We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Review: Paweł Wolski, Tadeusz Borowski – Primo Levi. Prze-pisywanie literatury Holocaustu [Tadeusz Borowski – Primo Levi: Trans-Scribing Holocaust Literature], Wydawnictwo IBL, Warszawa 2013.
More...
The pogrom that took place in Iaşi in the 28th-30th of June, 1941 represented one of the most horrible and tragic chapters of the Romanian history from the Second World War, which was intensely debated by the Romanian and foreign historians. The well-known historian Franz Babinger (1891-1967), full professor at the Ottoman Studies department of the University of Iasi, was one of the eye witnesses of the tragic events developed in Iaşi. His deposition in 1956 refers to the causes and the development of the pogrom, respectively to the interventions made together with the German consul in Iaşi – Fritz Gebhard Schellhorn – in front of the German authorities in order to stop the abuses against the Jewish population. His confession confirms the information contained by the German diplomatic and military sources regarding the pogrom, which attest that the Romanian authorities were responsible for the abuses.
More...
Alongside the physically existing town of Radom there is a second borough, visible only to some but, nonetheless, just as real. This is the Radom of material traces and some sort of a ghostly life; in it, the dead continue to pursue their phantom existence. The symbol of this absent presence is not something but naught – emptiness instead of the now windswept former Jewish district. It is also a strange phantom pain that assaults the author from time to time, whenever she thinks about all of them. This is a world next to us and within us, a world that grows deep within, penetrates, becomes part of us, and inflicts wounds.In this world the author’s deceased still live, although she is aware that they all perished at the time of the Holocaust and that the only surviving member of her whole family, Elias Sznajderman, left, never to return, in August 1945, a day after a pogrom carried out in the “Praca” cooperative.
More...
This is a review of Eva Mozes Kor, Lisa Rojany Buccieri's book,Am supravieţuit Lagărului Morţii(Povestea Evei Mozes, una dintre„gemenele doctorului Mengele” de laAuschwitz), Meteor Publishing,Bucureşti, 2012, 128 p.Keren Levine, Geamantanul Hanei.Din ororile Holocaustului, MeteorPublishing, Bucureşti, 2014, 112 p.
More...
The documents kept in the special collections of the Jewish Historical Institute Library contain an extract, purchased in 2010, from Warsaw municipal records, containing the depositions of Jews, noblemen and burghers suspected of taking part in a raid of nobleman Mroczek’a manor at Żebrak near Siedlce on the night of 1 November 1783. This document provides lots of insight into the social transformations taking place in Poland in the second half of the 18th century. It visualizes the internal differentiation of the Jewish population, struggling with increasing poverty. The suspects’ depositions portray Warsaw as a city attracting representatives of various social groups, which integrated irrespective of religious or ethnic differences, cooperated with each other or forming criminal gangs.
More...
Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was connected with unprecedented bestiality of German state authorities vis-a-vis the Jews. The Polish authorities eagerly jumped at the opportunity presented by this situation. The prosecuted Jews who happened to be Polish citizens turned out to be a perfect tool for exerting pressure on the new Chancellor. The Polish government forced Hitler to revise (at least verbally) his views of Poland. The effectiveness of this move unquestionable from the day-to-day policy perspective but in the long run this did not prevent Poland from an invasion by its western neighbour. Nonetheless, thanks to these cool calculations, Jews who were Polish citizens could have some sense of security that was firmly denied too Jews having German citizenship.
More...
In Uherský Brod, whose district boundary was several tens of kilometers, together with Slovakia, lived at the beginning of the Protectorate of about 600 Jews. Although about 50 people, who managed to emigrate legally, even so he remained the majority continue to live in the Jewish part of the city, which in year 1942 became a forcible refuge for forced nearly 3 thousand people benefiting Jewish faith in southeast Moravia. Some local Jews began from the spring of 1939 to work with the active resistance movement components, as with the Defense of the nation at converting across the Slovak border, as well as with the illegal Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which they provide finanial menans. Anti-Semitism while steadily louder and living conditions in still worse. He was destroyed Jewish cemetery, and so was lit synagogue from the 18th century. In January 1943, pursuant to a subpoena 2,837 Jews arrived with 50 kg of luggage into the building of the local grammar school. From there the journey went in three groups after about 1,000 people on 23, 27 and 31. 1. 1943 by stairs to the nearby train station and then through Terezin to Auschwitz.
More...
In this paper I demonstrate the concept of the Jewish godhead as presented in the drama Between Two Worlds: The Dybbuk by S. An-sky (Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport), and analyses the phenomenon of a dybbuk, which was very popular in the culture of Hasidim. It should be mentioned that the research subject became the Russian original of the text of An-sky’s drama. The text was found in St Petersburg in 2001. The original differs significantly from its Yiddish and Hebrew versions: the Russian version ofThe Dybbuk is preceded by a long “Prologue”, where the play’s author suggests its most important ideas to the viewers. Thus, the reinterpretation of An-sky’s drama, seen from a philosophical perspective, enables one to justify the thesis that the author was conscious of some incoherency intrinsically present in the realm of the religious beliefs of Hasidic communities, where both the God of Biblical and Talmudic narratives, and the impersonal godhead of Kabbalah were, simultaneously, worshiped. What is more: the author also focuses on the weakness of the godhead, as he or she has been deprived of his or her primordial, male-female, unity. At the same time, while analyzing An-sky’s text, I draw attention to the fact that in this play a dybbuk, an evil spirit existing in a living person’s body, is portrayed as a much better entity: An-sky’s dybbuk is a soul of a man who died prematurely, and who is wandering and missing his earthly lover, similarly to Shekhinah, who is missing her lover in heaven, and is wandering in exile, together with the Jewish nation.
More...
The article examines the historical relationship between the Jewish people and the Hebrew language and the process that led to the revival of the language within their culture. The author examines the Diaspora of the Jewish people and their retention of three private languages that they used while in Europe. These languages were Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish. Lithuanian intellectual Eliezer Ben-Yehuda played a major part in the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. Also discussed are the efforts of French philanthropist Baron Edmond James de Rothschild to construct Zionist settlements in Palestine.
More...
Leela Corman’s graphic novel Unterzakhn illustrates the difficulty of life at the turn of the century in New York’s Lower East Side as seen through the eyes of Jewish twins Fanya and Esther. Although the novel does not solely follow the story of the sisters, it is mainly focused on their fascinating passage from childhood to adulthood. The purpose of my paper is to analyze Corman’s graphic novel in order to illustrate how New York’s Lower East Side shaped the life of Jewish immigrants. On the one hand, I will examine the historical development of the Jewish migration and its causes. Consequently, I will explore whether Leela Corman follows the pattern of the factual past or not. On the other hand, I will focus on Corman’s graphic depiction of the streets of the Lower East Side and on her portrayal of Jewish family life. The critical sources used include Hasia R. Diner’s The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000 and Joyce Antler’s “’My Yiddishe Mama’: The Multiple Faces of the Immigrant Jewish Mother.” You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother.
More...
The paper sought to interpret the several works of Leo Baeck (1873–1956), German rabbi and religious thinker, leader of Progressive Judaism. As the rabbi of the Jewish community in Opole (1897–1907), in 1905 he published a key work of Das Wesen des Judentums (The Essence of Judaism), in response to Adolf von Harnack’s Wesen des Christentums. Baeck saw himself primarily as a rabbi and a preacher, who understood his mission beyond the borders of his own Liberal affiliation, as shaped by his responsibility to the entire German Jewish community and the Jewish people at large. His philosophical-theological thought as well as his works on history of religion should be read and measured in light of his rabbinic mission. He identified the essence of Judaism with biblical prophecy, namely the direct experience of God’s presence and the command to worship Him. For him Judaism, in contrast with Christianity, is thus not aimed at the salvation of the individual soul but rather at the collective redemption of humanity and of the world. In line with his national and this-worldly view of Judaism and the Jewish people, Baeck had a sympathetic, although critical attitude towards Zionism. He thought that the building of Palestine was a valuable prospect for embodying the spirit of Judaism, but not a guarantee that it would be realized.
More...
The review of: Kinga Frojimovics, Géza Komoróczy, Viktória Pusztai, and Andrea Strbik: A zsidó Budapest: Emlékek, szertartások, történelem (Jewish Budapest: Records, Recollections, Rituals); Faces of the City Series Ed. by Géza Komoróczy, Budapest: City Hall/Center of Jewish Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1995, 2 vols., 793 pp., illustrated.
More...
Article deals with the relationship between Carl Schmitt’’s political theory and political theology, which inherently works with the violence assumption, and the so called jewish question. Author shows the way the enemy of the political is gradually constructed on the basis of textual and doctrinal analysis. The core of Schmitt’s enemy construction depends on the refusal of the philosophical tradition, which assume that all man are equal as far as they are participating in one common nature or are in actual or potential possesion of reason. This refusal is the basis on which the criticism of normativism, for Schmitt in the inter-war period represented especially by jewish thinkers such as Hans Kelsen, is built to be after 1933 used in open attack on Jews as such.
More...
The Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann, former SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel), one of the initiators and executioners of the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” is rightfully listed among the most important events in Israel’s recent history and regarded as a foundational moment in the dissemination of Holocaust remembrance practices. Whilst its overall importance in enforcing/expanding the memory of wartime Jewish suffering is beyond any question, the trial itself and the specific interpretation of Holocaust it offered, was instrumentally used by incumbent Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Zionist Mapai Party as a political tool in order to strengthen the legitimacy of yet still maturing Israeli statehood and the country’s insufficient recognition within worldwide Jewish community. Analysis of how this trial was perceived (with particular emphasis put on American Diaspora and non-Jewish audience, aspecially the Catholic press) – the essential purpose of this paper – lead to the conclusion that such policy turned out to be rather ineffective at the very beginning but successful in the longer run. Asked whether Israel has the right to try Eichmann, most influential observers, both Jews and non-Jews (Nahum Goldmann, Martin Buber, Yosal Rogat; Karl Jaspers) responded negatively and opted for an international tribunal – however, Ben-Gurion managed to gain several allies, also among the Gentiles (Hugh Trevor-Roper). Simultaneously, in inevitable clash between two specifically understood Jewish identities – Zionist/Israeli and assimilationist/ American, the second one remained dominant. One of most characteristic representatives of the latter “self”, introduced more closely on the following pages, was Hannah Arendt, who skillfully combined its German/Jewish/American components and criticized the trial as American Jewess bound to German culture and language. Nevertheless, beginning with late 1960s and early 1970s, the memory of Holocaust, shaped in result of this trial, has quickly become a vital reference point for successive generation of Jews, in Israel and beyond.
More...