) and is still practiced all over the world. During the Second World War the visible effects of circumcision became an indisputable evidence of being a Jew and were often used especially by the so-called szmalcownicy (blackmailers). Fear of the possibility of discovering as non-Aryan prompted many Jews hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw to seek medical practitioners who would restore the condition as it was before the circumcision. The reconstruction surgery was called in surgical jargon “knife baptizing”. Almost all of the procedures were performed by Aryan doctors although four cases of hiding Jewish doctors participating in such procedures are known. Surgical technique consisted of the surgical formation of a new foreskin after tissue preparation and stretching it by manual treatment. The success of the repair operation depended on the patient’s cooperation with the doctor, the worst result was in children. The physicians described in the article and the operating technique are probably only a fragment of a broader activity, described meticulously by only one of the doctors – Dr. Janusz Skórski. This work is an attempt to describe the phenomenon based on the very scanty source material, but it seems to be the first such attempt for several decades.
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The article presents a selection of immediate post-war testimonies of Polish railway workers, who served at train stations at Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka. Testimonies, collected during investigations conducted by Polish authorities regarding the death camps, reviles the level of awareness of Polish witnesses to the crimes conducted at the Operation Reinhardt death camps.
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The materials presented in the article include documentation of the German Special Court (Sondergericht) in Warsaw proceedings against Tadeusz Puder, a Catholic priest of Jewish origin arrested by the Gestapo in the spring of 1941. His imprisonment was a consequence of a denunciation made by Fr. Stanisław Trzeciak, one of the leading Polish anti-Semites. Sentenced to several months in prison, Puder managed to escape from the prison hospital in autumn 1942 and survive in hiding. He died a few days after the liberation of Warsaw in a car accident. Despite the cooperation with the German security police, Trzeciak was among the victims of mass executions during the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. The introduction of the article presents a broader context of Trzeciak’s anti-Semitic activity and the reasons for his personal hatred for Puder, as well as unknown details of collaborative attempts in the first months of German occupation.
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Kiedy mówimy o polskiej historii, to można od biedy dopuścić – nie łamiąc konwencji poprawnego posługiwania się językiem – że bierzemy pod uwagę przede wszystkim (wyłącznie?) losy polskiej ludności. W tym sensie polska historia byłaby po prostu opowieścią o Polakach. Ale już historii Polski w ten sposób opowiedzieć się nie da.
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Zacząć muszę od wyznania osobistego. Tak jak przydarzyć się może niespełniona miłość – tak zdarza się niespełniona przyjaźń. Pozornie wszystko zdaje się sprzyjać zadzierzgnięciu mocniejszych więzów. Od początku rozumiecie się wpół słowa i buzuje międzyludzka chemia, jednak ziarno przyjaźni pada między ciernie codzienności. W natłoku obowiązków raz po raz zapominasz, że miałeś zadzwonić. Tysiąc razy obiecujesz sobie, że tym razem już na pewno się spotkacie i przegadacie w końcu kilka dobrych godzin, jak stary przyjaciel ze starym przyjacielem – a potem znowu szukasz nowego terminu. Tak mijają miesiące i lata, a przyjaźń wciąż nie wyszła poza fazę embrionalną. Kiedy przez przypadek się spotykacie, witasz się z przesadną serdecznością, ale w głębi duszy czujesz ukłucie żalu i zawodu względem samego siebie.
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Akcja „Reinhardt” to niemieckim określenie maskujące, za którym kryje się wymordowanie w latach 1942–1943 co najmniej 1,8 mln Żydów w obozach zagłady w Bełżcu, Sobiborze i Treblince. Spośród Żydów skierowanych do tych obozów przeżyło mniej niż 150 osób. Dwie z nich to ocaleni z Bełżca, pozostali zaś mniej więcej po połowie przeszli przez obozy zagłady w Sobiborze i Treblince. Prawie wszyscy wyjechali po wojnie z Polski – do Izraela albo do Stanów Zjednoczonych.
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W kwietniu 2017 r. czeska Izba Poselska przyjęła nowelizację ustawy o świętach państwowych, w której 9 marca – rocznica masowego mordu więźniów terezińskiego obozu rodzinnego w Auschwitz-Birkenau w 1944 r. – została zakwali fikowana jako ważny dzień. W ten symboliczny sposób czescy posłowie chcą zamknąć długi okres, gdy owo przerażające wydarzenie, uznane za największe popełnione jednorazowo morderstwo czechosłowackich obywateli podczas drugiej wojny światowej, odsuwane było na margines czeskiej świadomości historycznej. Posłowie jednocześnie dodali do czeskiego kalendarza, jako wspomnienie „drugiego oporu” 18 czerwca, rocznicę „bohaterskiej” walki zabójców Reinharda Heydricha przeciwko Waffen SS i Gestapo, i jednocześnie oficjalnie potępili ludobójczą przemoc; ludobójstwem nazwali również prześladowanie Ormian w imperium osmańskim podczas pierwszej wojny światowej.
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Na początku 2016 r. w Litwie, za sprawą książki Rūty Vanagaitė Mūsiškiai, rozpoczęła się głośna debata publiczna dotycząca współudziału Litwinów w Zagładzie. Szerszy kontekst debaty wprowadza i przybliża Agnieszka Stawiarska w artykule Potrząsnąć społeczeństwem. O znaczeniu dla Litwy książki Rūty Vanagaitė Mūsiškiai. W licznych relacjach prasowych Vanagaitė porównywana była do Jana Tomasza Grossa, czy wręcz nazywana „litewskim Grossem”, zestawiana z Timothym Snyderem, oskarżana o finansowanie zarówno z Rosji, jak i z Izraela, zarzucano jej „nastawienie antylitewskie”, próbowano śledzić jej „pochodzenie”.
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Ksiądz Franciszek Ilków-Gołąb z diecezji opolskiej, zmarły w roku 1978, bardzo przystojny do starości, od roku 1949 wykładał teologię moralną także w Wyższym Seminarium Duchownym we Wrocławiu, gdzie również ja miałem radość słuchać jego wykładów. Przypomnę jeden przykład, jak próbował nas uwrażliwić na ewangeliczną prawdę, że osoba jest ważniejsza od prawa: przyniósł na wykład egzemplarz najnowszego numeru czasopisma dla księży „Homo Dei”, w którym pisano o proboszczu nakazującym pochować matkę zmarłą przy połogu na cmentarzu parafialnym, a jej dziecko za płotem, gdyż noworodka nie zdążono ochrzcić...
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Pani L. to Lidia Wolańska, wtedy młoda dentystka. Mieszkała w domu należącym do rodziny Perechodników w Otwocku na rogu ulic Kościelnej i Kościuszki, tam też prowadziła swoją działalność stomatologiczną.
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Imre Kertész was among the 82,000 Hungarian Jews who returned in 1945. The transition from camp to home, the adjustment fom adolescent trauma to adult life is only hinted at in his works. This paper situates Kertész in the identity crisis of the immediate postwar period. The confusion of displaced identities in the aftermath of WWII, prompted psychologist Erik Erikson to universalize the adolescent identity crisis as a central contemporary problem. In Hungary not only Jews but the entire society was reforging identities. Borders were porous, so were political and religious affiliations. Kertész’s identity was defined, at least in a negative way, by the Holocaust: as a Jew without being a Jew, as a survivor when it was best to keep quiet. He lived in the constant of the world of Buchenwald and of Stalinist Hungary, with their constricted options and ideological imperatives fashioned upon twisted idealisms. His recreation of the Holocaust in Fateless and of the existentialist experience of living with memory in Kaddish, has made for disquieting reading abroad, as well. In ignoring heroic clichés he has transgressed the identity of victim and victimizer.
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In this essay, I interpret two Hungarian novels from the field of Holocaust literature concentrating upon the problems of representation. I argue that neither Kertész nor Márton can avoid facing the question whether the challenges of remembering and representation can be bound and reflected in a literary form. Past events are repeatedly narrated in present tense in both novels. For Márton, the fragments of narration do not constitute a story, and the invasion of imaginative elements provokes the conventional frames of depicting historical facts in an epistemological horizon. On the other hand, in Fateless storytelling emphasises the inconceivable character of the Holocaust, and Kertész’s work sheds light on philosophical paradoxes beyond epistemology. In this sense these two novels prove to be different but connected forms of Holocaust literature.
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This article is devoted to Polish historiography of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries concerning the Extermination of Jews and Polish-Jewish relations. It presents the works of both Polish historians and representatives of other scientific disciplines published in Poland and abroad and the Polish translations of foreign scientists’ works. Nevertheless, the article is mainly focused on the output of Polish historians because their contribution thereto is the greatest. Since the end of the 20th century, many works devoted to the Extermination of Jews to a greater or lesser extent have been published. These include both works giving the general outlook of the preparatory measures and mechanism of extermination of the Jewish population during the II World War and regional studies concerning the extermination of Jewish population in individual regions or localities in Poland under German occupation. The biographies of persons who affected the lives of thousands of people (not only the perpetrators of crimes but also the employees of Jewish administration) have been published, too. The latter has given rise to a discussion among historians as to the attitude of Jewish leaders towards their fellow-citizens and the invader’s authorities. These publications also depict issues related to various activities undertaken by the Jewish authorities (both civil administration and ghetto police), which have been discussed by Polish historians. One of the continuous concerns of Polish historians is the issue that has been studied since the end of the German occupation (penal liability of the perpetrators of crimes, the functioning of ghettos, extermination camps, labour camps and concentration camps, and the lot of Jews who were kept and murdered there). Only recently the issues pertaining to the Jewish resistance movement and the economic factors determining the Extermination of Jews in Poland under German occupation have become the subject matter of discussions and verifications. Since the end of the 20th century, Polish historiography has been much more focused on Polish-Jewish relations during the German occupation. However, studies and articles concerning this issue certainly do not exhaust the subject. Polish historiography is still searching for answers to questions concerning diversified attitudes of the Polish society towards Jewish population during the Holocaust and factors that determined these attitudes. The review of various research concerning the Extermination of Jews and Polish-Jewish relations at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries accomplished by Polish historians, which is presented in this article, shows that many new documents, memoirs and reports became then the subject matter of scientific examination and analysis, and matters that had long been ignored or consistently not mentioned for different reasons started to be discussed.
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