Polish Literature in Israel. A Reconnaissance (original) (raw)

Polish literature has accompanied the rise and development of the state of Israel since its very beginnings. However, today, after nearly seventy years since its establishing in1948 and after nearly fifty years since the last Aliyah of Polish Jews in March 1968, this chapter has been slowly closing. Polish literary life in Israel has been fading away-there are no more newspapers, weeklies, quarterlies, or other cultural or literary magazines in the Polish language; there are no more Polish publishing houses, bookstores or libraries; only few actually read in Polish; and there are only a few authors writing in Polish-with the youngest of them (Viola Wein or Eli Barbur) being about seventy years old. 1 Thus, it seems the right moment to attempt to offer a first historical and literary recapitulation of this seventy-year long chapter of the history of the Polish culture; the chapter unlimited to either home or emigration literature.