Product Description

Poland today is a very different country from the Poland of the past, yet attitudes inherited from the past continue to affect Polish-Jewish relations in the present. In Poland itself, now a free society, memories of the Jewish place in Poland's history, long suppressed by communism, are being re-evaluated. In America the attitudes that had divided the two sides in the Old Country seemed for a long time to be becoming more entrenched. This volume-probably the first comprehensive study of Polish-Jewish relations in North America-explores how this situation came about, and also considers the efforts being made to put the resentments caused by past conflicts to one side as the influences long dominant in the Polish-Jewish relationship in North America begin to lose their formative power. The contributors deal boldly with matters at the heart of the relationship. There is an attempt to quantify the attitudes of both sides to a number of key aspects of the Holocaust, and fascinating questions are raised about how the Holocaust has distorted the perceptions that Poles and Jews have of each other, and why the Holocaust remains a problem in Polish-Jewish relations. Stereotyping is confronted head-on. There is an investigation of how crude stereotypes of Polish peasants have found their way into Jewish history textbooks, crucially affecting the disposition of American Jews towards Poland, and of how the stereotyped world of the shtetl still haunts the American Jewish imagination, with great consequences for attitudes to Poles and Polish Americans. The way in which this stereotype is challenged by realities encountered in the context of the March of the Living is provocatively discussed, along with the options for dealing with a landscape 'poor in Jews, but rich in Jewish ruins'. A number of chapters describe attempts to overcome mutual stereotyping, including a detailed and valuable account of the National Polish American-Jewish American Council, and of the attempts that have been made to steer the Jedwabne debate in a constructive direction. These small beginnings show that it is possible to go beyond past differences and to concentrate instead on what has linked Poles and Jews in their long history. As in earlier volumes of Polin, substantial space is given, in 'New Views', to recent research in other areas of Polish-Jewish studies. CONTRIBUTORS Karen Auerbach, Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski, Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Alina Cala, Robert Cherry, Toby W. Clyman, David Engel, Danusha V. Goska, Andrzej Kapiszewski, Jonathan Krasner, Sarunas Liekis, Karen Majewski, Ewa Morawska, David Patterson, Gunnar S. Paulsson, John T. Pawlikowski, Antony Polonsky, Tomasz Potworowski, Laura Quercioli Mincer, John Radzilowski, Anna Petrov Ronell, Rona Sheramy, Daniel Stone, Adam Teller, Jerzy Tomaszewski, Carla Tonini, Maja Trochimczyk, Stephen J. Whitfield, Marek Wierzbicki

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1092422 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 653 pages

Review
'In the last fifteen years serious academic research into Polish-Jewish history has emerged as a burgeoning field at Polish universities. Indeed, Polin has played a major role in disseminating this research among an international audience ... This volume brings together a number of very specific and more general essays, written by leading representatives of both fields, and from both perspectives. These articles point to a new and promising research sub-discipline in American ethnic history.' Tobias Brinkmann, Journal of Jewish Studies 'Polin has long been a journal commanding attention and respect. This volume demonstrates that it sets the agenda for scholars of Polish-Jewish studies, contributes to the ongoing dialogue on the history of Polish-Jewish relations, and helps to understand how our relationships with members from each group might improve as a result of greater knowledge ... Apparent throughout the volume is the immensely valuable service the editors provide to the scholarly community by including views on current happenings.' Sean Martin, Polish Review 'Polin has for more than two decades defined the field of Polish-Jewish studies. Volume Nineteen continues that tradition by opening up the area of Polish-Jewish relations in North America ... The introductory articles by the editors stands as a model of its kind. It not only introduces the articles in the collection and ties them together, but also stands as one of the best contributions in the volume for its incisive weaving of the Polish and Jewish stories in North America ... This volume, like its predecessors, belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in Polish-Jewish relations.' Thaddeus C. Radzilowski, Shofar

About the Author
Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski holds the S. A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish History at Central Connecticut State University, and is the author of many books including The History of Poland; Ideology, Politics and Diplomacy in East Central Europe; Polish Democratic Thought; and Poland and Europe: Historical Dimensions. Antony Polonsky is holder of the Albert Abramson Chair of Holocaust Studies, a joint appointment held in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, and has been editor-in-chief of Polin since its inception.

Customer Reviews

Detailed Volume Documents Polonophobia, Zydokomuna, etc.
My review necessarily focuses on only a few papers in this large volume. As a lifelong Chicagoan, I appreciate Dr. John Radzilowski's work on Polish-Jewish relations in 1900-1930 Chicago.

Anti-Polonism is very old. Jonathan Krasner notes: "American Jewish textbook writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century took a dim view of Poles and other east European peoples." (p. 231)

Danusha V. Goska provides a detailed, hard-hitting analysis of Polonophobic stereotypes cultivated in American folk and popular narratives. She provides example after example of the same, and identifies the archetypical "dumb Polack anti-Semite" Bieganski (in SOPHIE'S CHOICE) as the Polish equivalent of Sambo and Shylock (p. 207).

Dr. Robert Cherry breaks new ground in his expanded survey of university academics and their perception of Poles. For the first time, Jewish behaviors (Jewish separatism in pre-WWII Poland, Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poles (Zydokomuna), Jewish particularism relative to genocide) are included within the survey (pp. 342-343).

Cherry, a Jew, also repudiates common Polonophobic notions: "Unlike many other occupied countries, Polish police and paramilitary organizations were not involved in rounding up Jews to be placed in ghettos or on trains headed for extermination camps. Catholic Poles were virtually never guards at concentration or labour camps. Thus, the idea the Poles were active accomplices in the destruction of Polish Jewry is unfounded." (p. 340)

The late Stanislaus A. Blejwas traced the course of Polish-Jewish dialogue, citing the numerous eruptions of Polonophobia during this time. Unfortunately, he failed to mention MAUS, which continues to be used in the American classroom to this day, and its false portrayal of Poles as well-fed pigs under the German occupation.

Ironic to Polish Cardinal August Hlond's much-maligned 1936 statement about Jews being freethinkers, Stephen J. Whitfield says much the same: "Peculiarly an ethnic as well as religious minority, Jews are `a certain people'. But many are far from certain about the validity of their own faith and are hardly animated by ancient verities and biblical certitudes. They have felt safer when the wall [of separation of church and state in the US] is high." (p. 294).

John T. Pawlikowski continues his insistence that the term Holocaust be reserved exclusively for Jews, which doesn't slight Polish sufferings (p. 424). Whom is he kidding? A nation identifies what it esteems through special naming and atypical attention. How can the inordinate attention paid to the Jewish genocide, to which a special name is devoted, possibly fail to convey the notion that it is supreme, and that all other genocides are second-rate?

Marek Wierzbicki analyses the early-WWII Zydokomuna in Wilno (Vilnius), citing many Polish and Jewish eyewitnesses, and refutes the contention that it was marginal: "It was not only the communist Jews and their sympathizers who greeted the Red Army enthusiastically, but also members of Jewish organizations without any communist connections, as well as Jews not associated with any organization at all." (pp. 489-490). "According to Dr. Szlomo Katz, a Jewish communist who served in it in 1939, at least 80 per cent of the [Vilna Workers'] Guard was Jewish." (p. 493).

Gunnar S. Paulsson's treatment of Jedwabne is incomplete and outdated. The preponderance of evidence demonstrates that Germans, along with a few mostly-coerced Poles, were the actual killers of Jedwabne's Jews (see Peczkis review of The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After).