Abstract: The Shoah belongs to one of the most thoroughly investigated aspects of modern European history. Scholars have used the Holocaust methodology to study other genocides, or forms of ethnic or political violence. Nevertheless, our understanding of the extermination of the European Jewry is limited, fragmented, and changes constantly due to new investigation methods, research interests, and public debates. The first studies on the Holocaust were conducted already during the Shoah but because of different reasons historians in some countries such as Germany and Ukraine did not pay much attention to them and concentrated rather on the documents left by the perpetrators and their fate during the war. While in Poland the research on the Holocaust never stopped, even if it was subjected to various political and ideological limitations, and the Shoah has been publicly debated since the middle of the 1980s, this was not the case in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Nevertheless, in the last two decades, the importance of the Holocaust was discovered in these countries as well and it is currently conceptualized in the framework of regional, national, and European history.
Abstract: This research contributes to the understanding of the process of reconstructing the memory of Jews in contemporary Poland. Focusing on a case study of a town in southern Poland, Mszana Dolna, the study analyses how Jewish/non-Jewish relations and the history of the Jews of the town are remembered by the current inhabitants of Mszana, as well as by Holocaust survivors and their families. The research is based on an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of memory, using in depth oral history interviews, archival and other written materials, as well as participant observation as sources of analysed data. The study concentrates on the memory of the life in Mszana before, during and after the war in terms of the coexistence of two communities, Jewish and non-Jewish ones. Focusing mainly on the annual commemoration of the shooting of the Jews of Mszana in August 1942 by non-Jewish members of the community and their participation in the educational programmes, the research elucidates the process of regaining the Jewish heritage of the town by non-Jewish inhabitants and incorporating it into the past of the community of Mszana. Identifying the variety of levels of interactions between Jews and non-Jews before the war, it argues that the interrupted coexistence of both groups in Mszana resulted in the void which remained after the destroyed Jewish community. The memory of Jews found its place in the oral history for several decades. Through examining the forms of remembrance of the Jews in Mszana, this study attempts to illustrate the transition of the memory of Jews from private sphere of life to the public discourse on the Jewish inheritance of the town.
Abstract: Travelogue – On the Contemporary Understandings of Citizenship among European Jews – title and subject of Theodor Barth’s thesis – encompasses six books with ethnography based on a multi-sited fieldwork, in Central- & Eastern European Jewish communities.
The books are concerned with aspects of their own conditions of production, from fieldwork research to writing, alongside the ethnographic subject of the Travelogue: the conditions of Jewish communities (mainly in cities of Central and Eastern Europe) in the last half of the 1990s (1995-99).
The books root the model experiments developed throughout the Travelogue in different ethnographic contexts.
Book 1 (Spanning the Fringes – Vagrancy to Prague) is a traveller’s tale with quite contingent, serendipitous, and very short-term trips to sample Jewish life in St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Warsaw, Kiev, Bucharest, Sofia, and Budapest.
Book 2 (The Minutes of the ECJC) is a commentary and analysis around a conference which the candidate attended in Prague in 1995 of the European Council of Jewish Communities (ECJC). It focuses on the political work and changing strategies of the ECJC. This book establishes some of the terms of the problems of community-Jews in Europe.
Book 3 (The Zagreb Almanach) is a description and analysis of the candidate’s stay with the Jewish community of Zagreb, focusing on a place, a green room, the community centre itself—this is the closest to a traditional site of community living in his ethnographic research.
Book 4 (The Books of Zagreb and Sarajevo) provides a contemporary and contextualized reading of a key Jewish ritual complex—the Passover Seder and its text, the Haggadah. This is a cultural object for systematic iteration and commentary, on which to articulate in depth a number of his insights gained more diffusely from observation. Among all the books, book 4 is the one intensive piece in which the textual analysis defines a process through which the candidate intends to sensitise the reader to how pattern can emerge from details.
Book 5 (Thirteen Kisses—a Manual of Survival From Sarajevo) relates a testimonial account of how the activist group La Benevolencija functioned in Sarajevo humanitarian relief during the Bosnian War of 1992-95. The candidate hopes to demonstrate a slow transition from wartime testimonials in the presence of an anthropologist, to recognition in the urban commonwealth in the aftermath of the war. He also invites the reader to consider the particularities of survivor testimonies and contrast these to how the war-zone was perceived from the outside.
Book 6 (The Account of the Lifeline) provides an understanding of a search and accountability model developed by La Benevolencija—in co-operation with the Joint—during the war in Bosnia (1992-95). It consolidates and expands the account of the Jews in Sarajevo and their humanitarian actions, through the candidate’s work on archives of the Joint (American Joint Distribution Committee) in Paris.
The six books of the Travelogue are rounded up in three concluding sections, containing 1) a synopsis of the findings across the books (Frames – Modeling Disordered Systems), 2) an account for the process of visual modeling throughout the books (Design – Choices and Aggregates), 3) a bibliographic presentation in which various sources influenced the conceptual choices and experiments that are made throughout the manuscript are discussed (Bibliography: Reflective Readings). In this way, the candidate hopes to retrace his steps from the findings, via the crafting of the volume back to the ranks of colleagues and readers.
Abstract: Overt state-sponsored antisemitism ended in Europe with the fall of the Soviet Union. Antisemitic attitudes, however, remain prevalent in Europe, and some European political actors have instrumentalized antisemitism for political gain. This report examines both the conscious use of antisemitism in European politics and the calculated tolerance of antisemitism, demonstrating that the oldest hatred remains a modern political tool.
Unlike antisemitic incidents of violence, vandalism, or insults, the political use of antisemitism does not target Jews themselves. Instead, antisemitic propaganda targets domestic or foreign audiences as a means of gaining political support. Demonstrating tolerance for antisemitism is another tactic of attracting political support. Polling data shows that these strategies have a rational basis. ADL’s 2019 Global 100 survey of antisemitic attitudes found that one in four Europeans polled harbored antisemitic beliefs.
Antisemitic propaganda has as its goal to energize and attract followers. Antisemitic propaganda is also used to tarnish political opponents in the eyes of a specific audience by intimating that someone is Jewish, supportive of Jewish causes or of the State of Israel. Other times, political opponents are slandered as antisemites or Nazis to diminish their reputations with specific audiences. Each of these techniques will be covered in this report, which focuses on the conscious choice of instrumentalizing or tolerating antisemitism for political gain. Antisemitic rhetoric by political actors as an indicator of bias is a much broader topic, and this report does not cover those instances.
The broad categories of the politicization of antisemitism include (1) politically motivated accusations of, or uses of, antisemitism against political opponents; (2) political appeals to antisemitic beliefs among the public, including the conspiracy theories about Jewish control of government, economy, media; and (3) tolerance of antisemitism within political movements as a strategy for increasing popular support. This list not exhaustive of the political instrumentalization of antisemitism, but this report provides illustrative examples from recent years in these broad categories.
Why is this report important? While violent antisemitic attacks receive wide publicity – and rightly so – the politicization of antisemitism can also severely impact Jewish communities. The British Jewish community provides a compelling example.
In January 2015, 11% of British Jews were considering emigrating, according to a poll by the UK’s Jewish Chronicle. That survey was conducted before Jeremy Corbyn, widely regarded within the British Jewish community as an antisemite himself, was even a leadership candidate for the Labour party. In September 2018, after antisemitism had become a serious problem in the Labour party under Corbyn, the Jewish Chronicle poll found that 39% of British Jews were considering emigrating. And in an October 2019 poll by the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council, just prior to the UK General Election, 47% of British Jews said they would “seriously consider” leaving the UK if Jeremy Corbyn were to win the election.
Had Jeremy Corbyn won, leading a major party widely recognized as tolerating antisemitism among its members, and had even 30% of British Jews emigrated as a result of that single event, that number of roughly 90,000 Jews would have been similar to the total of all the French Jews who left France over the past 20 years.
The sections below are select examples of the different ways in which antisemitism has been instrumentalized for political gain by various actors. The purposes and tactics vary substantially, but have the common element of politicizing antisemitism:
The Russian government instrumentalized antisemitism in the forms of propaganda and “false flag” operations to influence domestic and foreign public opinion in its conflict with Ukraine.
Polish political campaigns used overt antisemitic rhetoric during elections to win votes.
The Hungarian government used coded antisemitism in political campaigns against EU migration policies.
The UK Labour party consciously tolerated antisemitism to widen its political support from far-left radicals.
Ukrainian nationalists glorified World War II era fighters to promote nationalist narratives, while trivializing their involvement in the Holocaust.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party trivialized the Holocaust as part of their appeal to “Holocaust fatigue” among German voters.
Other political actors have engaged in similar acts of politicization, and their absence from this report is not indicative of any assessment. The cases below are simply the most blatant examples of the types of politicization to be highlighted.
Abstract: Agnieszka Graff’s piece was presented at the panel “Polish Jewish Women and Leadership: Then and Now” which took place in the scope of the Bet Debora conference in Wroclaw, September 1-4 2016. She chronicles how she arrived at understanding the ways in which feminism and Jewishness are interconnected. In the early days of her career as a feminist, Agnieszka Graff did not attribute much importance to the fact that she had a Jewish father and thus a Jewish name. When she returned to Poland after studying in the United States, she had begun identifying as a feminist but would not recognize that many other Polish feminists including her fellow campaigners Bożena Keff and Kazimiera Szczuka were also Jewish.
In 2005, the year that marked the first resurgence of nationalism in Poland since 1989, Graff realized that a number of the persons she had labelled as homphobic, conservative and mysogynistic in her first publication World Without Women (2001) were in fact also anti-semitic.
After several interviews with prominent second wave feminists and a visit to Israel in 2010, Agnieszka Graff came to the realization that Jewishness and gender were interlinked in complicated but undeniable ways, and she was alerted to the historical interconnectedness of anti-semitism and mysogyny that extended to Poland in the present day. She found the most profound correlation, however, to exist in Jewishness’ and feminism’s history of hate, oppression and fear.
Abstract: Poland presents the most advanced case of the transformation of the memory of Jews and the Holocaust in
all of postcommunist Europe. For that reason, it can serve as a paradigm in comparative studies of the
scope, dynamics, complexities, and challenges of this memory transformation.
The memory of Jews and the Holocaust in postcommunist Poland has persistently occupied a central stage
in public debate since 1989. At present, the more than twenty-year-old boom of the “theater” of Jewish
memory shows no sign of declining. This does not, however, mean that the archeology of the Polish
Jewish past has been completed and that a broad public consensus has been reached on how to remember
the Jews and the Holocaust, especially the dark uncomfortable past in Polish-Jewish relations showing
Christian (ethnic) Poles in a bad light.
One can differentiate three key dimensions in this landscape of memory: “remembering to remember,”
“remembering to benefit,” and “remembering to forget.” The first underscores the void left after the
genocide of Polish Jewry, and Polish-Jewish relations in all their aspects. In “remembering to benefit,” the
key intention behind the recalling of the Jews and the Holocaust is to achieve tangible goals. In
“remembering to forget,” the memory of Jews and the Holocaust is regarded as an awkward problem.
In Poland’s immediate future, these three modes of remembering Jews and the Holocaust will persist. This
landscape of memory will continue to resemble a film with a multiple array of scenes—many fascinating
and intellectually and morally uplifting, others confusing, hypocritical, intellectually dull, morally
despicable, and opportunistic.
Abstract: This thesis analyses three Central European countries – Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary - and their relations with Israel. I chose these three Central European countries because they share the same geopolitical space and historical experience. These three Central European countries and Israel are geographically distant, face different geopolitical threats, and have only a few policy issues in common. Nonetheless, ‘the question of Israel’ has been very much present in the foreign policies of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Building on constructivism and IR scholarship that engages with memory studies, this thesis explores the process of national identity re-formation and its impact on the formulation of national interest. Specifically, it focuses on: a) past legacies, institutionalized in collective memory and expressed in narratives, which linger over and constrain policy choices; b) the role of decision-makers with a special focus on their role in national identity re-formation in times when a policy is in transition and when a new regime must establish its legitimacy. I look at the historical roots of the relations of the three Central European countries with Israel. I do so by analysing the role of the Jewish question in the nation-building process of Polish, Czech, and Hungarian nations. Further, I argue that as the three former Communist countries started to re-define their relations with Israel, the legacy of the Jewish question has had a significant impact on the formulation of their foreign policies towards the Jewish state.
Abstract: Approximately one-third of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust were murdered in what Father Patrick Desbois has called the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ – mass shootings that largely took place across Eastern Europe in thousands of forests, villages, streets, and homes. In many instances, German perpetrators and their local collaborators eliminated entire communities in a matter of days or even hours.
And yet these Killing Sites remain relatively unknown, both in regional histories and in the larger remembrance of the Holocaust. With the passing of both survivors and witnesses, efforts are underway by a range of actors who are determined to locate and preserve these sites and to name their unidentified victims.
Recognizing the importance and urgency of this work, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) launched a Multi-Year Work Plan project on Killing Sites in 2011 to raise public awareness, offer support and expertise to diverse initiatives in this field, encourage further research, and pursue commemoration for educational purposes. As the first milestone of this plan, IHRA experts convened a major international conference on Killing Sites in Krakow on January 22–23, 2014.
As this volume reveals, the ambitious program brought together an impressive mix of organizations, scholars, and experts who examined a range of subjects, including the state of current research; promising pilot projects; complex national and religious legal issues; developments in forensic archaeology; and regional efforts to integrate Killing Sites into educational curricula, among others. Just as important, however, the Krakow conference highlighted the challenges that remain and the vital importance of the work that must still be done.
This publication includes nineteen articles based on the papers presented at the conference, reflecting both research and fieldwork. The participants in this book share with each other and with the reader the various challenges that they have faced, as well as their successes or lack thereof in overcoming obstacles. They tell of challenges of identifying mass Killing Sites; tracing the story of each site; legal, Halakhic (Jewish law), cultural, and political issues; efforts to involve local people and authorities as well as national authorities in the preservation and commemoration of these sites; conflicting memories that could lead to distorted commemoration, as discussed for example by Father Jacek Waligóra; or a desire to forget the events and the mass killings in some cases.
Abstract: Neighbors — Jan Gross’s stunning account of the brutal mass murder of the Jews of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbors — was met with international critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award in the United States. It has also been, from the moment of its publication, the occasion of intense controversy and painful reckoning. This book captures some of the most important voices in the ensuing debate, including those of residents of Jedwabne itself as well as those of journalists, intellectuals, politicians, Catholic clergy, and historians both within and well beyond Poland’s borders.
Antony Polonsky and Joanna Michlic introduce the debate, focusing particularly on how Neighbors rubbed against difficult old and new issues of Polish social memory and national identity. The editors then present a variety of Polish voices grappling with the role of the massacre and of Polish-Jewish relations in Polish history. They include samples of the various strategies used by Polish intellectuals and political elites as they have attempted to deal with their country’s dark past, to overcome the legacy of the Holocaust, and to respond to Gross’s book.
Abstract: From the Foreword:
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Education Research Project aims to provide an overview of empirical research on teaching and learning about the Holocaust (TLH) with a cross-cultural and multilingual perspective. The outcomes include transferring knowledge between various regions and countries, intensifying dialogue between scholars and educational decision makers and enhancing networking among researchers.
To fulfill these aims, in 2012 the IHRA established a Steering Committee and tasked a team of researchers with skills in a large range of languages. Early in the process, the decision was made to focus upon research which deals with deliberate efforts to educate about the Holocaust and to limit the search accordingly. This decision
meant there was a focus on both teaching and learning. The teaching focused on school settings – although there is also some explicit instruction at museums and sites of memory. Certainly, learning takes place in both school settings and museums/ sites of memory. This focus meant that some areas of scholarship are generally not
included in this collection. Firstly, non-empirical work, which is extensive and important, was beyond the scope of this research. Secondly, analyses of materials such as curricula, films, and textbooks were also beyond the scope.
The Education Research Project culminated in the publication of volume 3 of the IHRA book series Research in Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust: A Dialogue Beyond Borders, edited by Monique Eckmann, Doyle Stevick and Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs. The book is available in hard copy for purchase and as a free PDF download.
The second outcome is this set of eight bibliographies. These eight bibliographies comprise references to empirical research on teaching and learning about the Holocaust. They also include abstracts or summaries of most of publications. Each bibliography includes research from a single language or related group of languages
(both geographically related or linguistically related). The research team identified almost 400 studies resulting in roughly 640 publications in fifteen languages that are grouped in the following eight language sets:
German, Polish, French, the languages of the Nordic countries, Romance languages other than French (specifically Spanish, Portuguese and Italian), East-Slavic languages (Belarussian, Russian and Ukrainian), English and Hebrew.
The bibliographies presented here contain titles in the original language and translations in English, as well as abstracts in English that were either written by the original authors, written by the research team or its contributors (or translated into English by the team). This set of bibliographies provides a unique tool for researchers
and educators, allowing them to gain insight into educational research dealing with teaching and learning about the Holocaust, not only in their own language, but also in languages they are not familiar with. We hope that this publication and these abstracts will provide a tool that facilitates research across language borders and contributes to further exchange, discussion and cooperation between researchers and educators as well as the creation of international and cross-language networks.
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish Identity, Jewish Revival, Antisemitism, Jewish Culture, Jewish Heritage, Rabbis, Kashrut, Shechita / Ritual Slaughter, Jewish Organisations, Care and Welfare
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors: Children of, Jewish Community, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Post-Colonial, Post-War Reconstruction, Restitution and Reparations, Memory
Abstract: Książka jest wynikiem interdyscyplinarnych badań dwudziestu ośmiu autorów pracujących przez trzy lata systemem seminaryjnym pod kierownictwem Feliksa Tycha, autora projektu, oraz Moniki Adamczyk-Garbowskiej. Przedstawia próbę kompleksowego zbadania wpływu Holokaustu i okupacji niemieckiej na kondycję nielicznych - w porównaniu z przedwojenną liczbą - ocalałych Żydów polskich. Autorzy wprowadzają czytelnika w świat życia żydowskiego i stosunków polsko-żydowskich w powojennej Polsce od roku 1944 po pierwszą dekadę XXI wieku. Teksty zostały ułożone w czterech blokach tematycznych, które w znacznej mierze odpowiadają istotnym etapom życia żydowskiego w Polsce i jego postrzegania przez większość społeczeństwa, czyli kolejno latom szacowania strat, nadziei i odbudowy, okresowi tabuizacji, zacierania pamięci, wreszcie - sytuacji obecnej. Adresowana zarówno do specjalistów, jak i szerszego kręgu odbiorców książka ta może służyć jako źródło wiedzy, swoisty przewodnik, a także inspiracja do dalszych badań nad następstwami Zagłady w Polsce i w innych krajach. Jest to pierwsza zakrojona na tak szeroką skalę publikacja, która na przykładzie Polski - przed wojną największego skupiska Żydów w Europie i drugiego, po USA, na świecie - ukazuje wpływ Holokaustu na powojenną kondycję Żydów oraz całego społeczeństwa polskiego.
Feliks Tych, Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska Przedmowa 7
KRAJOBRAZ PO WOJNIE 13
Albert Stankowski, Piotr Weiser Demograficzne skutki Holokaustu 15
Alina Skibińska Powroty ocalałych i stosunek do nich społeczeństwa polskiego 39
Andrzej Żbikowski Morderstwa popełniane na Żydach w pierwszych latach po wojnie 71
Tamar Lewinsky Żydowscy uchodźcy i przesiedleńcy z Polski w okupowanych Niemczech 95
Ewa Koźmińska -Frejlak Kondycja ocalałych. Adaptacja do rzeczywistości powojennej (1944–1949) 123
August Grabski Żydzi a polskie życie polityczne (1944–1949) 157
PRÓBY ODBUDOWY ŻYCIA ŻYDOWSKIEGO 189
Grzegorz Berendt Życie od nowa. Instytucje i organizacje żydowskie (1944–1950) 191
August Grabski, Albert Stankowski Życie religijne społeczności żydowskiej 215
Helena Datner Dziecko żydowskie (1944–1968) 245
Joanna Nalewajko-Kuliko V, Magdalena Ruta Kultura jidysz po II wojnie światowej 283
Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Magdalena Ruta Literatura polska i jidysz wobec Zagłady 305
Renata Piątkowska Żydowskie życie artystyczne po Zagładzie 339
Grzegorz Berendt Wpływ liberalizacji politycznej roku 1956 na sytuację Żydów 359
Feliks Tych „Marzec’68”. Geneza, przebieg i skutki kampanii antysemickiej lat 1967/68 385
Edyta Gawron Powojenna emigracja Żydów z Polski. Przykład Krakowa 413
PAMIĘĆ I ZAPOMNIENIE 439
Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Adam Kopciowski Zamiast macewy. Żydowskie księgi pamięci 441
Eleonora Bergman , Jan Jagi elski Ślady obecności. Synagogi i cmentarze 471
Robert Kuwałek Obozy koncentracyjne i ośrodki zagłady jako miejsca pamięci 493
Sławomir Kapralski Od milczenia do „trudnej pamięci”. Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau i jego rola w dyskursie publicznym 527
Bożena Szaynok Kościół katolicki w Polsce wobec problematyki żydowskiej (1944–1989) 553
Małgorzata Melchior Zagłada w świadomości polskich Żydów 583
Hanna Węgrzynek Tematyka Zagłady w podręcznikach szkolnych (1945–2009) 597
Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs Świadomość Holokaustu wśród młodzieży polskiej po zmianach systemowych 1989 roku 625
TU I TERAZ 659
Helena Datner Współczesna społeczność żydowska w Polsce a Zagłada 661
Monika Krawczyk Status prawny własności żydowskiej i jego wpływ na stosunki polsko-żydowskie 687
Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Magdalena Ruta Od kultury żydowskiej do kultury o Żydach 715
Dariusz Libionka Debata wokół Jedwabnego 733
Joanna Tokarska-Bakir Następstwa Holokaustu w relacjach żydowskich i w pamięci polskiej prowincji w świetle badań etnograficznych 775
Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak Wdzięczność i zapomnienie. Polacy i Żydzi wobec Sprawiedliwych (1944–2007) 813
Antoni Sułek Zwykli Polacy patrzą na Żydów. Postawy społeczeństwa polskiego wobec Żydów w świetle badań sondażowych (1967–2008) 853
Informacje o autorach 889
Wykaz skrótów 895
Indeks 897
