CATEGORICALLY JEWISH DISTINCTLY POLISH: THE MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF POLISH JEWS ND THE NEW POLISH-JEWISH METAHISTORY (original) (raw)

Modern Syntheses of Jewish History in Poland: A Review

Studia Judaica, 2016

became an ethnically homogeneous state. National minorities remained beyond the newly-moved eastern border, and were largely exterminated, forcefully removed, or relocated and scattered throughout the so-called Recovered Territories (Polish: Ziemie Odzys kane). The new authorities installed in Poland took care to ensure that the memory of such minorities also disappeared. The Jews were no exception. Nearly two generations of young Poles knew nothing about them, and elder Poles generally avoided the topic. But the situation changed with the disintegration of the authoritarian system of government in Poland, as the intellectual and informational void created by censorship and political pressure quickly filled up. Starting from the mid-1980s, more and more Poles became interested in the history of Jews, and the number of publications on the subject increased dramatically. Alongside the US and Israel, Poland is one of the most important places for research on Jewish history.

For whom and about what? The Polin Museum, Jewish historiography, and Jews as a “Polish cause”

Studia Litteraria Historica, no. 6 (2017), 2017

The article presents main threads of the ongoing debate around the permanent exhibition of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Analyzing differences between two fields of research, Jewish studies and studies on Polish-Jewish relations, the article makes the case that many of the critical voices in this debate stem from a lack of understanding of the differences between these two fields of research ; these in their turn arise from the current state of affairs in Poland, and the pressure of nationalism and ethnocentrism, exerted also on Polish historical debates. If the telling of the 1,000 years of the history of Jewish life in Poland were to concentrate on the attitudes of the majority population towards Jews, as the critics seem to suggest should be the case, the Museum's narrative would run the risk of falling into a tele-ological fallacy, whereby all previous events and processes are interpreted as mechanically leading to the Holocaust, and of omitting all of these elements of Jewish history which are not relevant from the perspective of the Holocaust and of antisemitism studies. Making anti-Jewish hatred or the attitudes of the general majority towards Jews into the central axis of Jewish history could deprive Jews of their own historical sub-jectivity. At the same time, the article points out where and how the narrative of the Polin Museum indeed insufficiently includes the subject of antisemitism as an important factor of Jewish experience and of Jewish history in Poland. Renewing the dialogue between representatives of Jewish studies and Polish-Jewish relations studies is crucial from the standpoint of the current situation in Poland, in which the Polin Museum can be used by various actors in their attempts to build highly biased, politicized and uncritical versions of the history of Poland generally and of Polish attitudes towards the Jews specifically. This kind of understanding between the fields of Jewish studies and Polish-Jewish relations studies and their representatives' common struggle against such attempts require an understanding of the autonomy of and differences between these two fields of research.

New Directions in the History of the Jews in the Polish Lands

New Directions in the History of the Jews in the Polish Lands, 2018

The conference showed how much progress has been made in the last thirty years in illuminating the multi-faceted history of the Jews in the Polish lands. It demonstrated that there is now an international community spanning Poland, Israel, Eastern and Western Europe and North America devoted to examining this important topic. This community and the development of Polish-Jewish studies provided solid historiographic basis for the creation of the narrative core exhibition of the POLIN Museum. We are confident that this volume will have the widest possible circulation and will contribute to making better known the achievements of the Jews of the Polish lands and their complex and often fruitful coexistence with their neighbors.

There Is a Polish-Jewish History beyond the Holocaust

The Polish Review, 2021

Responding to the provocative question whether there is Polish history beyond the Holocaust, this article gives several reasons for an affirmative answer. First, if there is a history of Polish Jews beyond the Holocaust, and there is a lot, there is at least as much of a general history of Poland, of which the history of Polish Jews makes an integral part. Second, the history of the Holocaust, at least a good such history, requires the pre-Holocaust history of Jews and of their non-Jewish neighbors: we cannot understand their wartime choices without their prior experiences. Third, by the sheer numbers of Jews who had lived and were killed in Poland, often in sight of their non-Jewish neighbors, the Holocaust is part of the history of Poland more than of other countries. This observation aims not only to strengthen the second argument above, but to point at various consequences of the centuries-long geographic concentration of Jews in Poland and of its abrupt and horrible end.