Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje 1939–1940 metais – Valstybės saugumo departamento pranešimai

Author(s): Linas Venclauskas / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 67/2017

This is a publication of documents consisting of reports of the Lithuanian State Security Department concerning Anti-Semitism from 1939 to 1940 (up to the month of July). The situation during the first few months of Soviet occupation is also reflected in the reports of the Kaunas City Police. The content of the documents varies from short messages about anti-Semitic activities to lengthy and detailed reports. If a report contains information about anti-Semitic proclamations, usually but not always the supporting documents are included, too. These documents are in the form of typescript, manuscript, poster, or proclamation. The documents are not gathered in one file, except in one case (f. 378, ap. 10, b. 158) where the file is devoted just to Anti-Semitism; that file only has 104 pages. In all other cases, information is given in the flow of general information about events occurring in that period.

Книжное обозрение

Author(s): Maria Vyatchina / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2019

Review of: Мария Вятчина - Arkadi Zeltser. Unwelcome Memory: Holocaust Monuments in the Soviet Union. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Publications, 2018. 386 pp. ISBN 978-9-6530-8573-2.

Osmanlı Devleti’nde Yahudilik: Ebüzziya Tevfik’in Millet-i İsrailiye Kitabı

Author(s): Osman Özkul,Nadir Çomak,Hilal Uzun / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 5/2019

In this paper “Antisemitism.” which is a different dimension of European influence on Ottoman thought, has been discussed. First, the emergence of Antisemitism in the Ottoman State and its general progress were emphasized. Then the work titled “Millet-i İsrailiye” written by Ebüzziya Tevfik, a prominent Ottoman thinker and journalist, is examined as the unique sample text, as it was the first work that carried the traces of anti-Semitic discourse towards the Jewish people in the Ottomans. At first the concept of Anti-Semitism is examined and in the context of the emergence and foundations of anti-Semitism, information about the European period of Jews is offered. Secondly, religious-based anti-Semitism in the Ottoman State has been handled as a separate title in the context of our study. The third chapter is devoted to Ebüzziya Tevfik, his views and his work “Millet-i İsrailiye” which is analyzed within the scope of our subject.The purpose of this paper is to explain the emergence of anti-Semitism in the Jewish history and its European-based manifestations in the Ottoman State. It is also intended to distinguish the attitude towards the Jewish people both before and after the emergence of anti-Semitic discourses with reference to the history of the Ottoman State and European Jewish history. The work of Ebüzziya Tevfik “Millet-i İsrailiye” offers us important information being the first work that carried the traces of anti-Semitic discourse towards the Jewish people in the Ottomans within the context of the European origins of anti-Semitism in Ottoman thought.

“It’s not a matter of choice.” Aleksander Smolar interviewed by Konrad Matyjaszek

Author(s): Konrad Matyjaszek / Language(s): English Issue: 7/2018

Konrad Matyjaszek’s interview with Aleksander Smolar focuses on the contemporary Polish intelligentsia, identified as a social group and a social milieu, and on this group’s self-image produced in relation to antisemitism, understood here both as a set of violence-based public activities and practices, and as an excluding prejudice that constitutes a component of the Polish culture. Aleksander Smolar discusses the history of Aneks, the Polish-language émigré socio-cultural journal, whose editor-in-chief he remained during the entire time of its activity (1973–1990). He talks about the political conditions and forms of pressure directed at the Aneks’s editorial board, composed in majority of persons forced to emigrate from Poland during the antisemitic campaign of March 1968, he also mentions the post-1968 shift of the Polish sphere of culture towards the political right and conservatism, and the rapprochement between the left-wing opposition circles and the organizations associated with the Catholic Church that was initiated in the 1970s. He also recounts reactions to the political changes expressed by his father, Grzegorz Smolar, a communist activist and an activist of the Jewish community in Poland. Afterwards, Smolar discusses the context of creation of his 1986 essay Taboo and innocence [Tabu i niewinność] and analyses the reasons for which the majority of the Polish intelligentsia chose not to undertake cultural critique directed against the antisemitic components of the Polish culture.

The intelligentsia and the Holocaust. Dispersing the image

Author(s): Katarzyna Chmielewska / Language(s): English Issue: 7/2018

This paper in the field of cultural memory studies addresses the workings of memory, or more precisely – a politics of memory whereby the image of the intelligentsia and its role in the Holocaust vanishes from the collective consciousness. The relative visibility of peasants denouncing Jews, murdering them and plundering their property is accompanied by an invisibility of the intelligentsia and its essential role in reinforcing the exclusion and antisemitic patterns of behavior before the Holocaust which facilitated direct involvement in these events, as well as an invisibility of the intelligentsia’s own participation in the events of the Holocaust.

Homecoming. A case study

Author(s): Bartłomiej Krupa / Language(s): English Issue: 7/2018

The study concerns the homecoming story of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, Szlomo Himelfarb, who returned to his home town of Solec on the Vistula, and his murder by local policemen. It is based on the material of so-called sierpniówki [testimonies given in 1944–1946 before summary courts for the prosecution “of fascist crimes against the civilian population and traitors of the Polish Nation”]. In conclusion, the author points to other cases of murders committed immediately after the war in Iłża (Starachowice) County.

I (nie) żyli długo i szczęśliwie. Konstrukcje zakończeń w polskiej literaturze dziecięcej o Zagładzie

Author(s): Krzysztof Rybak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2019

The article focuses on endings of selected contemporary Polish children’s books about the Holocaust. In the majority of these stories, events are set in a ghetto. Crossing its wall is a turning point for the protagonists. I understand crossing this physical boundary as a positive preview of the future, a negative sign of the end of life, and a new beginning of one’s uncertainty about one’s fate. The study is divided into three parts devoted, respectively, to the biographies of Janusz Korczak, the endings of selected texts (including XY by Joanna Rudniańska, Szlemiel by Ryszard Marek Groński and Bezsenność Jutki by Dorota Combrzyńska-Nogala) and the case study of Arka czasu by Marcin Szczygielski. The collected observations are then analyzed in the context of the happy end convention, which, according to some researchers, is strongly associated with children's literature.

“Schindlerin Listesi” Soykırım Öyküsünden Sinema-Mimarlık Arakesitinde “Berlin Yahudi Müzesi” Mekansal Çözümlemeleri

Author(s): Havva Alkan Bala / Language(s): Turkish Issue: Sp. Iss/2019

In this study, the art of architecture and an internal or external humanity occasion analyzed through the Museum of Libenskind and the films in the memory of the art of cinema. In other words, this study aims to cognitively compare the Berlin Jewish Museum as an architectural work piece and Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) as the work pieces of cinema, discuss the way this concept turns into an instrument of narration and expression through the opportunities of architecture and the art of cinema and reveal the similarities and differences. The Jewish Museum is almost a reincarnation of the memories which are denied and was aimed to live down. This vitality only may be provided through the virtue of apologizing of the human beings and the experiences related to human beings from the downtrodden people.

Země nikoho 1938. Deportace za hranice občanství

Author(s): Michal Frankl / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2019

In November 1938, following the First Vienna Award and the loss of Southern Slovakia, the leadership of the autonomous Slovakia triggered the deportations of thousands of Jews into a region that was to be taken over by Hungary. Many of them were forced into a strip of land along the new demarcation line, between the Czechoslovak and Hungarian posts, into no man’s land. The article collates the scarce evidence scattered within Slovak and international archives, in published and unpublished testimonies and memories in order to understand the nature of this no man’s land of refugees which was multiplied by the shifting borders of East-Central Europe in 1938. While the existing historiography and editions of documents has provided ample information about the decision-making process behind the 1938 deportations and the course they took, the refugees no man’s land close to Miloslavov / Mischdorf / Miserd, among other – even less well known – cases, has not been explored from within, as a social space characterized by the withdrawal of the state and a lack of social structures. In an exploration of the terminology used to label these spaces and capture the refugee experience, the article analyzes the no man’s land as a space of exclusion and abandonment, a form of a territorialized statelessness. In the absence of the state, Jewish aid organizations provided food and material help and attempted to organize emigration – thus providing an improvised and imperfect replacement of citizenship. This no man’s land was an unstable and shifting space: the article explores its transitions during the transfer of authority to Southern Slovakia as well as the later spread of this no man’s land within Slovak territory – as extraterritorial spaces where unwanted Jews were kept in limbo, for instance the camps on the outskirts of Bratislava, at Červený Most / Rote Brücke and Patrónka.

Inne obrazy Zagłady

Author(s): Roma Sendyka,Wojciech Wilczyk ,Magdalena Zych,Marta Duch-Dyngosz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 769/2019

A Personal Research Entanglement - The 'Intimate' Perpetrator

Author(s): Franziska A. Karpinski / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

This essay deals with personal emotional entanglements that one encounters when researching letters written by perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Reinventing Saint Francis: Józef Wittlin, Anti-Semitism and the Idea of Modern Sainthood

Author(s): Joanna Rzepa / Language(s): English Issue: Sp. Iss/2018

This article discusses Józef Wittlin’s literary exploration of the idea of modern sainthood. It argues that Wittlin’s search for a new model of saintly life that would respond to the modern age was informed by the ongoing theological debates about the meaning and value of traditional hagiography. The article demonstrates that Wittlin’s reflections were inspired by Paul Sabatier’s influential study Vie de saint François d’Assise (Life of Saint Francis of Assisi), and informed by the immediate socio-political context (the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918–1919 and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe). Ultimately, Wittlin’s writings reinvent Saint Francis as a modern-day saint who shows a radical empathy with the persecuted and the marginalised, above all the Jews.

Reinventing Saint Francis: Józef Wittlin, Anti-Semitism and the Idea of Modern Sainthood

Author(s): Joanna Rzepa / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

This article discusses Józef Wittlin’s literary exploration of the idea of modern sainthood. It argues that Wittlin’s search for a new model of saintly life that would respond to the modern age was informed by the ongoing theological debates about the meaning and value of traditional hagiography. The article demonstrates that Wittlin’s reflections were inspired by Paul Sabatier’s influential study Vie de saint François d’Assise (Life of Saint Francis of Assisi), and informed by the immediate socio-political context (the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918–1919 and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe). Ultimately, Wittlin’s writings reinvent Saint Francis as a modern-day saint who shows a radical empathy with the persecuted and the marginalised, above all the Jews.

Válaszreakció a gazdasági-társadalmi kihívásra: az antiszemitizmus története a dualizmus derekán

Author(s): Viktor Papp / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 75/2019

Paksy Zoltán: Istóczy Győző és a magyar antiszemita mozgalom(1875–1892). L’Harmattan, [Budapest,] 2018. 281 oldal.

Kritikai megjegyzések Paksy Zoltán könyvéhez

Author(s): András Cieger / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 75/2019

Paksy Zoltán: Istóczy Győző és a magyar antiszemita mozgalom (1875–1892). L’Harmattan, [Budapest,] 2018. 281 oldal.

Accusations against Joint during the Anti-“Zionist” Campaign in Poland 1967: Prompt Termination of the Program

Author(s): Mikhail Mitsel / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) played a major role in Jewish life in Poland in the immediate post-war period. In 1958, the Polish government invited JDC to return, only to expel it again in 1967, following the Six-Day War. JDC became one of the targets of unprecedented and constant antisemitic and anti-“Zionist” propaganda in 1968. The first accusations against the JDC were made in Sztandar Młodych, the Communist Youth newspaper. On 1 April 1968 that newspaper accused the JDC of “having spied for Israel and the United States.” Similarly to the Soviet press in January-February 1953, at the time of Doctors’ Plot, Polish newspapers published articles about the Committee as a “Zionist agency carrying out subversive and intelligence tasks” in the spring of 1968. In Wrocław, Łódź, and other provincial cities, the newspapers carried out very strong attacks had against JDC, using lies in a most vicious way. At the very same time the authorities began a well-planned systematic action to destroy all Jewish institutions that received financial support from JDC. An exodus of some 12,000 Jews from Poland followed increased antisemitic propaganda. JDC provided aid to several thousand of emigrants.

“Żydzi stali się w Polsce zjawiskiem egzotycznym, niemal wymarłym gatunkiem”. Obraz społeczności żydowskiej w Polsce w latach 70. i 80. XX wieku we wspomnieniach Żydów powracających do Polski

Author(s): Monika Stępień / Language(s): Polish Issue: 02/2019

Jewish returns to Poland began in the decades prior to the fall of Communism. Described in personal accounts, there are numerous examples of returns in the 1970s and 1980s. The Jews were returning either individually, or as parts of official delegations, e.g. those that returned to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Most of the returnees write about the absence of the murdered Jewish community, resulting in a lack of a natural environment of memory. Only a few describe encounters with the small, nearly invisible Jewish community still living in Poland. For those returnees that do engage the Jewish community, few seem to find commonalities with those who stayed in Poland. The experiences of the returnees and the remnants of Polish Jews still living in the country at the time were so different that it made bonding difficult. Personal accounts of the returnees are lacking the images of the revival of Jewish life in Poland, which began in the late 1970s. The story of Polish Jews in the 1970s and 1980s is mainly a story of invisibility and absence.

Reception of the Polish-Jewish Refugees by Sweden from 1968 onwards

Author(s): Jan Axel Stoltz / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

The Polish Jews’ post-March ’68 immigration to Sweden reached its peak in 1969-1970. Nearly 3,000 Polish Jews immigrated to Sweden from 1968 to 1975. The Geneva Convention from 1951 and the Protocol from 1967 about Refugees was the legal basis. The Polish Jews were refugees in accordance with the Convention´s definition. Two generations dominated, the younger, 15 - 25 of age, and their parents´ generation, aged 45 - 60. The reasons for choosing Sweden were the Swedish welfare system, the possibilities to get an education and a good job, also Sweden´s geographical proximity to Poland.The reception of the refugees was handled by the national, governmental Labor Market Board (Swedish abbreviation AMS), which set up a dozen temporary reception centers with the task of preparing the refugee for a life after the center. The Most important was Swedish language education, also two interviews, one to replace the Polish travel document with Swedish documents, the other to be basis for the employment counsellor´s task finding work or other occupation. After closing of the temporary reception centers the refugee was referred to the local Labour Market Board for support. Around 400 Polish Jews, chiefly students, settled in the university town of Lund. They were offered an intensive Swedish language course and also a course in English for Polish students not knowing English. AMS found itself in a new situation with a big group of highly educated people with very specific qualifications that needed more language training. Also Polish professional qualifications and Swedish professional qualifications did not match. For craftsmen, however, finding a job was much easier. The concern to find adequate work also reached the Swedish Riksdag. Motions were submitted in 1971 with suggestions how to tackle the problem. The motions were referred to the Parliamentary Interior Committee for statement before decision. However, neither the Interior Committee nor later the Riksdag in plenum were ready to take action. AMS used an instrument to create individual positions called "archival work" for those with some kind of obstacle making it difficult to find a job on the open market. The elder refugees´ situation was an obstacle entitling them to do "archival work" in governmental institutions, universities, schools etc. The process of occupational mobility was largest with the highest educated. For them the first years of emigration meant an occupational degradation. The younger generation were more successful. Excellent careers in many different fields are numerous. Their successes have also become public in works by Polish authors.

International School for Young Scholars «Overcoming socio-cultural threats in historical dynamics: an experience of studying anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and genocides». Participant’s review

Author(s): Nikolay Kuznetsov / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2018

Between the 23rd and 26th of October 2017, in Moscow and Golitsino (Moscow Province) International Educational and Research Centre of the Holocaust and Genocides History of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH) organized the International School of Young Scientists «Overcoming socio-cultural threats in historical dynamics: an experience of studying anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and genocides», dedicated to Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

My, Żydzi… Marcowy manifest Artura Sandauera

Author(s): Justyna Koszarska-Szulc / Language(s): Polish Issue: 6/2018

“We, the Jews…,” a hitherto unpublished draft for a manifesto by literary critic Artur Sandauer (1913-89), poses a challenge to any potential editor, and it is equally difficult to interpret. Justyna Koszarska-Szulc’s introduction outlines the circumstances in which this text was written, especially the eruption of anti-Semitism in Poland in March 1968. This moment in Poland’s history might explain the many deletions and rephrased passages. Koszarska-Szulc also examines the problem of self-censorship, on both the institutional and the psychological level, by adopting a perspective inspired by the psychoanalytic approach to genetic study.