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The author considers the intersections of the annihilation of Eastern European Jews during the Holocaust and settler colonial genocides in North America through the lens of “cultural genocide,” as it was first proposed by Raphaël Lemkin, rejected by the signatories of the Genocide Convention, and then taken up a few decades later by Indigenous thinkers and activists in Canada and the US. Głowacka argues that an ideological proximity of the idea of “the vanished world,” which has shaped popular conceptions of Eastern European Jews in North America, and the colonial metaphor of “the vanishing Native American race” exposes problematic traces of Western cultural superiority entrenched in North American perceptions of the Holocaust. Głowacka proposes that introducing the notion of cultural genocide as it has been re-signified and decolonised by Indigenous scholars is useful in the context of Holocaust studies since it reveals political and ontological dimensions of the concept of culture and thus the inseparability of the physical and cultural aspects of the annihilation of Eastern European Jews.
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Review of: Visual Antisemitism in Central Europe. Imagery of Hatred. Hrsg. von Jakub Hauser und Eva Janáčová . De Gruyter Oldenbourg. Berlin – Boston 2021. X, 290 S. ISBN 978- 3-11-061607-1. (€ 89,95.)
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Review of: Reinhold Lütgemeier-Davin: Karl Laabs. Ein Juden- und Polenretter in Krenau/Chrzanów. Ein „Gerechter unter den Völkern“ aus Hann. Münden. Schüren. Marburg 2020. 140 S. Ill. ISBN 978-3-7410-0268-7. (€ 14,80,–.)
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Review of: Jeffrey Koerber: Borderland Generation. Soviet and Polish Jews under Hitler. Syracuse University Press. Syracuse, NY 2020. XIV, 421 S. ISBN 978-0-8156-3619-9. ($ 39,95–.)
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Review of: Syberiada Żydów polskich. Losy uchodźców z Zagłady. [Polnische Juden in Sibirien. Das Schicksal der vor dem Judenmord Geflohenen.] Hrsg. von Lidia Zessin-Jurek und Katharina Friedla. Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma. Warszawa 2020. 695 S., Ill. ISBN 978-83-66485-16-7. (PLN 53,–.)
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This article aims at revealing once more the unbelievable atrocities of the greatest humanitarian tragedy witnessed by humanity: the Holocaust. Heather Morris’ novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an amazing document reminding us of the millions of innocent Jews and gypsies tortured and murdered in the Nazi hells: the concentration camps. Auschwitz, the dismal world in between the normal life led by Lale Sokolov and Gita before the war and the inferno where despair and death rule. This article is a warning that we are not to ignore or forget what happened more than seventy years ago because it might happen again if we are irresponsible.
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Review of: Jack Palmer and Dariusz Brzeziński (Eds.), Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust: Heritage, Dilemmas, Extensions. Routledge, 2022
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The article discusses the main theses of Zygmunt Bauman’s book Modernity and the Holocaust, the contexts of its writing and its early critical reception in the 1990s. As an introduction to the issue’s theme, it focuses on the proposals for a contemporary interpretation of Bauman’s work put forward by the authors of the articles published in this issue of Studia Litteraria et Historica. In the final section, the author proposes a reading of Modernity and the Holocaust in relation to educational issues raised in the 1960s by Theodor W. Adorno.
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This article summarizes a few dozen years of research on the Jewish-Highland smuggling networks which operated at the Polish-Slovakian border, particularly in Podhale and Spiš. It brifly presents the principles of their operation during the interwar period and the importance of the border for the inhabitants of the borderland. It describes the changes that occurred in the functioning and the role of the smuggling networks during World War II, when that illegal activity became the basis of the survival of Jews living in Podhale. The main part of the article reconstructs the network of relations and events during 1943–1944 which made it possible to use contacts with the smugglers and their paths in Podhale, Spiš, Orava, and Liptov so as to rescue hundreds of Jews from the General Government.
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This article discusses the escapes of Jews from deportation trains going from the Białystok ghetto to Treblinka II. Based on the survivor testimonies regarding the two great deportation campaigns in February and August 1943, the author analyzes who, in what circumstances and how escaped from those trains, and whether those were spontaneous or organized escapes. The author pays particular attention to the Jews associated in organizations, who both individually and in groups made it possible for the deportees to escape from the freight cars, also in mass numbers. The escapes from deportation trains are seen as an important part of the Jewish resistance to the Nazi extermination policy.
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Review of Wiedza (nie)umiejscowiona. Jak uczyć o Zagładzie w Polsce w XXI wieku?, wstęp i red. Katarzyna Liszka, Kraków: Universitas, 2021, 302 s.
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In this study, the authors connect the perspective of a social historian with that of a literary one. On one particular example (the works of František Sokol-Tůma), they show the potential of examining not only the inner semantic structure of a text, but also its relations to the more general social, cultural and political contexts. Building upon the basic work of Étienne Balibar, the authors hold that anti-Semitism (and racism in general) has broadly socially manifested itself not in strictly hierarchized, caste-structured societies, but paradoxically in those that claimed at least a formal principle of equality. In other words in such contexts where the discourse of social recognition on the basis of equality among people had asserted or was asserting itself while having to legitimize the obvious sharp social discrepancies. This explains why the notions of race and racism were important to Czech, German and other nationalists during the mobilization and political campaigns, and especially in the last phases of forming national movements, in asserting the sovereignty of a national state and then during its establishment and also destabilization. In Sokol-Tůma’s novel pentalogy V záři milionů (In The Blaze of Millions, 1922), the core threads of the anti-Semitic ideology are woven into a complex semantic net, which loses its ambiguity in the gradually unleashing narrative and becomes clear and understandable, even to the most “simple” reader. It is this orientation towards the “common people” that justifies the claim that the text does not leave any “clusters of ideas” to be “dissolved in a poetical play of reflection” or to be “left open”. Therefore, the pentalogy fulfills the criteria of literary anti-Semitism formulated by Mona Körte. From our point of view, however, each such analysis needs to be preceded by a precise and detailed analysis of the semantic structure of a given text and the way such text has been linked to the larger threads of the more general social, cultural and political contexts.
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The group of Auschwitz survivors is numerous and rapidly shrinking. However, the accounts (could use: biographies, memoirs, recollections, stories, etc.) of those who experienced it are remarkable and still worthy of study. Moreover, testimonies from the time of the Annihilation (or Holocaust) – a message with a great weight of emotion and a particular feature of the great history, make the material collected in this way can serve as an invaluable contribution to expanding knowledge and analysis for future generations. Naturally, the educational issue is also important, although the focus will be on the cognitive role. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the fate of the life of an outstanding physician, a Polish Jew from Lodz, Leon Weintraub, who “started” his life anew three times – at the time of his birth in 1926, his liberation from the Nazi camps, and his expulsion from the country as part of the anti-Semitic campaign of March 1968. It seems that the study of the fate of an individual’s life under totalitarian systems, using the oral history method and confronting other sources, makes it possible to create a biographical sketch that is not just a collection of dry facts but enriched with elements of personal emotions, sensitivities, and feelings.
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Ludność żydowska stanowiła integralną część przedwojennego społeczeństwa zamieszkującego II Rzeczpospolitą. Żyli na tych ziemiach od wieków, zachowując odrębność religijną, językową i kulturową. Niektórzy spośród członków tej społeczności przejawiali tendencję do asymilacji i akulturacji. Współistnienie obu grup przerwał wybuch II wojny światowej i niemiecka okupacja ziem polskich. Niemcy dążyli do zagłady całej społeczności żydowskiej, bez względu na wiek czy płeć ofiar. W konsekwencji realizowanej przez nich polityki śmierć poniosło ponad 2,7 mln Żydów, przedwojennych obywateli II RP. Chociaż od zakończenia II wojny światowej minęło ponad 70 lat, to w środowisku historyków nadal trwają dyskusje na temat liczby zamordowanych Żydów i tych, którym udało się przeżyć. Podejmowane są próby podania możliwie precyzyjnych danych. Celem tego artykułu jest zwrócenie uwagi na dotychczasowe ustalenia, a także na problemy, z jakimi mierzą się badacze próbujący oszacować, jaki odsetek polskich Żydów przetrwał niemiecką okupację. Dla pełniejszego zobrazowania utrudnień metodologicznych posługuję się przykładem żydowskiej społeczności Krakowa i przemian demograficznych, jakim ulegała.
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Jews were an integral part of society in the Second Polish Republic. They had lived in the Polish lands for centuries, while remaining religiously, linguistically and culturally distinct. Some members of this community showed a tendency towards assimilation and acculturation. The co-existence of Poles and Jews was disrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War and the German occupation. The Germans strove to annihilate all Jews regardless of age or sex. Their policies resulted in the death of over 2.7 million Jews, pre-war citizens of the Second Polish Republic. Although 70 years have passed since the end of the Second World War, discussions still continue among historians as to the number of Jewish victims and survivors. Attempts are made to arrive at precise figures, insofar as this is possible. The aim of the article is to discuss findings to date and to highlight the problems encountered by scholars trying to estimate the percentage of Polish Jews who survived the German occupation. To illustrate the methodological difficulties, I use the example of the Jewish community of Kraków and the demographic changes that it underwent.
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W czasie II wojny światowej ludność cywilną na ziemi częstochowskiej poddano represjom niemieckim w wielu formach. Należały do nich aresztowania, wywózki na roboty przymusowe i do obozów koncentracyjnych, egzekucje i najbardziej brutalne – pacyfikacje wsi. Ponadto wieś została włączona w realizację niemieckiej polityki eksploatacji ekonomicznej. Podobne warunki panowały na pozostałych terenach okupowanej Polski. Wprowadzony przez Niemców system rządów (z założenia zbrodniczy) zmierzał do całkowitego podporządkowania narodu polskiego. Jakiekolwiek przejawy życia narodowego były zabronione, a kontroli podlegały wszystkie aspekty aktywności obywateli. Ostrze represji skierowane było w stronę osób wspomagających organizacje niepodległościowe oraz podejmujących działania pomocowe dla ludności żydowskiej. W niemieckich akcjach pacyfikacyjnych Polacy ginęli nierzadko bez względu na wiek i płeć. Niemcy, dopuszczając się wielu brutalnych zbrodni z ludobójstwem włącznie, łamali zapisy międzynarodowych konwencji.
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Konec druhé světové války byl spojen s mnoha očekáváními. Židovští obyvatelé Protektorátu Čechy a Morava, kterým se podařilo dožít osvobození, byli vděční za své přežití. Radost ze záchrany života však mnohým zatemňovala obava o osud blízkých. Řada přeživších zůstala po válce sama, z rozvětvených rodin zbyly jen pahýly, ukotvení v lidském společenství se změnilo v izolaci plynoucí z nemožnosti sdílet a překonat traumata otřesné válečné zkušenosti a jejích důsledků. I návrat do života tak pro ně byl nesmírně těžký a ne každý pokus se podařil. Na vlastní kůži to poznali i členové dvou rodin, jejichž životy se během války propojily, Neugeborenovi a Fischerovi.
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