scholarly journals Dla kogo i o czym? Muzeum Polin, historiografia Żydów a Żydzi jako „sprawa polska" [For whom and about what? The Polin Museum, Jewish historiography and Jews as a “Polish cause”]

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamil Kijek
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
Pol I ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Anti Jewish

For whom and about what? The Polin Museum, Jewish historiography and Jews as a “Polish cause”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 teleological 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 subjectivity. 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. Dla kogo i o czym? Muzeum Polin, historiografia Żydów a Żydzi jako „sprawa polska”Artykuł ten przedstawia najważniejsze wątki krytycznej debaty wokół treści wystawy stałej Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Polin. Analizując różnice między dwoma polami badawczymi – studiami żydowskimi i studiami nad relacjami polsko-żydowskimi – autor broni tezy, że wiele krytycznych głosów w debacie wynika z niezrozumienia różnic między przedmiotem badań tych dwóch pól, po części wynikającego z obecnej sytuacji – panującego nacjonalizmu i etnocentryzmu, wywierających wpływ również na polskie debaty historyczne. Domaganie się od wystawy opowiadającej tysiącletnią historię Żydów na ziemiach polskich, aby koncentrowała się głównie na stosunku społeczeństwa większościowego do Żydów, grozi popełnieniem błędu teleologii, to jest interpretowaniem wcześniejszych wydarzeń i procesów jako nieuchronnie prowadzących do Zagłady, a także pomijaniem wszystkich tych elementów dziejów żydowskich, które z perspektywy Holokaustu i badań nad antysemityzmem nie mają znaczenia. Tego rodzaju postulaty i stojące za nimi metahistoryczne założenia grożą pozbawieniem Żydów roli podmiotów w ich własnej historii. Z drugiej strony autor tekstu wskazuje na elementy narracji wystawy stałej Muzeum Polin, w których rzeczywiście w niedostateczny sposób uwzględniona została problematyka antysemityzmu jako ważnego elementu żydowskiego doświadczenia i kluczowego czynnika dziejów Żydów w Polsce. Przywrócenie rzeczywistego dialogu i komunikacji pomiędzy przedstawicielami studiów żydowskich i badaczami relacji polsko-żydowskich, przy zachowaniu autonomii tych dwóch pól i zrozumieniu różnic pomiędzy nimi, jest też istotne z punktu widzenia niewątpliwych zagrożeń w postaci prób wykorzystania Muzeum Polin w budowie upolitycznionych, bezkrytycznych wizji historii Polski i stosunku Polaków do Żydów.

Randolph L. Braham, editor. Perspectives on the Holocaust. The Hungarian Jewish Catastrophe. A Selected and Annotated Bibliography. (Holocaust Studies Series.) New York: City University of New York. 1984. Pp. 501.

2004 ◽  
pp. 389-391
Author(s):  
Stephen Roth
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Annotated Bibliography ◽  
Holocaust Studies ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Surprising Fact

This chapter describes Perspectives on the Holocaust (1984), which was edited by Randolph L. Braham. Probably the most unknown and unexplored part of Jewish history is the story of Hungarian Jewry. Its language, bearing no similarity to any other living language, is an impenetrable mystery for the foreigner. Hungarian Jews themselves have not been very assiduous in recording the history of their tribe – a quite surprising fact considering the notable achievements of Hungarian Jews in so many branches of science, scholarship and literature. Moreover, the little that exists of Hungarian Jewish historiography is sadly antiquated. There are, of course, numerous monographic works on specific periods or issues but the general history of Hungarian Jewry remains still to be written. In these circumstances, any book that could facilitate the filling of the historiographical gap is particularly welcome, and Braham's bibliography, which is the second edition of a small version of 1962, falls into this category. Unfortunately, it is limited to the period of the Holocaust, its immediate background and the aftermath.

scholarly journals Joyce’s “Nameless” Hero and Hungarian Jewish Experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-69
Author(s):  
Márta Goldmann
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Town

Abstract The essay considers the background of James Joyce’s “nameless” hero, Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, from the point of view of his Hungarian Jewish ancestry: his family history in the Western Hungarian town of Szombathely and the Jewish history of his town. It shows how a certain reading of the “Circe” and “Cyclops” episodes of Ulysses reveals them in hindsight as anticipating the nightmarish future of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. This reading is enabled when taking account of the strong parallels that run between the crisis of progress in human history that Ulysses addresses and the idea of history in Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History of 1940. 1882, the year of Joyce’s birth, was a turning point, if not actually a new beginning, in the long history of anti-Semitic feelings in Hungary. There was a blood libel case in the town of Tiszaeszlár in Eastern Hungary that year. More widely-known and central to the story of modern anti-Semitism in Central Europe was the holding of the first International Anti-Jewish Congress in Dresden in 1882. A local politician from Szombathely, called Győző Istóczy, is linked to both of these events, Szombathely being the town from which Leopold Bloom’s family originates in Ulysses. By unfolding some of the oblique references hidden in the novel to the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and revealing the background of the invented Bloom (Virág) family, the essay shows what tragic fate awaited the real-life Jewish families to which they allude and what would have happened to the Joycean “nameless” hero had he remained in Szombathely.

Anti-Semitism Research

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Benz
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish

Anti-Semitism refers to all anti-Jewish statements, tendencies, resentments, attitudes, and actions, regardless of whether they are religiously, racially, socially, or otherwise motivated. Ever since the experience of National Socialist ideology and dictatorship, anti-Semitism has been understood as a social phenomena which serves as a paradigm for the formation of prejudices and the political exploitation of the hostilities that ensue from them. As prejudice research, it is primarily interested in the behaviour and attitudes of different majority societies, and strictly speaking, it does not even require knowledge of the discriminated minority. This article claims that anti-Semitism research and Jewish studies are not interconnected, nor dependent on one another. However, the history of Jews, their interaction with non-Jewish majority societies, their persecution and extermination, serves anti-Semitism research as a paradigm.

scholarly journals Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN [Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews]

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Konrad Matyjaszek
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Design Structure ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Post War

Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish JewsOpened in 2013, the Warsaw-based POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is situated in the center of the former Nazi Warsaw ghetto, which was destroyed during its liquidation in 1943. The museum is also located opposite to the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and Martyrs, built in 1948, as well as in between of the area of the former 19th-century Jewish district, and of the post-war modernist residential district of Muranów, designed as a district-memorial of the destroyed ghetto. Constructed on such site, the Museum was however narrated as a “museum of life”, telling the “thousand-year old history” of Polish Jews, and not focused directly on the history of the Holocaust or the history of Polish antisemitism.The paper offers a critical analysis of the curatorial and architectural strategies assumed by the Museum’s designers in the process of employing the urban location of the Museum in the narratives communicated by the building and its main exhibition. In this analysis, two key architectural interiors are examined in detail in terms of their correspondence with the context of the site: the Museum’s entrance lobby and the space of the “Jewish street,” incorporated into the main exhibition’s sub-galleries presenting the interwar period of Polish-Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust. The analysis of the design structure of these two interiors allows to raise a research question about physical and symbolic role of the material substance of the destroyed ghetto in construction of a historical narrative that is separated from the history of the destruction, as well as one about the designers’ responsibilities arising from the decision to present a given history on the physical site where it took place.Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLINOtwarte w 2013 roku warszawskie Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN stanęło pośrodku terenu dawnego nazistowskiego getta warszawskiego, zburzonego podczas jego likwidacji w 1943 roku, naprzeciwko powstałego w roku 1948 Pomnika Bohaterów i Męczenników Getta; jednocześnie pośrodku obszaru dawnej, dziewiętnastowiecznej warszawskiej dzielnicy żydowskiej i powojennego modernistycznego osied­la Muranów, zaplanowanego jako osiedle-pomnik zburzonego getta. Zlokalizowane w takim miejscu Muzeum przedstawia się jako „muzeum życia”, opowiadające „tysiącletnią historię” polskich Żydów, niebędące insty­tucją skoncentrowaną na historii Zagłady Żydów i historii polskiego antysemityzmu.Artykuł zawiera krytyczną analizę kuratorskich i architektonicznych strategii przyjętych przez twórców Mu­zeum w procesie umieszczania środowiska miejskiego w roli elementu narracji historycznej, komunikowanej przez budynek Muzeum i przez jego wystawę główną. Szczegółowej analizie poddawane są dwa kluczowe dla projektu Muzeum wnętrza architektoniczne: główny hall wejściowy oraz przestrzeń „żydowskiej ulicy” stanowiąca fragment dwóch galerii wystawy głównej, poświęconych historii Żydów w Polsce międzywojen­nej oraz historii Zagłady. Analiza struktury projektowej tych dwóch wnętrz służy próbie sformułowania od­powiedzi na pytanie badawcze dotyczące właściwości fizyczno-symbolicznych materialnej substancji znisz­czonego getta w odniesieniu do narracji abstrahującej od historii jego zniszczenia oraz odpowiedzialności projektantów wynikającej z decyzji o umieszczeniu narracji historycznej w fizycznej przestrzeni, w której wydarzyła się historia będąca tej narracji przedmiotem.

The Three Horseman of the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism, East European Empire, Aryan Folk Community

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
East European ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Conscious Choice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish

This article traces the three main issues which dominated Hitler's regime in Germany during the Holocaust. Two interpretive traditions have, since Hitler's day, commanded scholarly efforts to understand the Holocaust. One emphasizes ideas, recounting the intellectual history of anti-Semitism and the aims and political actions of those gripped by its poisoned talons. Paired with this approach is the conviction that history is made by human beings' conscious choice: beliefs inspire purposive behaviour seeking their realization. Historical actors are aware of their actions and responsible for them. In Holocaust historiography, this widespread understanding of history and human behaviour has yielded the ‘intentionalist’ argument. This holds that anti-Semitic ideology of a uniquely aggressive type flourished in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Germany; and the anti-Jewish policies (Judenpolitik) of Hitler's ‘Third Reich’ led, if perhaps by a ‘twisted path’, to a mass murder which the Nazis' anti-Semitic ideas, and the dictator Hitler's in particular, authorized and even commanded.

scholarly journals Exhibiting Galicia: Problems of Interpretation and Other Reflections on the Permanent Exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 105-126
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Critical Comment ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opening Section ◽  
Jewish Museum

The purpose of this article is to offer a critical comment on the permanent exhibition of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków. The exhibition is innovative in museological terms. It is not about the Jewish history of Galicia, nor is it arranged using conventional chronology, nor is it comprehensive. Rather it is divided into five sections, based on a five-part set of ideas, simple ideas intended to help visitors make sense of the complex realities surrounding the present-day situation of the Jewish heritage seventy-five years after the Holocaust. Let me now briefly outline how these five ideas are represented museologically, the five sections in which the exhibition is organized. The opening section directly presents the popular Jewish stereotype that post-Holocaust Poland is nothing but a vast Jewish graveyard. So this section of the exhibition consists entirely of the raw, shocking sight of desolation – for example, photos of ruined synagogues or ruined Jewish cemeteries. The 23 photos on show in this section include the appalling condition of the synagogue in Stary Dzików (a small town near the Ukrainian border) as it looked in the 1990s and of the devastated Jewish cemetery in Czarny Dunajec (a small town near the Slovak border) at that time. Emphasizing what has been lost by showing the Jewish past of Poland in ruins, and how in that sense the effects of the Holocaust on the built Jewish heritage are still visible, even today, is certainly a powerful and provocative way to begin an exhibition in a Jewish museum.

Christians and Jews-Some Positive Images

1986 ◽  
Vol 79 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 236-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Saperstein
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
Positive Images

The dean of contemporary Jewish historians, S. W. Baron, has shown that many modern conceptions of Jewish experience in medieval Christian Europe suffer from a fundamental distortion. Writing history was not a natural vocation for medieval Jews; most Jewish historiography was inspired by calamities that generated the impulse to record and, if possible, to explain. Therefore, most medieval Jewish chronicles are little more than accounts of the massacres and attacks suffered by various communities at different times. The tendency to assume that these historiographical sources present a full picture of reality resulted in what Baron called the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history,” viewing medieval Jewish experience as essentially a succession of tragedies in a vale of tears.

scholarly journals ‘Non-Remembering’ the Holocaust in Hungary and Poland

2019 ◽  
pp. 471-480
Author(s):  
Andrea Pető
Keyword(s):  
Active Participation ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish

HUNGARY, as an ally of Nazi Germany, introduced anti-Jewish legislation from 1938 but managed to avoid the deportation of Jews from its post-Trianon territory until the German occupation of the whole country on 19 March 1944. The deportation of 430,000 Jews from Hungary was the quickest in the history of the Holocaust, taking less than two months with the active participation of Hungarian civil servants. Miklós Horthy, who governed the country with an iron fist from 1919, initiated discussions with the Allied forces over a separate armistice, but that did not remain unnoticed by the Germans who installed the fascist Arrow Cross party as a collaborationist government on 15 October 1944. The final days of Hungary, following the pattern of the Italian Social Republic, had started....

scholarly journals Gustav Meyrink’s 'Golem' and Leo Perutz’s 'Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke': A literary expression of the Jewish experience during the twentieth century

SURG Journal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-45
Author(s):  
Caitlin Vito
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Authority Figures

Gustav Meyrink’s novel Der Golem [The Golem], published in 1915, and Leo Perutz’s 1953 novel Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke [By Night under the Stone Bridge] communicate the authors’ image of the Jewish experience and treatment during the period of the twentieth century. Uncanny and fantastical elements are used throughout both texts to help portray the Jewish condition. Meyrink conveys the animosity between nationalistic Jews and middle-class assimilated Jews and highlights the rising anti-Semitism among Gentiles by associating Jews with the decay and corruption of modernity. At the same time, however, Jews are also depicted as a model of higher spirituality. Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke places the Holocaust within the greater context of Jewish history and conveys Perutz’s assessment that the tragedy of the Holocaust is one in a series of devastating events which have plagued the Jewish people. Moreover, the text casts doubt on the benevolence of Jewish and non-Jewish authority figures and even the mercifulness of God. The doubt raised in the novel regarding central Jewish beliefs mirrors the Jewish experience of disorientation and confusion following the horrors of the Holocaust. Perutz also conveys the need for Jewish history to be passed down to future generations as it is their past which helps form their Jewish identity. Keywords: Der Golem [The Golem] (Meyrink, Gustav); Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke [By Night under the Stone Bridge] (Perutz, Leo); Jewish experience (portrayal of); twentieth century; uncanny and fantastical literature; literary interpretation

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