Volume 27, No. 2 Gazeta Summer/Fall 2020 Interior of the restored synagogue in Łańcut, Poland, 2012. Photograph by David Kaufman. Used with permission.

A quarterly publication of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture Editorial & Design: Tressa Berman, Daniel Blokh, Fay Bussgang, Julian Bussgang, Shana Penn, Antony Polonsky, Aleksandra Sajdak, Adam Schorin, William Zeisel, LaserCom Design, and Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation.

CONTENTS Message from Irene Pipes ...... 4 Message from Tad Taube and Shana Penn ...... 5

FEATURE ARTICLES From Peoples into Nations John Connelly ...... 6 Here Is Muranów: POLIN Exhibition and Essay Collection ...... 10 Layers of Life, Layers of Memory Kamila Radecka-Mikulicz ...... 11 A Laboratory for a New City Beata Chomątowska ...... 14 Long Live the Jarden Jewish Bookshop! Erica Lehrer ...... 17

REPORTS Library of Ada Rapoport-Albert in Wrocław Wojciech Tworek and Marcin Wodziński ...... 20 Report from the Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation Adam Schorin ...... 22

EXHIBITIONS AND MUSEUMS Szancer, Imagine That! at Galicia Jewish Museum Jakub Nowakowski ...... 25 David Kaufman Photographs on Exhibit Julian and Fay Bussgang ...... 28 Kraków During the Pandemic. Photographs by Edyta Gawron ...... 30 YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum Launches ...... 31

ANNOUNCEMENTS BOOKS Bruno. Epoka Genialna (Bruno. The Age of Genius). By Anna Kaszuba- Dębska ...... 32 Ginczanka: Nie Upilnuje Mnie Nikt. (Ginczanka: No One Will Watch Over Me). By Izolda Kiec ...... 32 Bauman: A Biography. By Izabela Wagner ...... 33

2 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Ghost Citizens: Jewish Return to a Postwar City. By Łukasz Krzyżanowski ...... 33 Conscious History: Polish Jewish History Before the Holocaust. By Natalia Aleksiun ...... 34 Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800–1939. By Natan M. Meir ...... 34 Ben Katchor’s Dairy Kitchen and the Polish Milk Bar Adam Schorin ...... 35 CONFERENCES Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies ...... 37 Association for Jewish Studies ...... 37 IN BRIEF GEOP Announcements ...... 38 AWARDS Dariusz Stola Named 2020 Irena Sendler Memorial Award Recipient ...... 40 Polacos in Argentina Receives 2020 Best Book Award ...... 41 Documentary Filmmaker Roberta Grossman Receives Taube Jewish Peoplehood Award ...... 42

OF SPECIAL INTEREST Mississippi. A 1930s Play Finds New Relevance Alyssa Quint ...... 44 March of Remembrance: 77th Anniversary Commemoration of Treblinka Uprising Aleksandra Sajdak ...... 47 Szczepan Twardoch’s Król Adapted for Polish TV ...... 50

POEM “The Old Temple” (“Stara Bóżnica”) Julian Kornhauser ...... 51

OBITUARIES Ada Rapoport-Albert Marcin Wodziński ...... 52 Tadeusz Kuźmiński Courtesy of Jewish Heritage Europe ...... 54 Maria Janion Antony Polonsky ...... 55

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 3 President, American Association Message from for Polish-Jewish Studies

Irene Pipes Founder of Gazeta

Dear Members and Friends,

Greetings from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I am sitting out this unprecedented crisis. I hope you are comfortable and safe and that we shall soon be able to resume normal activities.

We are determined to carry on our important work. It is amazing how much one can do with podcasts and Zoom. We have been very impressed by the podcast series organized by the Global Education Outreach Program of the POLIN Museum in Warsaw, What’s New, What’s Next? Jewish Studies in the Time of Pandemic, which is intended lead up to the international conference “What’s Irene Pipes New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies,” scheduled to take place at the POLIN Museum in October 2021. Also impressive was TJHTalks, a series of virtual discussions organized by Taube Jewish Heritage Tours. One discussion featured Antony Polonsky in dialogue with Marcin Wodziński, and in another, “Creating Community: Jewish Recipes and Stories,” Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett led a conversation about Jewish foodways and the innovative cookbook The Community Table, produced by the Marlene Meyerson JCC in New York City.

Volume 33 of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry should be published by the end of the year. Among its editors was Ada Rapoport-Albert, who died shortly after the volume was submitted to the publishers, and to whom a moving tribute is to be found in this issue of Gazeta. The volume seeks to advance our understanding of all aspects of Jewish religiosity in the Polish lands, including the history of Hasidism, women’s history and the use of gender theory in the analysis of religious texts, and the religious life of the liberal segment of Eastern European Jewry. Other areas examined are the egalitarian aspects of religious life, including the vernacular religious beliefs and practices of ordinary people, the material history of Jewish religious life in Eastern Europe, and the recent shift of emphasis from theology to practice in the search for the defining quality of religious, especially mystical, experiences. We are hoping to organize a launch of the volume in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute in London in January 2021.

With best wishes,

Irene Pipes President

4 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Message from Chairman and Executive Director, Tad Taube and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life Shana Penn & Culture

The three feature articles in this issue of Gazeta inquire into history’s might-have-beens. They encourage us to ask questions about what would have happened if, for example, nationalism had played out differently in Poland and other East European nations, or if the Communist regime had not imposed a Stalinist model on the architects who designed the post-war Muranόw district of Warsaw.

Our first feature story draws from an important new book by John Connelly to ask why the history of Eastern Europe seems to run on its own unique track. Two more articles, by Kamila Radecka-Mikulicz and Tad Taube Beata Chomątowska, are both related to a new temporary exhibition at the POLIN Museum and discuss the reconstruction of Warsaw’s Muranόw district after World War II, including the government’s decision to scrap imaginative and historically sensitive rebuilding plans in favor of an approach inspired by socialist realist doctrine.

Yet not all might-have-beens result in a problematic ending, as Erica Lehrer shows in her account of organizing a successful fundraising campaign to save Krakόw’s Jarden Jewish bookstore from almost certain closure owing to the effects of the pandemic. She found the experience inspiring and affirming for the community – a ray of hope in a difficult time.

Shana Penn Similarly, we hope you find in this issue of Gazeta a glimmer of hope in trying times. Take a look at our new Poetry section and our Of Special Interest section. If you need cheering up, try the story about Szancer, Imagine That!, an exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum. It celebrates the work of Jan Marcin Szancer, an imaginative illustrator whose art has brought books to life for generations of Polish children and their families. His work shows that some things, like joy, transcend language and culture.

Tad Taube and Shana Penn Chairman and Executive Director

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 5 FEATURE ARTICLES From Peoples into Nations: A History John Connelly of Eastern Europe

Editors’ Note: This article 3. Both groups sensing that is excerpted from Professor their community’s fate Connelly’s book presentation was at the mercy of at the National History larger forces. Center, Washington, DC, July 28, 2020. Unusual in Eastern Europe is how this sensitivity, of being hy another book on small peoples subject to the WEastern Europe? My whims of larger peoples, is hope was to explain to readers reproduced across a band of what makes the region distinct, earth: Eastern Europe is a interesting, and instructive. series of Ulsters stretching In excellent recent work, the from the Baltic to the Adriatic. trend has been to say that Eastern Europe is a creation of A second question is why the outsiders, of Western travelers book is so long, especially if most of the historical action who “imagined” the region John Connelly’s book, released this in particular ways. Yet from year by Princeton University Press. occurred relatively recently, in my first visits in the 1970s, it the twentieth century’s age of struck me that East Europeans Earlier this year on sabbatical extremes, when wars, social themselves were imagining in Belfast, I discovered this movements, and political their identities in particular kind of sensitivity is not ideologies came to a focus ways. Above all, they seemed unique. Northern Ireland in Eastern Europe more than united by seismic sensitivity to shares three things with anywhere else. So why start history, feeling that events of Eastern Europe: the book in the 1780s? earlier times mattered in ways 1. Two ethnic groups living When I attempted to limit the I had not encountered. History in the same space that focus to the twentieth century, was akin to a personality that each considers their own; I soon found that the century might intervene in the life of did not make sense in terms one’s family, knocking at the 2. One of these groups of itself. The problem usually door, and becoming the guest portrayed as post-imperial related to nationalism. Why seated in the living room who (in Ulster those are the did the new nation states never leaves. “loyalists”); constructed as democracies

6 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 after World War I fail to work The problems of But at that time there were out? Why was Slovakia a Eastern Europe created no dictionaries and thus no problem for Czechoslovakia, or standard languages. The Croatia for Yugoslavia? Why after World War I most admired patriots were was Hungary so “irredentist”? were not inevitable. not military commanders, but linguists. But could the Why was there so little over national disappearance languages they made really regional cooperation? This had spawned movements first make peoples? The painful conundrum was impossible striving for cultural rights, then answers came after World to explain without looking for forms of political autonomy. further backward. The long War I, when later patriots introduction to the past century Eastern Europe is thus a inspired by this linguistic kept growing, from one long place of shifting boundaries nationalism created states chapter into ten. between empires—German, called Czechoslovakia and Russian, and Turkish—where Yugoslavia, unfortunately The 1780s form a starting generations of political failing to ask whether people point because it was then that classes have stoked a special living in these territories the Austrian monarch, Joseph fear: that their nations might felt themselves to be II, inadvertently awakened disappear from history, nations Czechoslovaks or Yugoslavs. nationalist anxieties among understood as peoples united in Which brings us to the “age Hungarians and Czechs by culture and a shared past, a past of extremes.” Three episodes attempting to make them supposedly with no beginning. use German as a language of stand out: 1918/19; 1933; 1945. administration and education. Germans have a special place What do we make of creation Petitions rained upon the court in the story because Germans and then breakdown of nation in Vienna. One Hungarian lived throughout the region, states? Was Eastern Europe a county evoked the fate of the and the region learned what breeding ground for fascism as Etruscan city of Veii: Like it was to be national from Paul Krugman and others have the Etruscans, the Magyars German thinkers. Here I claimed? Was Communism would disappear from history, think of the young Slovak an imposition on an unwilling becoming just another group theologians who imbibed region? In sum: are East of Central Europe’s German romantic nationalism at Europeans history’s victims? speakers. Joseph had “touched German universities in the The Habsburg monarchy some deep nerve,” yet was early nineteenth century was not “brought down” by insensitive to all pleas (see and brought ethno-cultural nationality problems. More Éva H. Balázs, Hungary and understandings of nationhood accurate is that its leaders the Habsburgs 1765–1800 back to their homelands. The became obsessed with [Budapest, 1997], 206-209). soul of a people, they had nationalism as an ideology, Within decades, the concern learned, was its language.

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 7 and took their state into war If Eastern Europe What about Communism? because they believed conflict seems home to strong Few East Europeans had between Teutons and Slavs was ethnic nationalisms wanted Soviet-style rule, inevitable. Still, without the that is because it’s a which was violently imposed highly unlikely assassination in region wedged between at the cost of tens of thousands Sarajevo of June 28, 1914, the of dead as well as deportees empires—empires that monarchy would have carried and political prisoners running on in some fashion. have threatened the into the millions. Many East coherence of ethnically Europeans justly considered Similarly, the problems of understood nations. themselves victims. Eastern Europe created after the war were not inevitable. Kerner projected new entities Yet the Soviets were thin on Given the erosion of the —like Czechoslovakia or the ground in postwar Eastern monarchical principle by Yugoslavia—not only as Europe, and it fell to locals to 1918, an order based on a good but also as necessary, implement the new system. new principle—national calling the Yugoslav people a Thus we find hundreds of self-determination—seemed “scientific fact.” thousands of accomplices, inevitable, but this new order effective self-Sovietizers, Still, fascism was a would have been sounder making Warsaw or Prague marginal force even after without the extraordinary resemble Moscow by 1955, the democracies declined, ignorance, idealism, and and producing a range of gaining mass popularity naiveté on the part of the national Communist regimes only in two places, Romania creators, above all the US adapted to local circumstances. and Hungary. The region delegation at Paris in 1919. produced remarkable Decades after the revolutions Only one person in President resistance to totalitarian rule. of 1989, we see that the Wilson’s fact-finding team In 1939 and 1941, Hitler tried foreign implants went very knew anything about the to gain elites in Poland and deep; Polish philosopher region where the new nation Yugoslavia for cooperation Józef Tischner spoke of Homo states would emerge. He against the USSR; yet leaders Sovieticus, a widespread was Robert J. Kerner, later in both places, with broad personality type among East a professor at UC Berkeley, support, said no. Hitler Europeans not willing to who happened to be a Chicago unleashed furious attacks take responsibility for their Czech and an enthusiast for upon these countries by own deeds, not able to think the ideas of T.G. Masaryk. land and air, but the damage independently, “always Rather than warn Wilson of was done: defiant Poles and ready to blame others, sickly the impossibility of drawing Yugoslavs had made his war suspicious, consumed by boundaries that would separate un-winnable. unhappiness.” Today’s the region’s nationalities,

8 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 populists reduce Cold War wedged between empires— contest. Why should they not political realities to “them” (the empires that have threatened be concerned about culture and Communists) pitted against the coherence of ethnically ethnicity; about poetry, songs, “us” (the virtuous people), but understood nations. But ethnic symbols, the deep and more Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, nationalism is alive and well proximate common stories or Roland Jahn, dissidents who elsewhere, for example Ulster, that hold a people together? paid for opposition with prison and we even find it in societies Nationalism was originally left sentences, say that everyone, characterized by “civic of center, and its causes—for including them, helped prop nationalism,” like the US or the liberation, for rights, against up Communism. In some way, UK, where populists promise fascism, for democracy—are the system involved everyone. to make “the people” great by no means conservative. And Former Solidarity activist again, “people,” understood as there is no other choice. Those Władysław Frasyniuk reminds the white working-class. who insist nations are fictions, us that Poland’s Premier figments of imaginations, How should opponents of those Mateusz Morawiecki, who will discover that for people populists respond? Eastern helps erode the independence taking part in this unavoidable Europe shows that human of Poland’s judiciary saying plebiscite they are not. n beings, like Slovak theologians, judges are “holdovers” from make nations. It also shows the past, is himself a creation To view Prof. Connelly’s talk that nations are not figments of of Communism: he “completed at the National History Center imaginations. Politics in fact is communist schools, studied in full, please visit: a field of struggle about what at a university of People’s https://www.youtube. the nation—the people—should Poland. In other words, he is com/watch?v=5MlJo_ be. Or to echo Renan, if the a communist bastard. And his YXupw&feature=youtu.be. nation is a plebiscite, there are children and grandchildren will choices on the ballot. Which be post-communist bastards. John Connelly, PhD, is nation does one celebrate: one We are a generation educated Professor of History at the that relies not upon fear but and shaped by the former University of California, upon inspiration, that is curious system: we now know that it Berkeley. He is author of about other nations rather than easier to win the freedom of From Enemy to Brother: hostile to them, that relies upon borders than to become free The Revolution in Catholic culture as a way to unite rather human beings.” Teaching on the Jews and than divide; that endeavors to of the newly released From Conclusion break down walls rather than Peoples to Nations: A History build them? If Eastern Europe seems home of Eastern Europe, Princeton University Press, 2020. to strong ethnic nationalisms, Clearly progressives have that is because it’s a region nothing to fear from this

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 9 Here Is Muranów: Rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto and Rapoport’s Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1948. A District That Grew Courtesy of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. Beyond the Rubble Exhibition at the POLIN Museum June 26, 2020–March 22, 2021

Editors’ Note: he following essays by TKamila Radecka-Mikulicz and Beata Chomątowska are excerpted here, with permission, from the exhibition catalogue, Here Is Muranów: A District That Grew Beyond the Rubble. Copies of the catalogue are available in e-book format via the museum’s website: https://www.polin.pl/en/here- is-muranow.

10 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Muranów: Layers of Life, Kamila Radecka- Layers of Memory Mikulicz

t’s so quiet, as if the whole of Muranów, those who settled universe has ceased to here after the war, appreciate “Iexist,” noted Mordechai Canin the peace and quiet of the dis- while wandering across ruined trict’s green courtyards. Muranów right after the war We use the name “Muranów” had ended. His words conjure fully aware of its incoherence up a massive, terrifying void, with the present administrative especially when juxtaposed nomenclature. For the sake of with the pre-war hustle and bus- the exhibition, we delineated tle of the district that was still Muranów’s borders along so fresh in people’s memory. the streets: Solidarności in Exhibition the south, Okopowa in the Cover of the exhibition catalogue. west, Stawki in the north The exhibition and accompa- Courtesy of the POLIN Museum of the and Miodowa in the east, nying catalogue are the POLIN History of Polish Jews. thus referring to its historic Museum’s first to focus on the through the squares and territory (e.g., as further historical context of the mu- courtyards of the district, exemplified in Małgorzata seum’s location. Muranów’s obliterating the sense of Karpińska’s contribution to genius loci is the point of depar- feeling at home, the cozy this catalogue, “The Residents ture for the exposition. Through daily existence, and drawing of Muranόw”). it, we reveal the multi-layered the local community— history of the district, from its against its will—into the The team working on the beginnings until the present day, political machinery. Today, exhibition sought to present including its architectural and the same steamroller could the history of the district existential complexity. Howev- wipe out another layer of the through the prism of the lives er, first and foremost, we tell the palimpsest, in order to make of its residents. Our goal was story of Muranów’s residents. space for a new one. to demonstrate their diversity and the various aspects of the The silence described by And yet, the silence can some- district’s history. We made Canin is ominous and times be comforting as well. sure to include the herstoric brooding. It symbolizes I. B. Singer wrote about the threads, such as the women the irresistible force of a peaceful pre-war Nalewki Street involved in raising post-war history steamroller that swept on a holy day. Today’s residents

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 11 Muranów, or contemporary Today it is a cozy the ground. The district was female activists; to keep the residential district for rebuilt after the war and balance in presenting stories settled by people from all of both famous residents some; for others, it is a over Warsaw and Poland (the and “common people”; and place they visit in order third period: 1945–89). Today to include the memoirs of to commemorate their (the fourth period: post-1989) children and youth in the Muranów is a home to various exhibition narrative. murdered relatives. groups, communities, and milieus, to non-governmental From the curatorial viewpoint, due to the fact that it touches organizations and the tale of Muranów’s upon universal issues such as foundations, and to people most vital element was to social change, losing a home, coming from the most remote demonstrate its different migration, urban utopias, post- corners of the globe. layers in such a way that the war building industry, and, audience’s attention would finally, the question of a local Topography be drawn in equal measure to community, civic activism, After the war, many streets in each layer and to each historic and the nature of cities. Muranów changed course, and period, as well as to the houses were rebuilt in different people inhabiting it. We also Palimpsest locations (or not at all), so wanted to focus on aspects Palimpsest is the main even though the addresses such as nature, architecture, category that organizes the often sound similar, they do and biographies of Muranów’s narrative and shapes the way not necessarily correspond streets. The district’s past and we think about the exhibition. with their pre-war location. present occupy two separate The term is derived from Presenting the topographic narrative threads. textual studies and signifies changes in a legible way while a parchment from which The exhibition is addressed focusing on the histories of the text has been scraped not only to Muranów’s people residing in the area or washed off for re-use. residents, both contemporary at a specific time was the This process, as well as the and former, including their greatest challenge faced by term itself, may serve as a descendants. It is addressed the exhibition team’s authors metaphor for the history of to the residents of Warsaw as and designers. Muranów. Before the war, well as other towns and cities, the Northern District was Muranów is a special case to the people interested in inhabited mainly by Jews among the “former Jewish Warsaw history and in social (this marks the first period quarters” in Europe: it is the urban history in general, as in the exhibition narrative: only residential estate raised well as in architecture and until 1939); transformed into on the rubble and of the urban planning. We do hope a ghetto during wartime (the rubble, with almost none of that it will prove interesting second period: 1939–45) the old buildings surviving. not merely due to the personal and subsequently razed to Today it is a cozy residential stories it presents, but also

12 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 the Muranów residents said in the 2007 survey on the district’s identity and memory: “Muranów is the area of the former Jewish quarter … While wandering around this place, so beautiful, green and friendly, one cannot help but think about those who used to live here, about the life that was broken by the war, lost forever.” Another resident added: “What we walk upon is hidden beneath a layer of soil. We see the buildings here, built on the hills, as it were, but those hills have not always been here—somewhere here the streets ran, and it was all razed to the ground, and the rubble was partially evened out in order to raise these houses, so it is by no means a natural landform.”

We do believe that both faces of Muranów—the residential estate and the memorial site— are equally true and valid. n Muranów in 1945 and 1963. Courtesy of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute and Wikimedia Commons. Kamila Radecka-Mikulicz is a curator, museologist, district for some; for others, living place and the place and doctoral candidate at it is a place they visit in that once was, a memorial the Institute of History of the order to commemorate their site. The parallel existence of Polish Academy of Sciences. murdered relatives. The paths these two independent orders She was part of the curatorial of the residents and tourists that rule the district began team for the Holocaust cross at times; at other times right after the war, when a Gallery of the POLIN they run along each other, new residential estate was Museum’s core exhibition. showing the two equivalent being built on the rubble of faces of Muranów—the the old quarter. As one of

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 13 Muranów: A Laboratory for a New City Beata Chomątowska

everal yellowish pages, handwritten in pencil. The Shandwriting dates back to the times when calligraphy was an obligatory subject at school. Title: Muranów—a grand and splendid task. “Grand, for it is a city for nearly 50,000 people ... Splendid for it goes beyond the wildest dreams of young architects from the time when they were still envisaging their future professional career.” These are hand-written Aerial shot of Muranów, Warsaw. notes of Bohdan Lachert, Photograph by Maciej Margas. Used with permission. Muranów’s chief architect, made, the former Northern red rubble; the level of rubble retrieved from the archive of Quarter was a vast—if not mounds themselves symbolized the Museum of Architecture homogeneous—sea of ruins left a new life, a new reality. in Wrocław. of the ghetto. The architect and The structure, featuring a his associates debated whether “Muranów transpired in our carefully selected color scheme to remove all the rubble and imagination as an image of a (surfaces of red, pink, grey, construct buildings on the pre- new reality. In the space above and white), was traversed by war ground level or perhaps to the rubble, the district turned different levels which pointed remove some of the rubble and into a vision—unique in the to the new sequences of leave the rest. They delineated history of mankind—which movement within Muranów, an experimental section and possessed such a historic in compliance with the Unistic tried to assess which option background, such an ocean of sculpture theory developed by made more sense. Even though possibilities that could form Władysław Strzemiński and the decisions were made due a truly special layout,” wrote put into practice by Katarzyna to practical reasons, the project Lachert. The layout is inscribed Kobro. Both artists together was driven by remembrance. in the landform. In 1949, with Lachert had co-founded The memory of the ghetto was when the decision to build the and headed an avant-garde symbolized by the canyons Muranów housing estate was group called Praesens. of former streets and bright-

14 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 From the artistic perspective, A leitmotif of the apartments of southern Muranów was to follow the content displayed on the Muranów had to accommodate slogan “break up the volume,” families with two or three used by Lachert in one of exhibition’s mezzanine children. Today, such the interviews in reference level is the fact that it apartments are sought after to spatial layout. The slogan by students or increasingly served as an inspiration and a poses questions without turned into “residences” for departure point for developing implying answers. tourists, a trend which exerts this section of the exhibition. a great impact on the district’s The square surrounding the (namely the immediate social tissue and the comfort POLIN Museum plays a vital surroundings of the POLIN of its permanent residents. role here, as it was envisaged Museum) and using Meanwhile, new developers’ as a center of the district in architectural models of investments stir intense which various objects aimed buildings, we encourage emotions, mainly related to at meeting social and cultural visitors to the exhibition to the fact that they encroach needs were to be located. “break them up,” to look on the so far undeveloped inside them searching for green areas. The vision of the square hidden content, to have fun evolved. At the final stage seeking options to use this A leitmotif of the content of work on the project, the content, or simply to relax displayed on the exhibition’s designers from Lachert’s in the space which is aimed mezzanine level is the fact studio—themselves a target to encourage relaxation and that it poses questions without of severe criticism—decided reflection, partially thanks implying answers. For all that it would be best to gather to its plain aesthetics. The the questions pertain to all the necessary functions in content, developed in various the unknown, to the future one large communal center forms, refers to the issues over which we may merely which was to dominate over touched upon directly in ponder: what will Muranów the rest of Muranów. It was to Lachert’s spatial layout of the look like, what will happen be located on an undeveloped district, which was envisaged to it in the coming decades? plot between today’s Anders by the architect on the scale While presenting Muranów’s and Zamenhof streets, its scale of a small town. (The first public space, the mezzanine comparable with the surviving urban layout draft, prepared level exposition also acts as Volhynia Barracks. Alas, the in the Warsaw Reconstruction a private territory, furnished project was never realized— Office, estimated the number with building volumes in monumental socialist realist of Muranów’s residents at a macro scale; a territory blocks were constructed at the 36,000; today this number has which can easily become spot in the second half of the almost doubled.) the scene of varied social 1950s, after Lachert’s idea had interactions between visitors been abandoned. As for the living conditions— who acquire new information at the time of the People’s and share their insights and Focusing on the original Republic of Poland, small, observations. idea of the Square of Youth predominantly one-bedroom

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 15 In socialist propaganda, on the shared corridors with more and more memorials Muranów was the first balconies—even if they were, appeared in the district, not working-class district in so to speak, imposed by the always linked to the local Warsaw city center. In the architecture. context. Generations of documents dated as early as residents are deeply aware 1948 there is an annotation Lachert’s idea of a spatial of living in a memorial park handwritten by Stefan layout of “the housing estate which manifests itself in a Ossowiecki in the collection that is also a memorial” was symbolic division of the shared of the Museum of Architecture ahead of its time and proved space—often against historical in Wrocław: “It is vital from completely illegible to his facts—into a residential zone both the social and cultural contemporaries, including and a memorial zone which perspective[s] that we ensure fellow architects. Once is addressed predominantly to the district’s population is socialist realist doctrine had tourists. The memorial zone is from the very start not fully been introduced, even the closely linked with the square uniform with regard to their most ardent critics admitted next to the POLIN Museum— occupation.” Therefore, that the project was by all the communal center of the Muranów was envisaged as means ambitious. As far as district that was never built. a socially diverse place, yet the aesthetics is concerned, Muranów itself— despite shaped with a view to the opinions varied. being set firmly in a specific needs of the working class. The experiment was carried typology as the “former In line with Bohdan Lachert’s out at the worst time possible. Jewish quarter,” the “post- ideas, a traditional quarter Lachert’s notes, along with ghetto-site,” and the only dominated by private other documents concerning housing estate-memorial in the entrepreneurship is being the construction of Muranów, world—advances from a local transformed into a social are a record of his desperate to an international dimension. n place. Communal space efforts to salvage the original encouraged interaction idea while trying to respond Beata Chomątowska is a between the inhabitants. That to the increasing—and often journalist, novelist, and is why, in his notes written mutually exclusive— demands Chairwoman of the Stacja as a reaction to the criticism of the commissioning party, Muranów Association. of the estate, Lachert defends the Communist administration. Her books include Stacja the deck-access type of Muranów (2012). apartment blocks. He writes Lachert’s project was never that even if Polish society brought to life in its original were not used to this type of version, and it remains buildings, inhabitants would unfinished. Buildings soon come to appreciate constructed of breeze-blocks them and more such blocks made of concrete and rubble would be constructed. Older were plastered, thus erasing residents of Muranów recall their purpose of ghetto positive neighborly interaction remembrance. Meanwhile,

16 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Long Live the Jarden Jewish Bookshop! Erica Lehrer

had never organized a fundraiser before. But this Ispring, as Poland closed its borders and imposed a far- reaching lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jarden Jewish bookshop—a tiny, big-hearted institution in Kraków’s Kazimierz neighborhood—was in peril. A shoestring operation in the best of times, I knew it could not survive if cut off from the influx of summer tourists that are its bread and butter. I checked in with its founders Zdzisław and Lucyna Leś, the owners of the bookshop. Photograph by Konrad Obidziński. Used with permission. and owners, Zdzisław and Lucyna Leś, who confirmed Jarden emerged Zora Neal Hurston (African my fears. I began to fret. unexpectedly as a American anthropologist and writer)—eager to plumb the The shop had meant so much crucial part of Kraków’s to me both personally and roots of “my culture,” but in professionally for almost “Jewish space.” a place which, as a diligently assimilated American Jew, I thirty years. I could not sit had never thought much about by and let it go down without the time I stepped blinking until the Iron Curtain fell. I a fight. from Szeroka Street into the cool dark of the massive found myself each summer I had wandered into Jarden stone façade that housed in the early 1990s picking in the summer of 1994, four the little bookshop, I had around Kazimierz, feeling years after the end of the already changed my college both quite conspicuous, and Polish People’s Republic major to anthropology and unexpectedly at home. and since my own first plunged into East European This was the decade and encounter with Kazimierz and Jewish Studies. I was a half before Kraków’s in the spring of 1990. By returning like an aspiring Jewish Community Center

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 17 was established in 2008, Many bookshop visitors ever spoken to—at Jarden. when Chabad Lubavitch still met new friends—often The bookshop served as the held to Rebbe Schneerson’s de facto textbook source injunction against setting even the first Pole for students and scholars up shop in blood-soaked or Jew they had ever of the country’s emerging Poland, and while foreign discipline of Jewish studies. spoken to—at Jarden. Jewish tourists mostly made a Many a master’s thesis was beeline to Auschwitz. These shaped under Zdzisław and were heady days, full of their allies—aided by a couple Lucyna’s tutelage. Artists angst and amazement for the of couches, an electric kettle, and filmmakers stored their few Jews from abroad who and the owners’ eagerness equipment there while stumbled upon Kazimierz and to listen and help—turned surveying the neighborhood lingered, and of anxious first the bookshop into a singular for picturesque angles and steps out of the closet for the destination, deeply entangled interview subjects. Zdzisław city’s proto-Jews, many of with Poland’s rediscovery of and Lucyna offered—and still whom had denied or quietly its continent- and generation- offer—whatever their patrons managed their identities until spanning Jewish soul. need: a chair and the day’s then; others who had not Overwhelmed with emotion, newspaper for a local denizen, known were beginning to find tourists (like myself) showed a Band-Aid or doctor’s referral out. The filming ofSchindler’s up, unable to make sense of for a young backpacker, even List in the quarter in 1993 had the swirl of unanticipated a makeshift space for Hasidic put Kazimierz “on the map” experiences. With the newly pilgrims to pray. of Jewish heritage, kick- democratic country’s lack Aside from myself, three starting international Jewish of communal infrastructure, other university scholars tourism. Jarden played a more local Jews were also hungry working on Jewish-related grassroots role. Zdzisław and for places to feel safe and to subjects got their start at Lucyna, although not Jewish, ask difficult questions about Jarden as young tour guides, felt a calling to expand the more intimate past. Jarden a service the bookshop the public’s sense of what emerged unexpectedly as added (and personally counted as Poland’s heritage, a crucial part of Kraków’s trained) to meet visitors’ and to help educate about “Jewish space,” serving in needs: Anna Cichopek- Poland’s Jews. capacities that far outstripped what a bookstore typically Gajraj, Associate Professor As I described in my 2013 advertises. of History at Arizona State book Jewish Poland Revisited: University, Agnieszka Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Many bookshop visitors met Legutko, Lecturer in Yiddish Places, the 1990s confluence new friends—often even the at Columbia University, and of local and foreign Jews and first Pole or Jew they had Ewa Węgrzyn, Lecturer in

18 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Jewish History at Kraków’s It is moving to see friends of the bookshop, as Jagiellonian University. that after almost three well as virtual tours. Other former employees Doing the fundraiser was an include the documentary decades, Jarden’s inspiration and a pleasure. filmmaker Paulina Fiejdasz books and tourist It not only helped me feel and the archivist Krzysztof services, but more useful during the COVID-19 Adamiec. They all recall lockdown, but the outpouring Jarden being much more than importantly its of support and sharing of a bookshop. Adamiec called good humor and memories was a great solace it a “Beit Midrasz, a place to Zdzisław and Lucyna, of knowledge, of study, of endless wise counsel, who saw their life’s work encounters.” Some of those still resonate. affirmed. I was reminded, as encounters were with the the poet Ross Gay wrote, that Leś’s themselves. Zdzisław, in $14,263 (CAD) (a bit over a “good little bookstore…is particular, is recalled fondly the modest original $14,000 a laboratory for our coming for his irreverent frustration ask). Topped up by a special together.” n when customers would come grant of $2,000 (USD) by in and disrupt his voracious Tad Taube’s foundation, and Erica Lehrer, PhD, daily newspaper reading or another $6,000 from a long- is Professor in History his conversations with local time friend of the Jarden and Sociology-Anthropology intelligentsia. Lucyna is the Bookshop, the non-Jewish at Concordia University, informal genealogical expert, Texas photographer Charles Montreal. listening to personal stories Burns, the bookshop now has and jumping online or pulling the cushion to survive the reference books off the lean winter season. Already shelves to show visitors how recognized as among the top easy it was to find their town, five independent bookstores in maybe their ancestors. Krakόw, Jarden is revamping It is moving to see that after its website, with easier access almost three decades, Jarden’s to the stock via mail order. books and tourist services, Zdzisław and Lucyna’s but more importantly its daughter Eryka is helping good humor and endless to ramp up the Facebook wise counsel, still resonate. page, developing a series of The GoFundMe campaign book recommendations and I created last April to help reviews, interviews with save the bookshop raised authors, artists, and other

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 19 REPORTS Wojciech Tworek and Library of Ada Rapoport-Albert Marcin Wodziński in Wrocl/aw

he Jewish studies community has been Tdeeply saddened by the untimely passing of Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert. Ada, as she was known by her friends, colleagues, and students, was truly an exceptional person. She is remembered as an author of works that transformed the study of Hasidism and Sabbatianism, a meticulous editor, and a uniquely generous scholar, always ready to share her time and expertise with colleagues The library of Ada Rapoport-Albert arrives at the Taube Department of Jewish and students. Her scholarship Studies, Wrocław University. and mentorship have shaped Used with permission. much of modern Jewish Several years ago, Ada studies. (For more about her University of Wrocław. generously offered to bequeath life and work, see the obituary Ada collaborated on many her working library to our in this issue of Gazeta.) projects with Marcin Wodziński, hosted Agnieszka department. The collection During the past two decades, Jagodzińska and Kamil Kijek contains some 5,000 volumes, Ada remained very much as postdoctoral fellows at predominantly primary involved in the burgeoning University College London sources and secondary Jewish studies scene in (UCL), and was Wojciech literature reflecting Ada’s Poland. Perhaps no other Tworek’s doctoral supervisor. lifelong interests: Jewish Polish academic institution Ada visited Wrocław in 2004, history, mysticism, Hasidism, benefited more from her and we hoped she would Sabbatianism, and gender wisdom and generosity come and visit us again in the studies. Other volumes in the than the Taube Department summer of 2021. collection include Hebrew of Jewish Studies at the literature, reference works,

20 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 and, last but not least, doctoral Ada Rapoport- to benefit from Ada’s erudition dissertations by students Albert’s scholarship and kindness, just as so many and colleagues. of us did in the past. n and mentorship have We were delighted to accept her shaped much of Wojciech Tworek, PhD, is gift, at the same time hoping Assistant Professor in the modern Jewish studies. we would not see the books Taube Department of Jewish any time soon. Unfortunately, contemporary art, currently Studies at the University of in June we learned the hosts seminars and faculty Wrocław. sad news. The COVID-19 meetings. History buffs may outbreak deprived her friends, be interested to know that it Marcin Wodziński, PhD, colleagues, and students of the is the same room in which is Head of Department and possibility to travel to London the Nazi commanders of the Professor of Jewish Studies at to say good-bye properly. Her so-called Festung Breslau the University of Wrocław. library, however, does travel. (the last bastion of the Third Thanks to the invaluable help Reich) took counsel from of Ada’s children, Saul and March to early May 1945. Maya, we have arranged for The complete collection the shipment of the books from will be stored together, London to Wrocław. Now, marked as Ada’s bequest, a long process of unboxing, and each volume will bear a shelving, inventorying, and commemorative bookplate. cataloguing has begun, carried Once the collection is out under the supervision of processed, the room will serve the departmental librarian, the dual function of seminar Monika Jaremków. and reading room.

Simultaneously, we are As Ada’s friends, colleagues, making Ada’s books and students, we are accessible for our faculty immensely proud to be and students. We have the custodians of her book designated a separate room collection. We remain grateful in our beautiful eighteenth to Ada for her gift and to her century building in the family for their assistance historic old town of Wrocław with the shipment. We are to host Ada’s collection. The delighted that our students room, furnished with period and the entire academic furniture and decorated with community will now be able

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 21 A Report from the Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Adam Schorin Poland Foundation

ver the last decade, Jewish heritage tourism a series of monthly webinars thousands of people in Poland relies on a that brings together luminaries Ohave visited Poland through of the Polish Jewish world Taube Jewish Heritage Tours visceral connection to discuss critical issues in (TJHT), the flagship program to the place: it is not the field, both contemporary of the Taube Center for the just about learning or and historical. The series, Renewal of Jewish Life. They which will continue even explored the towns where seeing, but actually, when travel is possible again, their parents or grandparents physically being here. offers our growing global grew up, visited concentration audience intellectual access camps and sites of memory, here—in the towns and cities to Jewish Poland. Special and participated in local where our ancestors lived for guests have so far included Jewish community events. centuries, in the camps and the Chief Rabbi of Poland, killing fields of the Holocaust, Michael Schudrich, and With the onset of COVID-19, and at the Shabbat dinner Professors Deborah Lipstadt, the Taube Center was forced tables of the growing Jewish Dariusz Stola, Samuel to cancel most of its in-person communities here today. Kassow, Antony Polonsky, programming for the year, How could we facilitate Marcin Wodziński, Natalia including many tours for these critical, complicated, Aleksiun, Glenn Dynner, international visitors. “Since and emotionally compelling and Barbara Kirshenblatt- people couldn’t visit Poland, experiences for people who Gimblett. Topics have ranged we decided to bring Poland aren’t actually here? from contemporary Holocaust to them,” said the Taube denial to the resilience of Center’s executive director, “We developed a three- Jewish museums, from gender Helise Lieberman. pronged approach,” said in Polish Jewish studies to Lieberman. “Engage former resistance in the Warsaw Perhaps more than most types and potential tour participants, Ghetto. The first TJHTalk of tourism, Jewish heritage support partner organizations, drew an audience of eighty- tourism in Poland relies and develop our educational eight attendees, and more on a visceral connection programs and resources, both than 900 people attended the to the place: it is not just locally and abroad.” about learning or seeing, but talk in July. This rapid growth actually, physically being In April 2020, the Taube speaks not only to the quality Center launched TJHTalks, of the conversations, but to the

22 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 profound interest participants have had in them.

A more recent initiative, Insights in Sites, will function as a companion piece to TJHTalks, featuring informal interviews with local community leaders, educators, and cultural activists. This series will focus on a less theoretical element of the Polish Jewish field by introducing participants to the people on the ground whose work drives preservation and heritage initiatives, community institutions, and cultural projects that bring Polish Jews and non-Jews together.

Working hand-in-hand with 1,000 Years of Jewish Life: A Timeline. the Hillels at Columbia/ Courtesy of the Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland. Barnard and Northwestern member Adam Schorin (also a emotionally resonant, with universities, the Taube contributing editor of Gazeta), speakers sharing both their Center just completed a pilot a pierogi-making workshop professional expertise and distance tour program called with former Wrocław personal experiences. Passport to Poland. The Rebbetzin Danielle Basok, On the local front, the four-week program, tailored and a virtual tour of the Taube Center began its to fit students’ schedules and POLIN Museum. Professors second edition of Yerusha, interests, included a virtual Agi Legutko and Karen a development program for meeting with journalist and Underhill led students in a professionals in the Polish Warsaw Jewish community closing conversation. Passport Jewish field. The year-long leader Konstanty Gebert, a to Poland offered participants program is unique in that presentation and discussion a way of engaging with it takes place in Polish and with FestivALT co-director contemporary Jewish Poland all workshop facilitators and Taube Center team that was both informative and

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 23 are based in Poland. This The Taube Center Looking forward to 2021, year’s cohort consists of in addition to preparing launched TJHTalks, ten individuals from Jewish for the return of in-person cultural and educational a series of monthly visitors, the Taube Center institutions across the country, webinars that brings has partnered with the including representatives European Association for the from JCC Kraków, the Galicia together luminaries of Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Museum, the POLIN the Polish Jewish world Jewish Culture and the Union Museum, and the Jewish to discuss critical issues of Italian Jewish Communities Community of Wrocław. to launch an Italian edition of in the field. Mi Dor Le Dor, the center’s In cooperation with the successful heritage education Northern California Board of Guide to Jewish Krakόw, and and community-building Rabbis (NCBOR), the center Field Guide to Jewish Łódź. program that ran from 2012 has developed Minyan Makers, The center plans to publish a to 2016. a text-based learning program field guide to Jewish Lublin for professionals from Jewish and environs by the end of the “We don’t know when it will partner institutions in Poland. year. The field guide series be safe to travel again,” said Taught by members of the serves as a crucial resource for Lieberman. “In the meantime, NCBOR, each learning cycle first-time visitors to Poland as we invite you to join us for includes three sessions focused well as for seasoned veterans our many online programs and on a current issue, with the texts looking to refresh their to check out our collection of serving as entry points into both knowledge. The publications educational publications. When traditional and contemporary can be used for a variety of you’re ready to visit, we’ll be responses. The first cycle ended educational purposes and are here to welcome you!” n in August. The second, with valuable in both formal and a new cohort recommended informal settings. With the Adam Schorin is a by the participants of the first, support of a grant from the contributing editor at Gazeta. will begin in the fall. The next Ministry of Foreign Affairs, cycle will focus on leadership the Taube Center has updated attributes and group challenges, its 1,000 Years of Jewish as presented in the source texts. Life in Poland: A Timeline with a greater emphasis on The Taube Center has also the roles of women in Polish updated its educational Jewish history. The grant also resources and publications, supports the translation of among them the Field Guide the Timeline into Polish to Jewish Warsaw, Field and German.

24 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 EXHIBITIONS AND MUSEUMS Szancer, Imagine That! New Exhibit Jakub Nowakowski at the Galicia Jewish Museum July 1, 2020 – July 30, 2021

n July 1, 2020, the Galicia Jewish OMuseum opened the door to imagination. The new exhibition Szancer, Imagine That! invites you into the fairytale world created by the famous Polish illustrator of Jewish origins, Jan Marcin Szancer.

In the world of Polish children’s illustration, Szancer, Imagine That! promotional image. Jan Marcin Szancer is an Courtesy of the Galicia Jewish Museum. institution within himself, known to all who were their sense of aesthetics Szancer was the youngest raised on the poems of Julian and visual taste. Therefore, child born into a Polish Jewish Tuwim and Jan Brzechwa, lost the need to honor a great family in Krakόw. He themselves in the adventures illustrator is completely graduated from the Krakόw of Mr. Kleks, or grew up with understandable and I am glad Academy of Fine Arts. He was the characters of Andersen’s that it fell to our institution the editor and cover illustrator fairy tales. Drawn with a to do just that. One of the for the children’s magazine precise line, meticulously museum’s goals is to show Świerszczyk. Around 200 accurate and at the same time the history of Polish Jews illustrated books, including whimsical, characters and from a new perspective. Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy, places came to life by the skill Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan About Jan Marcin Szancer of Szancer’s hand. The Tadeusz, and Jan Brzechwa’s master’s paintings spoke to Although Jan Marcin Szancer Pan Kleks series made the imagination of subsequent is known primarily from Szancer famous. multi-colored illustrations, generations of Poles, not only Szancer survived World War II kept in a fairytale atmosphere, allowing them to move into mainly in Warsaw. He his biography is far from a unknown worlds, but also sketched propaganda posters fairytale. from an early age shaping for the Home Army. During

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 25 the Warsaw Uprising he was deported to a transit camp and then to a labor camp in Maków Podhalański.

Despite the war, Szancer didn’t stop drawing. His most colorful illustrations were created during the darkest periods of his life.

He also wrote fairytales and created theater and film set designs. After the war he became the first artistic director of Telewizja Polska (the Polish broadcasting company).

Szancer was, for my generation, a mainstay. He produced illustrations or decorations for theaters, which we would see every Szancer, Imagine That! promotional image. day or every week. Andrzej Courtesy of the Galicia Jewish Museum. Rojek, the originator of the artist into a fantastic, how to draw, older Janek, exhibition and who grew sometimes dreamlike, taking his first steps on the path up in Poland during the narration. The exhibition of his illustrative career, and 1960s, says, “Poland was a teaches and encourages finally the esteemed Mr. Jan, pretty gray place … Szancer children to use their who even as an adult did not brought color! He brought imagination. Visitors are able lose his childhood imagination. dynamic movement! He to feel like the heroes of a Exhibition curator Paulina brought fantasy!” fairytale, created by the Banasik explains that “the museum and based on exhibition is entirely tangible, About the Exhibition important events in the life of which allows not only for Using Szancer’s colorful the artist. We invite our guests seeing it, but also for characters, the museum has to the world of Szancer: first participation.” In addition to transferred the biography of the little Jan, who is just learning several dozen out of thousands

26 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 of the most important and cultural partners and includes University and were married beautiful drawings by Szancer, Szancer’s original works, as just before the war in Krakόw. the museum also features well as books, postcards, and So, the city has great meaning analog installations specially children’s and youth for me and for my past … prepared for the exhibition. magazines, all with Szancer’s For me, the fact that the Jan “I think there is still a place for illustrations. It opened at the Marcin Szancer exhibition is analog exhibitions and for the Galicia Jewish Museum in July about him, about the family, appreciation of seeing art 2020 and will be on display and is taking place in Krakόw firsthand and experiencing it, through July 2021. means very much. standing with the art, looking It is accompanied by an Szancer, Imagine That! was at it... I think we will miss that exhibition of children’s works created thanks to the if we eliminate it completely,” entitled What Were You engagement of a number of says Elizabeth Szancer, Jan Thinking?, and a richly diverse individuals and foundations Marcin Szancer’s cousin and program of events from the US, UK, and other herself an art curator. for visitors of all ages. countries. Almost 100 While on a basic level the The program focuses on contributors from Poland exhibition is devoted to Szancer’s biography and work, supported Galicia Jewish younger audiences, it also and uses it as a starting point Museum’s crowdfunding includes a special narration for of a much wider discussion campaign. The project is also adult visitors, focusing on about the influence of Polish co-financed by the city of Szancer’s story and the history Jews on Polish culture and art Krakόw and it is under the of Polish Jews in the second in the second half of the honorary patronage of half of the twentieth century. In twentieth century. Jacek Majchrowski, mayor this time of growing anti- of Krakόw. n The story of Jan Marcin Semitism and nationalism this Szancer shows that it is the rich For a detailed interview with positive story seems to be more imagination which helps us to Elizabeth Szancer, please see: important than ever. Thanks to survive difficult times. Szancer’s biography and work, https://www.youtube.com/ the exhibition becomes a I have been travelling to watch?v=WQDZzKogDC- perfect tool for highlighting the Poland and specifically to g&t=20. scale and the input of Polish Kraków and Tarnów for many, For more about the Galicia Jewish influence on the identity many years. I started to come Jewish Museum, visit: www. of contemporary Poles. in the ‘70s with my mother. galiciajewishmuseum.org. My mother was born in The exhibition was created in Krakόw, and both my parents Jakub Nowakowski is cooperation with a range of studied at Jagiellonian Director of the Galicia Polish and international Jewish Museum.

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 27 The Posthumous Landscape: Jewish Historical Sites in Poland and Julian and Western Ukraine. David Kaufman Fay Bussgang Photographs on Exhibit in Toronto

or almost thirty He has since returned to Eastern Europe. He was also Fyears, Toronto-based Poland multiple times to struck by the realization that photographer and filmmaker photograph memorial sites— although few Jewish David Kaufman has been including Jewish cemeteries, inhabitants remain there, the documenting Jewish heritage synagogues, former Jewish quantity and quality of the sites in Eastern Europe. neighborhoods, and other sites material culture is vast, while Kaufman made his first related to the Holocaust. His the ability to preserve many trip to Poland in 1992 to work now extends to areas historical sites is inadequate. make Hidden Children, a once in Poland but now in He feels that it is therefore documentary about child Western Ukraine. important that they be survivors of the Holocaust. documented. In partial Kaufman was captivated by A decade later, he visited fulfillment of this mission is the beauty of the many Poland to make films about the recent traveling exhibit, memorial buildings and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Posthumous Landscape: objects that he found in and about the Łódź Ghetto. Jewish Historical Sites in

The ruins of the Great Synagogue of Brody, Ukraine, 2016. Photograph by David Kaufman. Used with permission.

28 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Julian and Fay Bussgang He was struck by the realization that the quantity and quality of the material culture is vast, while the ability to preserve many historical sites is inadequate.

Poland and Western Ukraine, most recently at Congregation Darchei Noam in Toronto

(through August 2020). Interior of the restored synagogue in Łańcut, Poland, 2012. Photograph by David Kaufman. Used with permission. Kaufman’s photos and films about vestiges of Polish- Jewish life are detailed and moving. In the exhibit, Warsaw is represented by photos of the Jewish cemetery and of lesser-known views of the ghetto wall on Waliców Street and of run-down Brzeska Street in the former Jewish district of Praga. Unlike Warsaw, many more vestiges of Jewish life can be The palace of Izrael Poznański in Łódź, Poland, 2013. seen in Łódź, as only a small Photograph by David Kaufman. Used with permission. portion of the former ghetto show the Bracka Street Jewish Łańcut, Bobowa, and Kraków area north of the city center cemetery, the Poznański (the Progressive Tempel was destroyed. A significant Palace, and the Radegast Synagogue) as well as portion of the buildings in railway station, where the monuments from the cemetery Bałuty, the poor district at the exodus of the final liquidation in Ożarów. n heart of the former ghetto, of the Łódź Ghetto took place. Julian and Fay Bussgang remain intact and substantially Displays include photos of are longtime contributors unaltered. The photos of Łódź restored synagogues from to Gazeta.

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 29 Online Exhibitions: Kraków During the Pandemic. Photographs by Edyta Gawron Galicia Jewish Museum and San Francisco-Kraków Sister Cities Association

he online exhibition, Krakόw During the TPandemic, offers a striking visual tour of the city from its lockdown in March to its gradual re-opening this past summer. Created from photographs and text by Edyta Gawron and curated by Tomasz Strug of the Galicia Jewish Museum, the show opened on August 24 and continues online at https://adobe.ly/2PVgMAF. Co-hosted by the Galicia Jewish Museum and the San Francisco-Krakόw Sister Cities Association, the exhibit was inspired by the presentation of Gawron’s photos of Krakόw during the lockdown in the spring 2020 issue of Gazeta.

Edyta Gawron is a historian and Assistant Professor at Jagiellonian University, Institute of Jewish Studies. She serves as the President Kraków During the Pandemic promotional image. of the Management Board Courtesy of the Galicia Jewish Museum. of Galicia Jewish Heritage and co-author of several Commenting on the exhibit, Institute Foundation (Galicia exhibitions, she loves Jonathan Webber, social Jewish Museum). A curator photography and cycling. anthropologist and co-founder

30 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 of the Galicia Jewish Museum, discusses the first photo in This is important because notes: “All the photos are the exhibit: “This could so the sign is in black. In short, superb, in different ways, easily be a static and boring the photograph is full of and collectively they shine photograph but it is not. Why? movement and the eye that excellent light on this city, The pillar is just a bit off looks at it never rests, but the and how it has been affected center to the left. Symmetry focus is where it should be. by recent events. You really makes a view ‘heavy.’ The Brilliant.” went to a lot of trouble to put ‘imbalance’ gives it movement Viewers are invited to together a very wide-ranging and life. But there is balance. upload photos of daily life and comprehensive collection On the left is a big tree and it in their neighborhoods and of photos; and their order is dark. It is offset by the view surrounding environs during and captioning here of course to the right—distant slender these pandemic times onto enhance them very well. The trees and most importantly, the Facebook pages for the photos of the main Market the illuminated building Galicia Jewish Museum and Square at its different stages next to the right border. The the San Francisco-Kraków were particularly effective.” illumination of the building— Sister Cities Association. n and just one building, is Shaul Stampfer, a Hebrew perfect. It is the antithesis to University professor the trees in many ways but it, specializing in nineteenth and only it, reflects the sun. century Jewish Lithuania,

YIVO Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum Launches

his summer saw the exhibition, Beba Epstein: the online museum, combines Tlaunch of the YIVO The Extraordinary Life of an written text, animations, Bruce and Francesca Cernia Ordinary Girl, contextualizes videos, archival images, Slovin Online Museum, an hundred of artifacts from the artifacts, interactive 3-D interactive, virtual museum YIVO archives through the environments, and games to of Eastern European Jewish story of Beba Epstein, who engage visitors in a learning history. The museum will use was born in Vilna in 1922 and experience specially designed YIVO’s expansive archives whose autobiography was for the Internet. You can visit to teach about this history discovered in Lithuania in the first exhibition now at through the life stories of 2017. The exhibition, like all https://museum.yivo.org/. n actual individuals. The first the exhibitions planned for

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 31 ANNOUNCEMENTS Books Bruno. Epoka Genialna (Bruno. The Age of Genius) By Anna Kaszuba-Dębska | Znak Publishing, 2020

nna Kaszuba-Dębska’s Bruno. Epoka Genialna (Bruno: The Age of Genius) is a massive biography of Polish Jewish writer and Aartist Bruno Schulz. Born in 1892 in Drohobycz, in modern-day Ukraine, Schulz rose to prominence as a gifted fabulist in dream-like short story collections, The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. In 1942, he was murdered in the Drohobycz Ghetto, leaving behind the legend of an unfinished novel, The Messiah, which has never been found. n

Ginczanka: Nie Upilnuje mnie nikt (Ginczanka: No One Will Watch Over Me) By Izolda Kiec Warsaw: Marginesy, 2020

n late 1930s Warsaw, she was already a famous poet and a legend of the bohemian cafés. During World War II, she Iescaped to Lviv (Lwów), and from there to Kraków. In 1944, after denunciation, she was arrested and shot a few months later, probably in the concentration camp in Płaszów. Although Zuzanna Ginczanka’s life was cut short by tragedy, Kiec’s biography shows the contexts of the time and places where Ginczanka lived, giving us an enriched view into her life. Highlighted with illustrative materials, the book includes photographs that reflect the realities of the epoch, documents about the poet herself and her relatives, and unique, previously unknown portraits of Ginczanka. We can get to know her as a poet, a woman, a Jew, and a Pole, and a person with creative impact on the literary world. If only we could have known her longer. n

32 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Bauman: A Biography By Izabela Wagner Polity Press, 2020

ygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) was an influential Polish- born scholar and intellectual who wrote about changes in Zcontemporary society, with a special focus on poverty and its effects. Forced to leave Poland during the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign, he relocated to Israel and then to the UK, before taking a position at the University of Leeds. One of his best- known books is Modernity and the Holocaust, which argues that modern industrial and bureaucratic paradigms made the Holocaust imaginable and feasible. n

Ghost Citizens: Jewish Return to a Postwar City By ~Lukasz Krzyżanowski Translated by Madeline G. Levine Harvard University Press, 2020

ukasz Krzyżanowski recounts the story of a largely forgotten group of Holocaust survivors who returned to their hometowns in Poland Land tried to start their lives anew. Focusing on Radom, an industrial city about sixty miles south of Warsaw, he tells the story of what happened to returnees facing massive political, social, and legal change. Confronted with ongoing anti-Semitism and hostility from non-Jews, bureaucratic hurdles and violence—including by members of Jewish gangs depriving returnees of their pre-war property—many Jews left. Those who stayed created a small, isolated community. Drawing on a rare collection of documents—including the post-war Radom Jewish Committee records, which were discovered by the secret police in 1974—Ghost Citizens is the moving story of Holocaust survivors’ agency and their struggle to restore their lives in a place that was no longer home. n

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 33 Conscious History: Polish Jewish History Before the Holocaust By Natalia Aleksiun The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in Association with Liverpool University Press Oxford University Press, 2021

leksiun’s book examines the political and social context of the historical scholarship of Polish Jewry during the inter-war years, Awhen a group of Jewish scholars sought to create a sense of Polish Jewish belonging while also fighting for their rights as an ethnic minority. The political climate made it difficult for intellectuals to pursue an academic career; instead they had to continue their efforts to create and disseminate Polish Jewish history by teaching outside the university and publishing in journals and magazines. As public intellectuals, they also sought to provide a narrative that would establish Jews as an essential component of Polish life and history, and thereby protect them against growing anti-Semitism. n

Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800-1939 By Natan M. Meir Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture Stanford University Press, 2020

eir describes the lived experience of Jewish society’s outcasts and their fate during the centuries of modernization Min Eastern Europe, including Russia. Extending his investigation from shtetl poorhouses to slums and insane asylums, he argues that poor, orphaned, and other marginalized Jews often became scapegoats in crisis situations or symbols of degradation or decline ready for uplift by reformers or nationalist political leaders. n

34 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Ben Katchor’s Dairy Kitchen and the Polish Milk Bar Adam Schorin

he Dairy Restaurant by Ben Katchor is a graphic- novel history of that rarefied institution. Katchor Tsituates the now mostly extinct Lower East Side dairy restaurant in a much longer lineage, going all the way back to that first vegetarian eatery (complete with misbehaving patrons), the Garden of Eden.

While Jewish dairy restaurants owe their dietary restrictions to the laws of kashruth, they also functioned out of economic imperative, making it possible for poorer Jews to eat out. Likewise, the milk bar, the Polish corollary to the Jewish dairy restaurant, though not subject to any religious guidelines, grew out of similar financial necessity. Though its roots go back to a restaurant founded by a dairy farmer in the late 1800s, the modern Polish milk bar most recalls the Communist era, in which these cheap, no-frills establishments were often the only eating-out option for most families. Today, they occupy a curious crossroads in Polish dining: both a government-subsidized necessity for low-income diners, and a hipster tourist attraction rich in Communist kitsch, a speedy lunch spot for businesspeople and a

bastion of home-cooked nostalgia. Some of Warsaw’s The Dairy Restaurant by Ben Katchor, published by milk bars have operated continuously since the 1950s Schocken in 2020. (and do actually serve meat as well). Others have been resurrected in their former sites, and others still have been opened in recent years, either made to look retro or taking on a fresh, modern aesthetic.

On the following page are snapshots of just a handful of the city’s milk bars. Occupying different neighbor- hoods, dressed in different styles, they all serve a wide range of clientele. n

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 35 All photographs by Adam Schorin, 2020. Used with permission.

36 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 ANNOUNCEMENTS Conferences Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

he Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is holding its annual conference, November 5–8 and 14–15 this year. The convention will be virtual, and Tsessions have been reduced to ninety minutes to prevent “Zoom burnout,” but otherwise the ASEEES will still have its traditional exhibit hall, film screenings, and affiliate group meetings. The 2020 theme will be Anxiety and Rebellion, and the convention invites panelists to examine the sources of rising anxiety in East European and Eureasian countries, the politics driving the region, rebellions and counter-rebellions, and “the discourses and forms of artistic expression that reflect, amplify or stoke sentiments and motivate actions of the people involved.” For conference and registration information, please visit: https://www.aseees.org/convention. n

Association for Jewish Studies

he Association for Jewish Studies conference, which is the largest annual gathering of Jewish studies scholars in the world, will be held online, December 13–17, 2020. The TAJS is hopeful about digital possibilities to promote scholarly collaboration and networking, and still plans to include its traditional programming format, such as the plenary sessions, “AJS Honors Its Authors,” and the Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards. There will even be virtual coffee breaks and book exhibits! Register for the conference by December 6 by visiting: https://www.associationforjewishstudies.org/2020-annual-conference. n

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 37 ANNOUNCEMENTS In Brief GEOP: Global Education Outreach Program of the POLIN Museum

n GEOP International themes in the context of Prof. François Guesnet Conference: “What’s New, the COVID-19 pandemic. – Negotiating Jewish What’s Next? Innovative Published every two weeks, Communal and State Methods, New Sources, online podcasts in the new Responses to Cholera in and Paradigm Shifts in GEOP series “What’s New? nineteenth century Poland Jewish Studies” What’s Next? Jewish Studies In the upcoming months new in the Time of Pandemic” Given the coronavirus podcasts will be published. will precede and introduce pandemic, the international Professor Shaul Stampfer conference “What’s New, the conference. As a lead-up and Prof. Natan Meir will What’s Next? Innovative to the conference, the podcasts focus on the history of Methods, New Sources, and will demonstrate the kinds Jewish responses to applying Paradigm Shifts in Jewish of presentations we would historical and contemporary Studies” is postponed by like to encourage. perspectives to epidemics in the Warsaw Ghetto and to a year to October 2021. We invite you to listen to epidemics and anti-Semitism. Call for applications will five new podcasts available remain open until on Spotify, Spreaker, and the Dr. Gerben Zaagsma, December 31, 2020. POLIN Museum website: Professor Marcin Wodziński, and others will consider the GEOP invites scholars working n Prof. Barbara future of digital research and in Jewish studies to propose Kirshenblatt-Gimblett – panels and Ph.D. students to Jewish studies in light of these New Sources: Collecting submit proposals for the poster uncertain times. the Pandemic session for the international The series will conclude with n interdisciplinary conference. Prof. Maciej Münnich – podcasts devoted to what’s Epidemics in the Bible For more information on the next, and how Jewish Studies conference: https://www. n Prof. Jeremy Brown – will change. Will we turn to polin.pl/en/whats-new-whats- Pandemics in the Talmud new methods? Are we facing a next-2020. paradigm shift? n Dr. Marek Tuszewicki During the intervening – Epidemics in Jewish Podcasts are posted periodically months, we are inviting Folklore and Folk Medicine: on the POLIN Museum’s distinguished academics The Role of Magic website, Spotify, and Spreaker. to explore the conference

38 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Books Published by and Literature, University The call for the sixth edition GEOP Fellows Awarded of Potsdam, Polacos in was open until September Argentina: Polish Jews, 2020. The first term will be Within the GEOP Fellowship Interwar Migration, and the held online. Program, the participants— Emergence of Transatlantic academics from all around the The GEOP Doctoral Seminar Jewish Culture, University world—actively participate was established in 2015. In of Alabama Press, 2020. in the academic life of Jewish partnership with members studies in Poland. Best Book Award of the Latin of the Polish academic American Jewish Studies Thanks to the Global Education community, GEOP organizes a Association (LAJSA) in 2020. Outreach Program it has been seminar devoted to the history possible to support many (See Awards Announcement in and culture of Polish Jews. significant academic works. this issue of Gazeta for more The seminar convenes once a about this award-winning book.) month at the POLIN Museum Two GEOP Fellows received in Warsaw. awards for their publications, More about the awarded books which were completed through and GEOP Fellows here: https:// The Taube Department of the GEOP program at the polin.pl/en/news/2020/06/10/ Jewish Studies at the University POLIN Museum and the books-published-global- of Wrocław is a partner in the Jewish Historical Institute. education-outreach-program- museum’s ongoing Doctoral fellows-awarded. Seminars project. n Dr. Alicja Maślak Maciejewska, Institute GEOP Online Activities of Jewish Studies of GEOP Doctoral Seminar and Initiatives Jagiellonian University, Online Those Who Prayed in the In June 2020, the fifth edition GEOP joins the movement Temple: Krakόw Progressive of the GEOP doctoral seminar of supporting the academic Jews in the Nineteenth came to an end. Due to the community during the Century: A Socio-Religious COVID-19 pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic. Study, Jagiellonian second term of the GEOP We invite all those interested University Press, 2018. Doctoral Seminar was held in Jewish studies and Jewish online. We express our sincere In 2019 the book won second history and culture to browse thanks to the members of prize in the competition of the GEOP online repository at: Polish academic community Jόzef A. Gierowski and https://polin.pl/en/geop-online- who supported and helped the Chone Shmeruk. activities-and-initiatives. n seminar participants in these n Dr. Mariusz Kałczewiak, troubled times! Chair of Central and Eastern European Culture

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 39 ANNOUNCEMENTS Awards Dariusz Stola Named 2020 Irena Sendler Memorial Award Recipient

aube Philanthropies instituted an annual Taward in 2008 that recognizes Polish nationals for preserving and revitalizing the country’s Jewish heritage. The award is named in memory of Irena Sendlerowa (Sendler), a social worker who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. She was identified by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the 2020 awardee Dariusz Stola. Photograph by M. Starowieyska. Nations, and the Irena Sendler Courtesy of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Memorial Award has become recognized as a significant In 2019, the honors went to the POLIN Museum of the honor within Poland and Zuzanna Radzik, a public History of Polish Jews from among the world’s Jews. intellectual and activist the opening of its permanent Awardees in 2018 were Ola recognized for her research, exhibition in 2014 until Bilińska, a Yiddish language writing, teaching, and February 2019, during which and culture researcher and advocacy on issues such as time the museum won acclaimed musical artist who Catholic-Jewish relations, multiple international awards. and Adam Bartosz, an has done exemplary work in Nominations for the Irena ethnographer and museologist preserving and celebrating Sendler Memorial Award are who, thirty years ago, founded Yiddish music, and Norman reviewed by a panel of Taube the Committee for Preservation Conard, a renowned educator Philanthropies advisory board of Jewish Heritage in Tarnów. from Kansas who, together members and Jewish cultural with his high school students, This year, the awardee is leaders in Poland. n brought the untold story of Professor Dariusz Stola, Irena Sendler to public view. highly respected director of

40 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Polacos in Argentina Receives 2020 Best Book Award from Latin American Jewish Studies Association

ariusz Kałczewiak, a senior researcher and lecturer in the Slavic Studies Department at the University of MPotsdam, has constructed an in-depth narrative that sheds light on marginalized aspects of Jewish migration from Poland to Argentina between the 1890s and 1930s. In the period between 1918 and 1939, sixty thousand Polish Jews established new homes in Argentina. They formed a strong ethnic community that quickly embraced Argentine culture while still maintaining their unique Jewish-Polish character. This mass migration caused the transformation of cultural, social, and political milieus in both Poland and Argentina, forever shaping the cultural landscape of both lands.

Based on archival research, Yiddish travelogues on Argentina, and the Yiddish and Spanish-language press, this study recreates a mosaic of entanglements that Jewish migration wove between Poland and Argentina.

Most studies on mass migration fail to acknowledge the role of the country of origin, but this innovative work approaches Jewish migration to Argentina as a continuous In the period between 1918 process that took place on both sides of the Atlantic. Taken and 1939, sixty thousand as a whole, Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Polish Jews established Culture, enlightens the heterogeneous and complex issue of new homes in Argentina. immigrant commitments, belongings, and expectations. They formed a strong ethnic Jewish emigration from Poland to Argentina serves as a case study of how ethnicity evolves among migrants and community that quickly their children, and the dynamics that emerge between embraced Argentine culture putting down roots in a new country while also maintaining commitments to the country of origin. while still maintaining their unique Jewish-Polish character. Polacos in Argentina was published by and can be purchased through the University of Alabama Press. n

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 41 Documentary Filmmaker Roberta Grossman Receives Taube Philanthropies 2020 Jewish Peoplehood Award

oted filmmaker and writer, British Special Operations NRoberta Grossman, has Executive in 1943, and been selected to receive Taube returned to Nazi Europe Philanthropies’ 2020 Jewish parachuting behind enemy Peoplehood Award. The award lines in an aborted mission to honors Jewish men and women rescue Hungarian Jews, her who have worked to foster pride mother among them. This film in Jewish identity and heritage won the audience award at for new generations, making a thirteen Jewish film festivals, uniquely Jewish contribution to was broadcast on PBS, global culture. The award was nominated for a Primetime created in 2011 by the Taube Roberta Grossman. Emmy, and shortlisted for an Jewish Peoplehood Initiative. Roberta Grossman’s personal collection. Used with permission. Academy Award. In creating this honor, Tad Together with Sophie Sartain, Taube, chairman of the Taube breaking feature-length Grossman produced Hava Philanthropies, remarked: documentaries made on Nagila: The Movie (2012), a “Jewish Peoplehood is part of Jewish historical subjects feature-length documentary that our shared heritage, values, and that shed light on important traces the cultural journey of attitudes. It’s part of the DNA of twentieth century histories, the popular song, Hava Nagila, Jewish life—not only American and that were otherwise from Ukraine to YouTube. or Israeli, but rather inclusive of little-known to a multi- Released theatrically and all the nations of the earth.” generational public. Notable screened at eighty Jewish film among her films (produced The Taube Jewish Peoplehood festivals, Hava Nagila: The under the auspices of the non- Award has three past recipients: Movie was either the opening or profit production company the formerly Hasidic reggae closing night selection at more Katahdin Productions) are musician Matisyahu; the board than half of those festivals. chairman of the Association Blessed Is the Match: The of the Jewish Historical Life and Death of Hannah In 2015, Grossman directed Institute Piotr Wiślicki; and a Senesh (2008), which tells the producer Nancy Spielberg’s co-founder of Warsaw’s post- courageous and tragic wartime feature-length documentary, communist Jewish community, experience of Hannah Senesh, Above and Beyond, which Dr. Stanisław Krajewski. The a World War II-era poet and spotlights the Jewish award includes a $10,000 gift. diarist who made aliyah to American World War II-era British-mandated Palestine pilots who volunteered to The 2020 award recognizes from Hungary, enlisted as a fight for Israel in its 1948 Grossman for her ground- volunteer parachutist in the War of Independence, also

42 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 establishing the Israeli Air The committee commends which to tell historical stories, Force. Interviews with pilots Roberta Grossman on and to me, very few histories who flew these missions her decision to share are as compelling as the are among the highlights Jewish story. To receive of the film. compelling twentieth this award from Taube century Jewish Philanthropies is especially In 2018, Grossman wrote, narratives through the meaningful, not only because produced and directed a widely accessible art they have been so supportive powerful hybrid documentary/ of my work, but because we dramatic feature about the form of feature-length share our deep commitment secret archives of the Warsaw documentary film. to the Jewish people in all its Ghetto during World War II, tion of Auschwitz-Birkenau messy and beautiful complexity and which were assembled by the Soviet Red Army. and diversity.” under the leadership of historian Emanuel Ringelblum. The film, Said Tad Taube, “Roberta Grossman initially considered Who Will Write Our History, Grossman has given the world pursuing a doctorate in history was executive produced by a treasure trove of Jewish and embarking on an academic Nancy Spielberg and is based historical narratives that enrich career, but ultimately regarded on the acclaimed scholarly our understanding of our filmmaking, and especially work of the same title written history and deepen our sense documentaries, as a more by historian Samuel Kassow of cultural pride.” effective way to engage with and published in 2007. historical subjects and convey Upon receiving the Award, historical knowledge to broad Taube Philanthropies co- Grossman stated: “Receiving and diverse audiences. The sponsored the Discovery this award is deeply gratifying, committee that unanimously Channel’s global broadcast in part because it has allowed selected her for the 2020 award of Who Will Write Our me to step back and see that commends her decision to share History in commemoration there is an observable arc, these compelling twentieth of International Holocaust a body of work that I’ve century Jewish narratives Remembrance Day, January created with my long-time through the widely accessible 27, 2020, which marked the collaborators. I believe that film art form of feature-length 75th anniversary of the libera- is the most powerful medium in documentary film. n

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 43 OF SPECIAL INTEREST Mississippi. Yiddish Translation of Alyssa Quint 1930s Play Finds New Relevancee

Editors’ Note: The following head after his trip to the is an excerpt from a longer United States: article published in July 2020 in Tablet magazine, I itched to write something for which the author with a social theme ... serves as editor of the Having just been [in history section. America], I had attempted to represent in dramatic form a ississippi was the tragic event, the incident of M brainchild of the Polish Scottsboro. The tragic lynch- Jewish intellectual Mikhl sentence of nine black boys. Vaykhert (Michał Weichert, The event is well known 1890–1967), who spearheaded to everyone. But the living an acting studio and avant- drama is so big, that my garde theater called Yung first attempts at capturing Teatr in inter-war Poland, it struck me as lifeless ... and Leyb Malakh (né Leyb But seeing the youth of Zaltsman, 1894–1936), an Yung Teatr ... brought the established Yiddish playwright Scottsboro tragedy back to by the time of their meeting in my head. 1933. It was not long after the By 1933 Vaykhert was equally men had met that they decided A poster advertising the 100th enthralled by the Scottsboro to work on a theatrical project performance of Mississippi. Courtesy of YIVO. trials, spurred, in part, by the about the Scottsboro Boys, attention they had attracted nine African Americans falsely United States of America from writers and artists. In accused of raping two white (CPUSA) and the International Europe, the Scottsboro Boys women in 1931 in Scottsboro, Defense Alliance (also a had become a focal point of Alabama. The Scottsboro Communist organization) took anti-American sentiment on the Boys (ages nine to twenty) on the defense of their case. part of Communist agitators; were initially sentenced to the string of injustices inflicted death, but the case was retried Malakh, in an essay published so publicly on the Scottsboro numerous times throughout in the Warsaw magazine Boys all but confirmed the the 1930s, during which time Literarishe Bleter, recounts sanity of the Communist cause. the Communist Party of the that the topic lodged in his

44 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 For many, the unwillingness While it raises the banner The play goes far in of more mainstream political humanizing its subject and of class conflict, the play organizations to match the conveying a sense of what outrage on the Left was itself also shows racism in its producers imagined as outrageous. authentic African American different forms and from culture. One character, for The Scottsboro affair was different angles. instance, is a former decorated an apt illustration of the soldier in the US war against struggles of the working class sheriff reveals that the white the Sandinistas, while (more than, say, race) as the men had called the station, another’s life was shaped Depression and its epidemic accusing the boys inside of by the Great Migration of of joblessness created the raping the women. The sheriff African Americans and now economic circumstances can barely restrain the mob lives in Harlem. Moreover, of the boys’ arrest. Malakh as it cries: “Pull them out! the script is embedded with explores this in Act I. A rather Lynch the devils!” The women an array of original Yiddish long first act takes place in a corroborate the white men’s songs by Henekh Kon moving freight car where the stories until, after a trial puts (1890–1970), who composed African American young men the boys and men on death in diverse musical traditions, and boys (Malakh reduced row, one of the women retracts including jazz, gospel, and the number of boys from nine her account. to seven) get to know each African American spirituals. other as they travel between While it raises the banner of One makes reference to Chattanooga and Memphis, class conflict, the play also the enslavement of African revealing their backstories to shows racism in different forms people, and another refers to the audience. It is 1931, and and from different angles. In one the part former slaves took in they sneak on and off a slow scene, for instance, members of the Union army fighting in the moving freight train, looking the racist Lily White Movement Civil War. for day labor. Tensions rise lavish gifts and sympathy on the Other aspects of the play after the conductor (not boys’ female accusers, and in have not aged as well and, by knowing about the presence of another scene one of the boys today’s standards, might feel stowaways) sneaks two white in prison recalls the ugly racist clichéd, examples of cultural women into the same boxcar. chant of the Ku Klux Klan as appropriation, or worse. They rise all the more when, a he was forced to watch them (The dated word “Negro” few stops later, two white men set a man on fire. Yet another appears frequently, and racist enter the car. The white men scene sheds light on the social characters use the n-word.) get into a fistfight with one of reverberations of this tragedy: A cabaret singer in a Harlem the African American boys, a woman calls over an African nightclub sings a Yiddish- who throw them off the train. American boy to shine her shoes language song described in When the train reaches its on the streets of New York. He the script as “half-jazz, half final stop, an angry lynch mob can’t, he replies, as he doesn’t sentimental” that begins, surrounds the boxcar and the want to be accused of rape.

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 45 “I am a brown Venus from Atlanta.” Actors wore black make-up with the clear objective to become their subjects and even, perhaps, to educate the mostly Jewish and Polish audience as to what an African American actually looks like. The play hardly meets today’s standards of political correctness. Nonetheless, it sought empathy with and curiosity about the texture and history of African American life and it succeeded in invoking this from its audience. As the journalist Y. Gotlib wrote after seeing a performance of Mississippi in Kraków:

The greatest wickedness of our time is the relationship of white people to black people ... There is a way to put it in Jewish terms: shfikhes damim, murder, literally, the spilling of blood. The white spills the blood of the black, not in Sketches by the artist Felix Fridman of some of the actors of Mississippi in costume as published in Literarishe Bleter. one fell swoop, but drop by Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Press via The National Library of Israel. drop, with every gesture and every glance. When one is https://www.tabletmag.com/ the Modern Yiddish Theater in America one often thinks sections/arts-letters/articles/ (2019), a finalist for the to oneself that the heart of a yiddish-mississippi-mikhl- National Jewish Book Award, n black man must resemble a vaykhert. and is a co-editor of two gaping wound. forthcoming volumes on the Allysa Quint is the Leon Yiddish theater: Women For the full version of this Charney Visiting Fellow at on the Yiddish Stage and a essay, please visit: Yeshiva University. She is critical edition of the Yiddish the author of The Rise of operetta Shulamis.

46 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 The March of Remembrance: 77th Anniversary Commemoration Aleksandra Sajdak of the Treblinka Uprising

he 2020 March of Remembrance took an Tunusual course this year. Due to the pandemic, it was done individually. On July 22, the director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Professor Paweł Śpiewak, together with the Deputy Program Director, Anna Duńczyk- Szulc, laid a wreath at the

Umschlagplatz Monument. Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich and Professor Paweł Śpiewak at the Among those present were the Umschlagplatz Monument in Warsaw during the March of Remembrance in Israeli ambassador to Poland, July 2020. Courtesy of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. Alexander Ben Zvi, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael The first Ribbons of between seventy and 100 Schudrich, the Director Remembrance with the names people survived the uprising, of the POLIN Museum of of murdered Warsaw Jews compared with the the History of Polish Jews, were pinned on the art approximately 800,000 people Zygmunt Stępiński, and the installation. who were killed at Treblinka Vice-President of the Institute from 1942 to 1943. A few On August 2, 1943, prisoners of National Remembrance, weeks later, the Germans of the Treblinka death camp Mateusz Szpytma. destroyed the camp and launched a long-prepared removed almost all traces of Prof. Śpiewak walked through uprising. They overpowered or its existence. the area of the former Warsaw killed many of the Ukrainian Ghetto to 20 Chłodna Street, guards, set fire to the barracks, On August 2, 2020, where Adam Czerniaków, and blew up a petrol tanker, ceremonies in the Treblinka President of the Judenrat, causing a fire in the camp. camp museum commemorated lived until his suicide on the About 200 of the 800 uprising the rebellion. Spokespersons second day of the Great participants escaped to from state and local Deportation in July 1942. freedom. It is estimated that authorities, diplomats, and

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 47 representatives of the “This is a place that Today, none of the survivors surrounding towns paid tribute speaks in silence. of the camp are alive. And to all those murdered in the this puts even more former death camp. Rabbi Otherwise it is unable responsibility on our Oriel Zaretsky from Warsaw to speak.” shoulders. It obliges us to opened the ceremony with the —Paweł Śpiewak, document the historical truth El Male Rachamim prayer. Director of the Jewish and pass it on to those who Historical Institute will come after us. But the Actor Waldemar Barwiński memory of Treblinka’s hell read an excerpt from the should read in full, should is not only about recalling report of Abram Jakub come back to. This is a place the facts about this Krzepicki (a fugitive from that speaks in silence.” unimaginable crime. It is Treblinka), which was written A letter from Prime Minister also a reflection on its by Rachel Auerbach of the Mateusz Morawiecki was sources, a reflection on the Oneg Shabat group in 1942. read by Dr. Edward destructive power of hatred, Prof. Śpiewak then added, Kopówka, Director of the on the contempt for man and “This is a book that everyone Treblinka Museum: his inalienable rights, on

Commemoration of the 77th anniversary of the prisoners’ revolt in Treblinka, held on August 2, 2020. Courtesy of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute.

48 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 what was the basis of the live to see the moment when twentieth-century the authorities will finally catastrophe of our grant permission to start civilization. work. Maybe next year I will be able to witness this Due to the coronavirus event with you ... Thank you pandemic, fewer people took all again for not forgetting part in the commemorations about Treblinka. See you than in previous years. Ada soon! Krystyna Willenberg, widow of Samuel Willenberg (who At the end of the ceremony, died in 2016 and was the last prayers were said, wreaths participant of the Treblinka were laid, and candles uprising), could not attend. were lit. n Prof. Śpiewak read her letter: Aleksandra Sajdak, an Your presence and the assistant editor at Gazeta, is ceremony taking place will Senior Program Manager and not allow the memory of Genealogist for the Taube Treblinka to be forgotten. Center for the Renewal of For me, Treblinka is a holy Jewish Life in Poland cemetery with the ashes of Foundation/Taube Jewish my mother and numerous Heritage Tours, and members of my family. researcher at the Genealogy Here, too, my late husband Department of the Emanuel endured ten months. His last Ringelblum Jewish Historical dream was to build a Institute. She is a doctoral magnificent building worthy candidate at the Polish of this place, in which you Academy of Sciences. can imagine everything that happened here. Because in Treblinka, during and after the uprising, all traces of what happened here were obliterated. My husband did not live to see this moment, and I am not so young either, but I hope that I will

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 49 Szczepan Twardoch’s Król Adapted for Polish TV

ans of Szczepan Twardoch’s novel FThe King of Warsaw (reported in the spring 2020 issue of Gazeta) don’t have long to wait to catch it on the small screen. Krόl (Polish for “king”) will premiere its first season of eight episodes on Friday, November 6, on the channel and streaming service Canal+. The series, starring Michał Żurawski and directed by Jan P. Matuszyński, follows Jakub Szapiro, a Jewish boxer-slash-mob enforcer in 1930s Warsaw. As Szapiro navigates the city’s seedy underbelly and the Jewish boxing circuit, the competing factions of socialists and Szczepan Twardoch’s Król has been adapted for fascists tear apart Warsaw’s Polish TV. Promotional materials. political landscape. In the Courtesy of Canal+ Polska. trailer, included below, we and nationalism that are front- catch glimpses of still-existing and-center in contemporary synagogues and of political Poland as well. rallies featuring symbols like the falanga, a green-and-white You can watch a trailer at flag still used by the Polish https://www.youtube.com/ far-right today. The series watch?v=PYtzDb5rfwE. promises compelling, lurid Viewer discretion is advised action while engaging with for sex and violence. n issues of identity, ethnicity,

50 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 POEM Editors’ Note: With this issue, Gazeta introduces a new section of poetry. We welcome submissions for review or poem recommendations. Please note, that while all submissions and suggestions are welcomed, we cannot reply to each query. . Stara Bóznica The Old Temple By Julian Kornhauser b Cicho Silent pusto empty złoty świecznik błyszczy the golden candleholder gleams jak oko lisa like the eye of a fox niewidzialny rebe an invisible rebbe śpiewa beztrosko sings untroubled jego śpiew unosi się powoli his song rises slowly jak dym like smoke pejsaty chłopiec a sidelocked boy jingł wus mot em ungeszługn yingl vus mot em umgeshlugn śmieje się z obrazu laughs down at me from a painting wyciera krople krwi z czoła wipes the drops of blood from his forehead moi dziadkowie my grandfathers kiwają do mnie z bimy bow to me from the bima jeszcze nie wiedzą że im korona they do not yet know that their crown spadnie na głowę will fall onto their heads przykryty tałesem covered in my tallit ze srebrną atarą na ustach its silver atarah on my lips krzyczę I cry out wołam call out ale nikt mnie nie słyszy but no one hears me ulica Szeroka Szeroka Street jest coraz węższa is becoming narrower and narrower nie przecisnę się tędy już nigdy I’ll never manage to squeeze through that way again

Julian Kornhauser, born in Gliwice in 1946 to Jewish and Catholic parents, is a leading voice in contemporary Polish poetry. He was a key member of the Polish New Wave, a group of poets who stood in opposition to Communist authorities and rejected the period’s literary trends. He is the father of the contemporary poet and critic Jakub Kornhauser and Agata Duda, the First Lady of Poland.

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 51 OBITUARIES

Ada Rapoport-Albert Marcin Wodziński (1945–2020)

da Rapoport-Albert, an British, even if ironic about Israeli-British historian British self-illusions. Educated Awho died in London on June 18, at University College 2020, was exceptional in many London, she defended her ways. Ada bridged oppositions doctoral dissertation under in a way nobody else did. She the supervision of Joseph was Israeli and British, and a G. Weiss and later Chimen woman who became a guru in Abramsky. Ada remained loyal the male-dominated field of to the memory of her teachers, Jewish religious studies. She highlighting her intellectual was an intellectual historian roots in British academia, and who contributed significantly to eventually situated her whole the social revaluation of Jewish academic career with her alma mystical movements. In a world Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert, mater. In 2002, at the peak of Photo by David Assaf. of oppositions, she was a model Wikimedia Commons. her career, she became the head of integrity. of the Department of Hebrew for the spirituality of her and Jewish Studies at UCL, Born in 1945 in Mandate historical protagonists and a and led it until retirement ten Palestine and raised in Tel sincere curiosity about their years later, turning it into one of Aviv, she was proudly Israeli, worlds. Her work displayed the world’s leading centers of sun-addicted, and deeply intimacy with Jewish history Jewish studies. immersed in Israeli culture and culture, in particular with with its mixture of anti-clerical Ada was a very sharp critic, Hebrew humanism. It was also, secularism and fascination for reviewer, and adviser, who however, deeply committed all things religious. Her studies was never afraid to point to the deepest calling of emerged from this fascination. out inconsistencies, weak historiography, namely the Sincere in her secular outlook, points, or errors of facts and interest in things unlike us she never turned her studies into interpretation; she was straight and the recognition of the an identity quest for religious to the point, clear and precise. complexities of past and distant roots from a postmodern or Co-editing texts with Ada was a peoples and cultures. a New Age angle. But, at the lesson of modesty and scholarly same time, her scholarship Together with her intense rigor, a lesson I will never was always filled with a deep “Israeli” character, she forget. But even more than understanding and appreciation remained quintessentially rigorous, she was generous.

52 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Her sharp criticism was never Virtually every one cornerstone for the study of cruel. Tenderness, according Jewish religious experience for of her articles turned to the writer Olga Tokarczuk, many decades to come. is “the most modest form of out to be a paradigm- Ada educated a number of love,” and that was her way changing contribution doctoral students from Poland, of transforming academia into some of whom, most notably a better place. As one of her to the field…[S]he Wojciech Tworek, returned close friends and colleagues will be remembered to Poland and contribute now noticed, she was perhaps the to the international success of only scholar without enemies. for her scholarship Polish centers of Jewish studies. Her criticism was always deconstructing the range Others continue academic matched with deep interest and careers abroad. Ada also eagerly tenderness. She spent hours and of cognitive stereotypes cooperated with Polish scholars, days on end reading and editing created within and co-edited volumes and co- her students’ and colleagues’ authored texts, thus extending writings. I remain deeply about Hasidism. the network of academic grateful for so many big and cooperation to many of us. small amendments she brought on Bratslav and Habad I vividly remember her to my own work. Hasidism, the role of the tsadik, on the gender structure assistance in navigating the Ada was also a model for of Sabbatianism, and of the academic world that she the golden rule that “less is role of women in the Hasidic extended to me and so many more.” Even before I met her, movement. others. Without her support I had been deeply impressed and intercession I might have by her rare quality of writing Most of all, she will be never published my first book on only important subjects. remembered for her scholarship in English. More than that, her In the academic world, where deconstructing the range scholarship will remain with us the rule is “publish-or-perish,” of cognitive stereotypes here in Poland not only in its Ada managed to publish created within and about intellectual realm, but also in relatively few books and Hasidism. Never satisfied the most material way, as she articles. For the university with dominant assumptions, donated her library to the Taube administrators, this might Ada revolutionized our Department of Jewish Studies have been an issue. But for the understanding of much of at the University of Wrocław. scholars of Jewish religion, Jewish religious life in Eastern (See my article with Wojciech this established a golden Europe. She demonstrated Tworek in this issue of Gazeta.) standard. Virtually every how to look critically, how to Ada was a model for so many one of her articles turned out combine wealth of evidence of us in so many ways. We will to be a paradigm-changing with clarity of narration and miss her. n contribution to the field. Ada nuance of argumentation with will be remembered for her boldness of argument. Her pioneering studies on the volume, Hasidic Studies, will social structure of Hasidism, no doubt be a foundational

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 53 Tadeusz Kuz´min´ski (1955–2020) Jewish Heritage Europe Creator of the Living Shtetl Museum

adeusz Kuźmiński, The development of the City who rebuilt a wooden on the Trail of Borderland Tsynagogue and created a Cultures is overseen by the “living shtetl” open-air Biłgoraj XXI Foundation, museum in southeast Poland, which was established in has died after a long illness. 2005. During a visit to the He was 65. Kuźmiński was complex in 2016, Kuźmiński a businessman and local told Ruth Ellen Gruber, philanthropist in Biłgoraj, a Director of Jewish Heritage town that was a thriving Jewish Europe (JHE), that each center before the Holocaust building replica was based but a place where no Jews on old photographs found in live today. He built a full- pre-war shtetls. One building scale version of the destroyed on the square houses a small wooden synagogue of Wolpa museum exhibition space (now in Belarus), standing in dedicated to the Nobel Prize- a replica Jewish marketplace Tadeusz Kuźmiński outside the winning Yiddish author Isaac replica of the Wolpa synagogue aimed at anchoring a cultural- in 2016. Bashevis Singer, who spent commercial-residential Courtesy of Jewish Heritage Europe. his childhood in Biłgoraj. development designed to evoke “He was a wonderful and Adapted with permission from a pre-World War II village. very special person, a Jewish Heritage Europe (JHE) Kuźmiński called his creative dreamer,” remarked https://jewish-heritage-europe. project “City on the Trail of Emil Majuk, project manager eu/2020/07/19/poland-rip- Borderland Cultures,” and his of the “Shtetl Routes” tadeusz-kuzminski/. n dream was to create a complex initiative at the Grodzka that reflected the multicultural Gate NN Theatre in Lublin. character of pre-war Poland “His passing away is a great that would serve as a cultural loss for the Lublin region. and commercial venue and a I hope that there will be some tourist attraction. people to continue the work he started in Biłgoraj.”

54 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Maria Janion Antony Polonsky (December 24, 1926–August 23, 2020)

aria Janion was a successor, the University literary scholar who of Gdańsk. She continued Mspecialized in the analysis to work at the Institute of of the romantic literary Literary Research, where she tradition in Poland and was made docent in 1957, Europe. She was the author until her retirement in 1996. or co-author of more than In her initial studies of twenty books as well as the romanticism, she stressed its editor of a large number of character as an intellectual key Polish romantic texts. revolution which, by its break While initially she stressed with classicism and its highly the liberating and redemptive limited view of tradition, character of the works of the Maria Janion. made possible a new view great Polish romantic poets, Courtesy of Taube Philanthropies. of humankind, nature, and she became increasingly history. Central to this was aware of the problems which the University of Łódź where the importance assigned martyrological and messianic she came under the influence to individuals, each with views of the Polish past have of Stefan Żółkiewski, a key their own unique character. caused for the creation of a figure in the radical literary The loss of independence pluralistic, open, and tolerant weekly Kuźnica, in which she made this romantic view society in Poland. She was, published articles and reviews. of the world particularly indeed, one of the most In 1948 she was appointed attractive to Poles, who were eloquent advocates for liberal to the Institute of Literary drawn to the new type of and democratic values in the Research of the Polish hero which it established country. Academy of Sciences, and in 1951 became an assistant and the way it validated Born in Mońki in Podlasie, professor (asystenka) at the alternative national visions northwest of Białystok, she University of Warsaw where of culture. As she argued, the grew up in Vilna where she she obtained her master’s “romantic-symbolic” style was an active member of the degree in the same year. of culture came to dominate Home Army during World Subsequently she also taught Polish intellectual life in War II. Subsequently, she at the Higher Pedagogical the nineteenth century, a studied Polish literature at School in Gdańsk and its dominance which, unlike the

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 55 situation elsewhere in Europe, Janion was strongly nature of the Communist continued throughout the attracted to the use which regime in Poland. She had twentieth century and which joined the Polish United has not been successfully could be made of the Workers’ Party (PZPR) challenged even in the present Polish romantic tradition in 1949 but was quickly day. In its Polish variant, this disillusioned. Her lectures to challenge what she perspective endorsed armed were very popular among insurrection in support of increasingly saw as the students, and in the wake national independence and oppressive and stultifying of the repression which stressed the messianic and followed the events of martyrological elements in nature of the Communist March 1968 she resigned the nation’s history. Janion regime in Poland. from the PZPR and was set out these views in her first dismissed from her position book, an analysis of the work reasons for the spell it cast, at the Higher Pedagogical of the romantic poet Lucjan particularly in Poland, and School in Gdańsk. This Siemieński, in the Antologia the bizarre character of many did not slow her, and in the romantycznej poezji krajowej of its manifestations, such 1970s she was one of the 1831–1863 (Anthology of as vampirism, whose Polish founders of the independent Polish Romantic Poetry manifestations she elucidated, Association for Academic 1831–1863) which she edited including the use made of Courses (Towarzystwo with Maria Grabowska, and this topic by Mickiewicz. Kursów Naukowych—the in her studies of the three Although her principal interest Flying University) and was principal Polish romantic was in Polish literature she involved in the organization poets, Zygmunt Krasiński, also wrote perceptively of unofficial teaching on the Adam Mickiewicz, and Juliusz on Goethe, Rousseau, history of Polish literature. In Słowacki. She showed how Chateaubriand, William Blake, the relatively liberal Gierek much these writers, widely and Gunther Grass. Her last years, she was appointed to regarded as antediluvian and essay was was devoted to the Philological Faculty of lacking relevance, had to Goethe’s concept of Bildung the University of Gdańsk, offer the contemporary reader. (self-cultivation). She was where she received the Perhaps her most important also passionately interested title of professor (Profesor work in this field is Gorączka in film. zwyczajny) in 1973. She romantyczna (The Romantic Initially, Janion was strongly strongly supported the Fever), an investigation interested in using the Polish Solidarity movement and in of the complexity of the romantic tradition to challenge August 1980 was one of sixty- phenomena of romanticism, what she increasingly saw as four intellectuals who wrote which explains both the the oppressive and stultifying an open letter supporting the

56 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 strike in the Lenin Shipyard. particularly alarmed by what successfully, to use Edward In December 1981 she she described in a letter to the Said’s concept of Orientalism participated in the Congress Congress of Polish Culture to demonstrate that in the of Polish Culture, whose in October 2016 as “the Middle Ages, Poles had been proceedings were interrupted centrally organized return to effectively colonized by the by the establishment of martial the ideas of the played-out Roman Catholic Church. In law. In her address, she epigones of romanticism—a 2012, in an extended interview, appealed to the participants canon made up of national Janion. Transe—traumy— in what she described as the and religious stereotypes transgresje (Janion. Trances— “national uprising” (narodowy and centered on Smoleńsk Dreams—Transgressions) zryw) to make use of its as a new messianic myth.” she openly proclaimed her energy to facilitate a major Much of her work was now gay identity. Now in her intellectual transformation. devoted to the “posthumous eighties, she wrote strongly in life” of Polish romanticism support of Polish feminism, This moving speech, which and to the work of such both political and literary. An forms the core of Agnieszka writers as Tadeusz Konwicki, important product of this was Arnold’s film Bunt Janion Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, her Kobiety i duch inności (Janion’s Revolt, 2005), and Jarosław Rymkiewicz. (Women and the Spirit of was a reflection of her She became a prominent Otherness), an examination growing awareness of the member of the Society for of the lives of a number negative consequences of Humanism and Independent of women and the way that the dominance in Polish life Ethics (Stowarzyszenia na women have been transformed of the romantic view of the Rzecz Humanizmu i Etyki into symbols in literary world with its glorification Niezależnej) and of the Polish works and in the collective of martyrology. As she put Writer’s Association and the imagination. it, “We have not succeeded Polish PEN Club. Between in building our community She also fought against 1997 and 2004 she served on on civic values, but rather on homophobia, racism, and the jury of the Nike Award, national myths.” anti-Semitism, about which holding the office of chair she wrote prolifically. Many After the negotiated end of between 2000 and 2004. of these central tenets are communism in 1989, she She became a strong critic found in Do Europy tak, ale became actively involved in of the Polish Catholic razem z naszymi umarłymi the promotion of the values Church. In her Niesamowita (To Poland, Yes, But with of civil society and stressed Słowiańczyzna: fantazmaty Our Dead), in which her main that such a society would literatury (Uncanny Slavdom: argument is that if Poland is require the romantic paradigm Literary Phantasms), she to become culturally part of to be transformed. She was attempted, not wholly Europe, it will have to come

GAZETA SUMMER/FALL 2020 n 57 to terms with its own complex In her last publication, past, including its legacy of she again underlined anti-Semitism. In her last publication, Bohater, spisek, the danger inherent śmierć: wykłady żydowskie, in the heroic myth (Hero, Conspiracy, and Death: with its alarmingly The Jewish Lectures), she again underlined the danger attractive force. inherent in the heroic myth with its alarmingly attractive The obituary gives only a force, and set out to dismantle superficial account of the the intellectual roots of Polish complexity and richness of anti-Semitism through an the work produced by Maria analysis of how Holocaust Janion. It is unfortunate that issues have been discussed in so little of it is currently memoirs and literary works. available in English, and one only hope that her death will Janion’s students were stimulate greater efforts to devoted to her, referring translate her most important to her as “the master” works. She was one of the (mistrzyni). On the occasion great figures in Poland in of her seventieth birthday the late twentieth and early in 1996, she was presented twenty-first centuries and with a Festschrift with the clearly has an ongoing title Romantyzm. Janion. relevance in the struggle to Fantazmaty (Romanticism. establish a pluralistic and Janion. Fantasms), edited by open society in Poland. One Dorota Siwicka and Marek can only hope that her many Bieńczyk. In 2006, on the pupils and admirers will carry occasion of her eightieth on her work and propagate birthday, her pupils produced her values. n Księga Janion (The Book of Janion), which contained Antony Polonsky, PhD, a detailed bibliography of is Chief Historian at the the many theses she had POLIN Museum of the supervised, organized into a History of Polish Jews. genealogical tree with more than a thousand entries.

58 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 2 Window in Kraków featuring promotional materials from the Galicia Jewish Museum’s exhibition Szancer, Imagine That!. Photograph by Paulina Banasik. Used with permission.

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