Full Description
In the period between the two world wars, Poland's Jewish community was second only in size to that of the United States, and was the laboratory in which the ideological orientations which dominated the Jewish world - Zionism, Bundism, Neo-Orthodoxy, Assimilation - were tested. There has been much disagreement as to the character and strength of anitsemitism in Poland at that time, and the extent to which the experience of the Jews aided the Nazis in carrying out their genocidal plans. This latest volume of Polin includes contributions from Poland, western Europe, Israel, and North America, which together provide a clearer understanding of the issues which have in the past proved so divisive. It also includes a number of personal testimonies from people who experienced the interwar period at first hand. The result is a book that will be essential reading for all those interested in modern Jewish history and in the problems of ethnic minorities in post-Versailles Europe.
Contents
Part 1 Jews in independent Poland, 1918-1939Polish Jewry in the interwar period, Ezra Mendelsohn; Britain, a British Jew, and Jewish relations with the new Poland - the making of the Polish minorities treaty of 1919, Mark Levene; the social consciousness of young Jews in interwar Poland, Alina Cala; Polish-Jewish relations as reflected in memoirs of the interwar period, Szyja Bronsztejn; Shtetl communities - another image, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska; the civil rights of Jews in Poland, 1918-1939, Jerzy Tomaszewski; the Jewish question in Polish religious periodicals in the second republio - the case of the Przeglad Katolicki, Franciszek Adamski; the image of the Jew in the Catholic press during the second republic, Anna Landau-Czajka; the Jewish press in the political life of the second republic, Andrzej Paczowski; Polish political parties and antisemitism, Jerzy Holzer; the Polish Kehillah elections of 1936 - a revolution re-examined, Robert Moses Shapiro; Jewish artisans, Zbigniew Landau; some aspects of the life of the Jewish proletariat in Poland during the interwar period, B. Garncarska-Kadary; the expulsion of Polish Jews from the third Reich in 1938, Karol Jonca; the Jewish boycott campaign against Nazi Germany and its culmination in the Halbersztadt trial, Alfred Wislicki; what shall we tell Miriam? a tale for the peasant, Rafael F. Scharf; Polyn - land of sages and tsadikim, Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk. Part 2 Review essays: why did assimilation fail in the kingdom of Poland between 1864 and 1897?, Stanislaus A. Blejwas; in the shadow of the facts, Dariusz Stola; readings and misreadings - a reply to Dariusz Stola, David Engel.NER(01): GB
