Volume 28, No. 2 Gazeta Spring/Summer 2021

Wilhelm Sasnal, First of January (Side), 2021, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation,

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, William Zeisel, LaserCom Design, and Taube Center for Jewish Life and Learning

CONTENTS Message from Irene Pipes ...... 4 Message from Tad Taube and Shana Penn ...... 5 FEATURES Lucy S. Dawidowicz, Diaspora Nationalist and Holocaust Historian ...... 6 From Captured State to Captive Mind: On the Politics of Mis-Memory Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz ...... 12

EXHIBITIONS New Legacy Gallery at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Tamara Sztyma ...... 16 Wilhelm Sasnal: Such a Landscape. Exhibition at POLIN Museum ...... 20 Sweet Home Sweet. Exhibition at Galicia Jewish Museum Jakub Nowakowski ...... 21 A Grandson’s Reflection onSweet Home Sweet Adam Schorin ...... 24 REPORTS Kraków to Stop the Sale of “Lucky Jews” Magda Rubenfeld Koralewska ...... 25 Changes in Governance at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Antony Polonsky ...... 27 CONFERENCES History of the Jewish Workers’ Alliance—the Bund Antony Polonsky ...... 28 Symposium in Honor of Professor Antony Polonsky Michael Fleming, François Guesnet, and Christine Schmidt ...... 30 “What’s New, What’s Next?” Online Conference at POLIN Museum ...... 32 International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) ...... 33 “Restoring Jewish Cemeteries of Poland” ...... 33 ANNOUNCEMENTS BOOKS Warsaw Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation. By Katarzyna Person ...... 34 Islands of Memory. By Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs ...... 35 The Stage as a Temporary Home. By Diego Rotman ...... 35 The Rebellion of the Daughters. By Rachel Manekin ...... 36

2 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Hasidism, Suffering and Renewal: The Prewar and Holocaust Legacy of Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira. Edited by Don Seeman, Daniel Reiser, and Ariel Evan Mayse ...... 36 The Touch of an Angel. By Henryk Schönker ...... 37 Tale of a Niggun. By Elie Wiesel ...... 37 The Towns of Death: The of Jews by Their Neighbors. By Mirosław Tryczyk ...... 38 Ashkenazi Herbalism. By Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel ...... 38 The August Trials: and Postwar Justice in Poland By Andrew Kornbluth ...... 39 Philo-Semitic Violence: Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives By Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski ...... 39 AWARDS Barbara Engelking Receives 2021 Irena Sendler Memorial Award ...... 40 Jósef Hen Receives Lifetime Achievement Award ...... 41 IN BRIEF Stanford Libraries Receives International Military Tribunal Nuremberg Trial Archives ...... 42 Jewish Historical Institute Dedicates Jan Jagielski Heritage Documentation Department ...... 43 GEOP Announcements ...... 44 New Foundation to Support LGBTQ+ Communities in Poland ...... 46 OF SPECIAL INTEREST The Rediscovered Caricature Art of J.D. Kirszenbaum-Duvdivani Nathan Diament ...... 47 POEM The Tale of a Niggun (Excerpt) Elie Wiesel ...... 49 OBITUARIES Roman Kent Antony Polonsky ...... 50 Jan Jagielski Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute ...... 53 Faye Schulman Tressa Berman ...... 54 Marek Web Joanna Lisek ...... 56 Jewlia Eisenberg Naomi Seidman ...... 57 Teresa Żabińska-Zawadzki ...... 59

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 3 President, American Association Message from for Polish-Jewish Studies

Irene Pipes Founder of Gazeta

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am very happy that the POLIN Museum in Warsaw is again open and very much hope to be able to visit it in the near future.

We have continued to take advantage of the wonders of technology to carry on our important work. In my last message I described the opening of the Legacy gallery at POLIN Museum which honors Polish Jews who have made a major contribution to the life of Poland and the wider world. A series of online events has marked its opening. Among these are the series of interviews “Meet the Family” Irene Pipes in which Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at the Museum, discussed the lives of prominent Polish Jews with members of their families.

Antony Polonsky, Chief Historian of the Global Education Outreach Program of POLIN Museum, has organized a series of online discussions of recent books on the history of Jews in Poland, intended to lead up to the international conference “What’s New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies” to be held at POLIN this October. Among the most recent books to be discussed are Nancy Sinkoff’s, Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of (featured in this issue in an interview conducted by Professor Samuel Kassow), Jeffrey Shandler’s Yiddish: Biography of a Language, and others.

One notable event also described in this issue was the online symposium held in honor of Professor Antony Polonsky on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Its theme was “The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: Sources, Memory, Politics,” and it brought together established and junior scholars to review the state of knowledge on this complex and disputed topic. The importance of this sort of exchange is made clear by Tomasz Tadeusz Kuncewicz’s article, which clearly shows the complexities of history and memory to meet the challenges that face Poland today.

I hope you are all well and that we shall soon be able to meet in person.

With best wishes,

Irene Pipes President

4 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Message from Chairman and Executive Director, Tad Taube and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture Shana Penn

Two of our lead stories in this issue of Gazeta address a very serious issue: intolerance and its impact on Jewish communities from the end of World War I until today. Our first story is an interview conducted by Samuel Kassow with Nancy Sinkoff, the biographer of Lucy Dawidowicz, arguably one of the most influential Jewish writers since World War II. In her most famous book, , Dawidowicz argued that anti-Semitism was the driving force in Hitler’s worldview and an essential part of his European war. She also argued that Poles themselves had a strong anti-Semitic streak, as she witnessed first-hand on a visit to Vilna in 1938. Tad Taube Sinkoff concludes her interview with questions that Davidowicz’s writings pose for today’s readers. “How do we understand the penetration of intolerance in a society? Who’s responsible for it?”

These are exactly the kind of questions that dominate our second lead story, by Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz, a legal studies scholar from Poland known for his human rights scholarship and advocacy. His article focuses on the current Polish government’s efforts to define Poles and Poland in a way that imposes a single national narrative. Unfortunately, explains Koncewicz, that ultranationalist narrative discourages, even punishes, the unbiased examination of Poland’s complicated and often painful history, including the relations between gentiles and Jews. To Sinkoff’s query of “Who’s Shana Penn responsible” for the “penetration of intolerance in a society?” Koncewicz has a direct and sobering answer.

Both of our lead stories urge the importance of maintaining an open and objective public and scholarly dialogue as a way of curbing intolerance. And this, in turn, flourishes best in a democratic nation animated by civility and the freedom to speak frankly about truth and justice. We hope you will find that this issue of Gazeta helps to advance this critical discussion.

Tad Taube and Shana Penn Chairman and Executive Director

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 5 FEATURE ARTICLES Lucy S. Dawidowicz (1915–90), Diaspora Nationalist and Holocaust Historian Samuel Kassow Interviews Nancy Sinkoff About Her Award-Winning Book

ditors’ Note: This Polish Republic, to spend a interview has been year as a research fellow at the Eadapted from a conversation YIVO Institute. She returned between Professors to New York during the war NancySinkoff and Samuel years, working closely with Kassow on Sinkoff’s award- refugee scholars. She went winning book, From Left to back to Europe, to post-war Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, occupied Germany, in both The New York Intellectuals the American and the British and the Politics of Jewish zones. After fifteen months History (Wayne State in two very different areas of University Press, 2020). the occupation, she returned Sinkoff and Kassow spoke to New York. She quite on the webinar series literally was transnational Encounters, co-hosted by the in her peregrinations. Intellectually, she connected University of Massachusetts the Jews.’” What does that the US diasporic experience Amherst’s Institute for mean, and how does the back to Europe. She also Holocaust, Genocide, and approach relate to her diaspora connected what I call the Memory Studies, and the nationalism and to the long Jewish past in European Avraham Harman Research traditions of Jewish historical historiography to the post-war Institute of Contemporary writing that preceded her in American Jewish experience. Jewry at the Hebrew Europe? University of Jerusalem. The book covers all these See the full interview at: Sinkoff: Lucy Dawidowicz subjects and is sensitive https://www.youtube.com/ embodies transnationalism. to the long Jewish past, watch?v=gdvwgrpiW_Q. She was an American-born Dawidowicz’s present immigrant daughter raised Kassow: moment, and the context, Congratulations, in an intensely Jewish namely, the worlds of Yiddish Nancy Sinkoff, on a wonderful environment in inter-war scholarship, American Jewish book. Your book claims that . In 1938, she politics, and the transnational Dawidowicz argues “Jewish made a fateful decision to connections that she—and history must be written with go to Vilna, then within the Ahavat Yisrael I—would argue exist among , ‘love of boundaries of the Second

6 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Jews. She saw herself as Kassow: Can you discuss deeply connected to this her main contributions to entity called the transnational the history of the Holocaust? Jewish people. How do they stand up today, forty-five years after the Dawidowicz was informed publication of The War by the ideology known as Against the Jews? “diaspora nationalism,” or diaspora national identity, Sinkoff: Dawidowicz was which insists on the not Lucy Dawidowicz peoplehood of the Jews. The until January 1948. Born people themselves are the in 1915, her name was motor of their history. Their Lucy Schildkret, or Libe in religion, ideology, and politics Yiddish. In December 1947, all derive from their existence Professor Nancy Sinkoff. she returned to the United as a nation, which embodies a Nan Melville. Used with permission States, and at age thirty-three, sense of belonging to a people [Dawidowicz] connected after her two sojourns in with a long historic past. Europe, she married Szymon She was educated in diaspora what I call the long Dawidowicz, a refugee from nationalist institutions. Jewish past in European Warsaw who immigrated Starting in childhood, she to New York before the wrote in Yiddish, studied historiography to the Holocaust but lost his wife Yiddish literature, and many post-war American and children in the Warsaw of her teachers were great Ghetto. They had a wonderful Polish Jewish historians. Jewish experience. marriage. They did not have children, but she got a Polish Her diaspora nationalism ―Nancy Sinkoff surname, Dawidowicz. encouraged her to go to Vilna. they had come and which Diaspora nationalism infused Until the publication of the they cherished.” She was the Yiddishist ideologues Golden Tradition: Jewish taught to love Jews and with ahavat yisra’el/ahaves Life and Thought in Eastern Jewishness, to relish Jewish yisroyel (Heb. and Yid. love Europe in 1967, her anthology experience and creativity. of the Jewish people). In a of East European Jewish life, 1968 talk, she recalled that her This meant that in her she was relatively unknown. childhood teachers “wanted perspective the historian of The book that makes her to transmit what was viable of the Jews should acknowledge famous is the War Against East European Yiddish culture a commitment to the Jewish the Jews: 1933–1945. to their children, namely its people and care about it. It It’s still in print, which ambience, the mood, the spirit, was a form of nationalism is interesting because, in the values of the internal that privileged the belonging many ways, Dawidowicz Jewish society from which of the Jews to a people. has been disregarded or is

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 7 no longer significant to the war against the Jews was a historians who write on the distinct and deliberate war. Holocaust. Highly acclaimed The campaign to destroy the in 1975, it is known for its Jews was already a blueprint perspective on the causes in Hitler’s mind from the of the . She publication of . wrote that Hitler’s ideology That forms the first part of of anti-Semitism was a her book. linear steppingstone to the The second part, “The destruction of the Jews during Holocaust,” is about the the war. That concept is called Jewish communal response to “intentionalism.” the attack. In this regard, the When the book was re-issued book differs from the works in 1985, she wrote, “It has that had preceded it in English been my view, now widely because it emphasizes Jewish Lucy Schildkret, Hunter College shared, that hatred of the graduation, 1936. sources, Jewish historical Jews was Hitler’s central and Courtesy of Laurie Sapakoff agency, and the Jewish most compelling belief and collective will to live, which that it dominated his thoughts the gift that keeps on giving. is a reflection again of her and actions all his life. The Scholars are still arguing about diaspora nationalism. documents amply justify this. To what degree was anti- Kassow: Though the book my conclusion that Hitler Semitism the motor of Hitler’s has been superseded by other planned to murder the Jews ideology? Can modern anti- research, her discussion of in coordination with his plans Semitism be linked to earlier the Jews—especially of the to go to war for Lebensraum forms of anti-Jewish hatred? —brought the attention (living space) and to establish How influential was it among of the wider public to the fact the Thousand Year Reich. The the masses of German soldiers? that the ghettos were Jewish conventional war of conquest How important are ideas in communities and were worthy was to be waged parallel to, shaping historical change? of study. Outside of Israel, and was able to camouflage, How important are “great men the ghettos were not being the ideological war against the in history”? How important are studied, they were regarded Jews. In the end, as the war structures of society, socio- as holding pens for the death hurtled to its disastrous finale, economics, happenstance, camps. One issue that stands Hitler’s relentless fanaticism idiosyncrasy, etc.? out is Poland. Can you discuss in the racial ideological war Dawidowicz’s statement that her analysis of Poland, Polish- ultimately cost him victory in her views were widely shared Jewish relations in the inter- the conventional war.” is not true, but it represents war period especially, and the Among historians of the her position that, in contrast war period? Other historians, Holocaust, this paragraph is to conventional war, the such as Celia Heller, whose

8 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 book was entitled On the Edge system. Her view of Eastern of Destruction: Jews of Poland Europe was decisively shaped between the Two World Wars, by her anti-communism. saw Poland as inexorably Regarding the inter-war years, anti-Semitic and Jewish life as when Dawidowicz arrived in doomed from the onset of the Poland in 1938, she’s already Polish state’s independence reading about and after World War I. How did fascism. The Yiddish press Dawidowicz evaluate those reports the discrimination years in her memoir From That against Polish Jews. Still, it Place and Time? was better to be a Polish Jew Sinkoff: There are two parts in inter-war Poland than it to your question. First, what was to be a German Jew after is the “reality” of Polish- the rise of Nazism. There Jewish relations in the inter- were no Nuremberg Laws in war years? Second, how does Poland, even if anti-Semitism Dawidowicz remember that Lucy Schildkret in Vilna, August 1939. increased after the military Courtesy of Laurie Sapakoff when she writes her memoir hero Józef Piłsudski died in in 1989–90? The memoir is How do we understand 1935. Before that, anti-Jewish a late-in-life reflection on actions were present but were the important years of being the penetration of not instrumentalized through in Europe, returning to New intolerance in a society? the state, unlike in Nazi York, and the destruction of Germany. Ashkenazi Jewish civilization. Who’s responsible for Dawidowicz arrives in 1938, The book is poignant and it? I think the issues which we now know was the written with a great sense beginning of the end. The of loss. raised during Lucy S. drums of war are beating Lucy Dawidowicz is living Dawidowicz’s life will hard. She’s well aware in the Cold War period. She speak to people today. of anti-Jewish hatred and looked at Eastern Europe predations on the street and through the lens of the Cold ―Nancy Sinkoff in the university. But in 1938, War and the destruction of no one knew about Zyklon Jewish particularism, of underground in those societies. B gassings. The Celia Heller autonomous Jewish culture It was difficult to be publicly perspective, that Jews lived in the and in involved with autonomous on the edge of destruction, communist Poland. Jewish culture in Eastern gives you the false sense Europe. We knew later that that Jews woke up in August She didn’t have full access there were continuities of 1938 and rent their clothing to much that was happening Jewish identity under the Soviet in mourning.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 9 Lucy Schildkret and Szymon Dawidowicz, 1946. Courtesy of Laurie Sapakoff

A poignant part of Polish landscape. Jews felt among some historians to say Dawidowicz’s memoir that way, and they did so in that Polish anti-Semitism has describes going to see an Yiddish, in Hebrew, and in been greatly exaggerated. exhibit, Jews in Poland, Polish. The exhibit showed I hope that by spelling out, that CYSHO (Yid. Tsentral the enormous cultural and in small detail, what really yidishe shul organizatsye) political vitality. Some Jews happened, my book will help had prepared on Jewish life left if they could, but Poland to set the record straight.” in Poland, which opened was their home. Kassow: While there was with a map showing Jewish Dawidowicz, however, increasing anti-Semitism communal life everywhere. observed the discrimination, after Piłsudski died, Poland The Jews were an urban the anti-Jewish violence, the never passed a version of the majority in Poland; they were ghetto benches. Later, in an Nuremberg Laws. Once the everywhere. This exhibit was interview, she said—in her Polish pre-war government to show the doikeyt (Yid. typical forthright fashion— realized they needed the “hereness”), the relatedness, “It’s very fashionable now support of the Western the belonging of Jews to the

10 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 democracies, they had to put Nancy Sinkoff, PhD, is the on hold many restrictions that Academic Director of the they had intended to inflict Allen and Joan Bildner Center on Polish Jews. Many Polish for the Study of Jewish Life Jews, at the end of the 1930s, and Professor of Jewish were cautiously hoping for Studies and History at Rutgers new grounds within Polish University—New Brunswick. society. Dawidowicz made From 2014 to 2018, she no effort to learn Polish or to served as Rutgers University’s really understand the Poles. Director of the Center for I’m not apologizing for the European Studies. Poles, but in this I think she was strident and unable to Samuel D. Kassow, PhD, is understand some deeper things Charles H. Northam Professor that were going on within of History at Trinity College, Polish society. where he specializes in the Lucy Schildkret in Belsen. history of Ashkenazi Jewry. Sinkoff: I agree with your Courtesy of Laurie Sapakoff His groundbreaking book, comments 100 percent. She Who Will Write Our History? did not learn Polish. Her and because of the learning was adapted into an award- husband spoke Polish. One of of languages. What did it winning film in 2018. the reasons she could never mean for the average peasant forgive the Poles was deeply hearing a sermon chastising personal. First, the murder of the Jews versus a functionary her beloved mentors, Zelig in a bureaucracy? And Jan and Riva Kalmanovich, Gross put this question on who were like parents to the map again with his her. Second, the murder of famous book, Neighbors: Szymon’s daughter, who The Destruction of the Jewish was a ghetto fighter. And so, Community in Jedwabne, she was angry and embittered. Poland, about the murder of the Jews by their neighbors. One of the complexities of studying the relations of locals These are big questions. to anti-Jewish incitements How do we understand the is this divide, if you will, penetration of intolerance between governmental in a society? Who’s practices and from-the-ground responsible for it? I think attitudes. That’s part of what the issues raised during Lucy historians can do because of S. Dawidowicz’s life will the opening of the archives speak to people today. n

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 11 From Captured State to Captive Mind: Tomasz Tadeusz On the Politics of Mis-Memory Koncewicz

n loving memory of my the state capture that has late grandmother Czesława taken place in Poland since IStrąg, a Righteous Among the 2015. With the judiciary Nations, who taught me that and public media in tatters, in order to move forward, we the government is now must never forget about where implementing what I have called elsewhere a “politics we come from. of mis-memory” that seeks to Poland, March 2021 present one correct vision of history for all Poles. A court’s finding, only weeks ago, that two Polish Czesława and Maria in 1994. The most dangerous installment history professors are guilty Family Archives of Tomasz T.Koncewicz. of such politics came with Used with permission of defaming an individual the 2018 amendment to for activities during the the Law on the Institute of Holocaust, is not just a In a room where people National Remembrance, case brought to protect the unanimously maintain which criminalized perceived reputation of a relative. erroneous public statements Rather, we seem to be entering a conspiracy of silence, which assigned to the Polish unchartered territory, where one word of truth sounds nation any blame for crimes the long arm of the law committed by the Nazi becomes a method of settling like a pistol shot. invaders. Minister of Justice scores. In this case, the sacred ―Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Ziobro presented dignity of the Polish nation, Nobel Lecture (1980) the rationale as follows. The hidden under the argument of Polish government, he said, protecting the “good name” done and, ultimately, are we “took an important step in the of a person, overshadows ready to face it now, if ever? direction of creating stronger the need to have a robust legal instruments allowing us historical conversation about These questions face Poles to defend our rights, defend the fate of millions of often today. The defamation suit of the historical truth, and anonymous victims. Our focus the historians did not happen defend Poland’s good name on this one case runs the risk in a legal vacuum, nor can everywhere in the world.” He of obscuring a national debate we claim that we did not see vowed to prosecute all those about fundamental questions: it coming. Quite the contrary. who defame the Polish nation Who are we? What have we It follows from the logic of by these means.

12 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Even at its drafting stage, the split perception created “two law sparked an uproar over moral vocabularies, two sorts its breathtaking scope and the of reasoning, two different severity of its sanctions (up pasts. In this circumstance, to three years’ imprisonment) the uncomfortably confusing and has been criticized as recollection of things done yet another example of the by us to others during the ultranationalist revival in war … got conveniently Poland and the return of a lost.” Judt rightly points out right-wing revisionist history. the communists’ interest in Critics have pointed out the “flattering the recalcitrant possible dangers of limiting local population by inviting it free speech and of building to believe the fabrication now a martyrological narrative deployed on its behalf by the claiming that the world USSR—to wit, that central and does not understand how eastern Europe was an innocent much Poland and Poles Czesława Strąg and Rozalia victim of German assault.” have suffered. Kateganer (Maria Damaszek) during the war. Czesława decided to protect The retracted legislation The diplomatic fallout with Rozalia by having her baptized, with sends the signal that history the name of a Polish girl who was Israel that followed the law’s thought to have been sent to Siberia. is being instrumentalized entry into force saw the Family Archives of Tomasz T.Koncewicz. to serve a new vision of the government finally cave in to Used with permission past. Imposing or threatening pressure by withdrawing the sanctions for statements Facing History Honestly most controversial provision. contradicting the official and Openly This minor concession was understanding of “what intended to improve the In trying to understand happened” clearly inhibits the diplomatic optics. A more the current Polish way of free flow of ideas and leads to general provision (Article historical mis-memory, the a singular vision of the past. 133 of the Criminal Code) analysis of the late historian Protecting the good name of remains in force and states: and essayist, Tony Judt, can the state or nation is deemed “Whoever publicly insults be instructive. He has argued more important than a robust, the Nation or the Republic that two kinds of memories comprehensive, and inclusive of Poland shall be subject to emerged from what he calls the discussion about the past—a the penalty of deprivation of official version of the wartime discussion that must tolerate liberty for up to three years.” experience, which became statements, often shocking It is now being deployed dominant in Europe by 1948. and controversial, though to impose the approved One was that of the things done nonetheless adding to the historical narrative on all of to “us” by the Germans during debate. Historical discourse us. Civil liability, as used in the war, and the other that of belongs to this category. the case of the two historians, things (however similar) done By revealing the past, we completes the repression. by “us” to “others” after the war. According to Judt, this discover the present. This

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 13 approach allows us to bring of the Polish people and controversial aspects of the the heroism of the Polish nation’s history to the fore Righteous Among the Nations and discuss them openly and or questioning Poland’s dispassionately. These are both resistance in the face of the the price for and the challenge Nazi atrocities. Nobody denies of maintaining what American that. My point is different. political philosopher John We survived because history Rawls has evocatively called was always a repository an “overlapping consensus” from which to imagine a and living in a society with new order and rebuild life. competing visions and We relied on our shared understanding of our history. commitment and moved Nobody should be excluded, Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz accepts forward. We remembered Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the much less penalized, for Nations medal on behalf of his family, both the good and the bad professing their own vision 2014. and what saved us and our of history, which may go Family Archives of Tomasz T.Koncewicz. way of life. Therefore, my Used with permission against the mainstream argument against an imposed political narrative. struggles and common understanding of history commitments.” This is the favors an inclusive historical Moving Forward: A kind of intellectual and civic memory that brings together Collective Denial? fidelity that should inform our and exposes all national Poland and the Poles find understanding of our history. experiences and narratives. themselves at a critical Building a historical debate Unfortunately, in Poland the juncture, suspended between calls for a living pact among past continues to be seen as old myths and the narratives of the past, present, and future. a collection of indisputable “what happened,” on the one That would move us away truths, not open to divergent hand, and the rejection of any from what American historian interpretations and historical attempts to discover the multi- J. Connelly has called “a debate. Paranoid politics, dimensional past, on the other. historiography obsessed with having destroyed judicial Historical debate should strive minutiae and overgrown review, the courts, and the free for pragmatic recognition that with easy assumptions media, have now set their sights we reshape and re-examine about martyrology,” and on historical memory. The our civic and constitutional push us toward more critical Polish “politics of resentment” commitments as we move understanding of who we and the rising politics of mis- forward. As legal scholars J. Poles are and where we come memory threaten to make the Balkin and R. Siegel remark, from. A nation unready to past an uncontested sphere, “we turn to the past not embark on a comprehensive dominated by one truth because the past contains journey into its past cannot superimposed by the state. within it all of the answers to move forward. When grand our questions, but because it is All this must not be read gestures dominate, and soul- the repository of our common as belittling the sufferings searching is lacking, the

14 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 nation becomes a captive of its With the judiciary and in this context is about a past rather than its master. public media in tatters, generational reading of our national history. It is not about the government is now More than thirty years ago, uncritical iconoclasm. It is Jan Błoński’s taboo-breaking implementing what I about recognizing that the past essay, “The Poor Poles Look have called elsewhere a must be a key to the future. at the Ghetto,” broke the cycle After all, national constitutions “politics of mis-memory” of silence. He wrote (my must be understood as translation): that seeks to present one documents made for people of Genocide, of which the correct vision of history different views. What matters is that no one overarching Polish people were not guilty, for all Poles. happened after all on our narrative exists, and that soil and stigmatized this as a tool to fight political disagreement should account soil forever...Our memory adversaries and to divide for many “contested pasts.” and public consciousness Poles into “better” and In Poland in 2021, we may must never forget about this “worse” sorts. Yet, this be crying out in the historical bloody and heinous sign … politics seems to be engulfing wilderness, but we must not Our homeland is built first Poland. What is most alarming give up. After all, this is my and foremost of memory; in is the rise of a government- history, your history, our other words, only memory backed historical narrative civic history that should be of the past gives us a chance claiming that a bunch of fancy recognized and owned up to be ourselves. This past is historians, by revisiting a from bottom-up, rather than not to be disposed of freely, settled and one-dimensional be ordained top-down by even though we cannot be history, has transformed the sleight of opportunistic held directly responsible for poor Poles from victims into political hand. And for the past in our individual perpetrators. We are told that carrying this truth with me, capacity. We are obliged to their research and academic I will be forever grateful to carry this past inside us, queries betray the nation and my grandmother. n irrespective of how painful aim at deforming the history it might be. And we should by equating Nazi crimes Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz strive to cleanse it ... all with the actions of the heroic is Director of the Department the profanity that happened Poles. Is this attractive for of European and Comparative here on this soil obliges us the masses? By all means, Law, University of Gdańsk, to perform such an act of as the captive mind is prone a member of the Council cleansing. On this graveyard to embrace intuitive and of the Fondation Jean this obligation really boils exonerating myths. Monnet Pour l’Europe, and down to a respect for one an attorney specializing in thing: to see our past in truth. Again as put by Błoński, “On litigation before European this graveyard this obligation supranational courts. The last thing Poland needs really boils down to … one today is the spreading of thing: to see our past in truth.” a culture of treason, using My understanding of civic and its own vision of the past constitutional commitment

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 15 EXHIBITIONS Barbara Kirshenblatt- New Legacy Gallery at POLIN Gimblett Museum of the History of Polish Jews Tamara Sztyma

he new Legacy gallery at POLIN Museum of Tthe History of Polish Jews features distinguished Polish Jews and their achievements. Conceived as an epilogue to POLIN Museum’s Core Exhibition, which presents the thousand-year history of Polish Jews, the Legacy gallery showcases exceptional individuals in a beautiful architectural space overlooking the Monument to Legacy gallery in POLIN Museum. the Ghetto Heroes. Photograph by Maciek Jaźwiecki. Courtesy of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

In determining whom to exclude them? What about • Who is representative? feature in the new gallery and converts? Would the Which individuals best how to present them, we individual in question want represent the diversity of considered the following to be identified as a Jew what it means to be a questions: (and as a Polish Jew) and to “Polish Jew” and the broad be included in this spectrum of fields in which • Who is a Jew? Who is a presentation? they were active—from the Polish Jew? How do 18th century to the present? individuals identify • Why does it matter? themselves in relation to Assuming a case can be • Who is distinguished? On how others identify them, made for identifying an what basis should whether as Jewish or individual as a Jew (and as a “distinction” be determined? Polish Jew), what is the Polish? If they do not • Should living individuals relevance of such identify themselves as be included? Jewish or “of Jewish identifications for each origin,” on what grounds individual and for the • And finally, how does the would we include or Legacy gallery more story of a particular generally? individual illuminate the

16 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 history of Polish Jews, and Our goal as curators life, and reflection on the how does the history of was to make a selection condition of modern man. Polish Jews illuminate an n that would form a Isaac Bashevis Singer, individual’s story? Nobel laureate, who, in his coherent whole, however Our goal as curators was not novels written in Yiddish simply to select outstanding kaleidoscopic it might be, but translated into many individuals, but to make a and to raise questions, languages, evoked the world selection that would form a of Jewish towns in Poland. indeed the very questions coherent whole, however n Shmuel Josef Agnon, kaleidoscopic it might be, and that we asked ourselves. Nobel laureate, who was a to raise questions, indeed the creator of modern Hebrew very questions that we asked to explore the lives, careers, literature, where his Polish ourselves. The twenty-six and achievements of the hometown of Buczacz, in individuals featured in the twenty-six individuals in Austrian Galicia, and the Legacy gallery represent but greater depth. Tamara Sztyma, Land of Israel meet. one constellation—twenty- co-curator of the gallery, n Bruno Schulz, who six is the numerical value of undertook extensive research combined literature and art koved (Heb. honor) in and selected the rich content and made the world of gematria. The volume that for beautifully designed Drohobycz, his provincial accompanies this gallery (see interactive stations. hometown, the mythical link below) presents many In this gallery and in the center of his artistic more individuals, and we hope accompanying volume, we microcosm. even more will be nominated bring a critical perspective to by our visitors and readers and n Henryk Berlewi, a founder what might otherwise be a included in an online of the Jewish and Polish “Hall of Fame” and Jewish supplement to the gallery. inter-war avant-garde, who apologetics, by considering was also a pioneer of the social and historical The Legacy gallery offers modern typography. another way to engage with the conditions that affected Jewish n history of Polish Jews. creativity throughout the Alina Szapocznikow, Hopefully, those who thousand-year history of whose highly personal experience this gallery will be Polish Jews. sculpture, at the juncture of inspired to revisit the Core body, memory, and trauma, Exhibition and rediscover The Twenty Six defined a new direction in contemporary art. some of these luminaries n , one of the within the historical narrative most admired creators of n Ida Kamińska, doyenne of presented there. The Legacy modern Polish poetry, who the Yiddish stage as actress, gallery offer a more intimate combined the creative director, and theatre visitor experience in an potential of language, poetics manager before and after inspiring space and opportunity of the paradoxes of everyday the Holocaust.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 17 n Arnold Szyfman, founder of modern Polish theatre as director, playwright, and institution builder. n Samuel Goldwyn, one of Hollywood’s creators, a film producer known for excellence in the movie industry. n Aleksander Ford, key figure in 20th-century Polish cinematography and creator of the iconic film, The Teutonic Knights. n Henryk Wars, a popular composer for cabaret and film, remembered to this day for his hit tunes in both Poland and the United States. n Artur Rubinstein, virtuoso pianist, considered his era’s greatest interpreter of Chopin. n Bronisław Huberman, celebrated violinist and founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra Hubert Czerepok’s Tree of Life, inspired by the Kabbalah, won POLIN Museum’s (forerunner to the Israel competition for an artwork capturing the Legacy gallery’s celebration of the Philharmonic Orchestra) in achievements of Polish Jews. Photograph by Maciek Jaźwiecki. Courtesy of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews 1936, who helped musicians flee Europe for British n Rosa Luxemburg, activist n , member Mandate Palestine on the of the Polish and German of the Bund, the Jewish eve of the Holocaust. socialist movement, Labor Movement, a leader n David Ben-Gurion, first supporter of democracy and of the Prime Minister of Israel, the proletarian revolution, Uprising, and an activist signed the Declaration of the who paid with her life for in Poland’s post-war Establishment of the State of her involvement in the democratic opposition. Israel on May 14, 1948. revolutionary movement.

18 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 n Ludwik Zamenhof, creator The Legacy gallery n Leopold Kronenberg, of Esperanto, the most offers a more intimate entrepreneur, industrialist, successful international banker, and philanthropist, language, in support of visitor experience in active in Polish and Jewish the utopian ideal of an inspiring space and worlds during the 19th universal humanity. century. opportunity to explore n Janusz Korczak, educator, n Helena Rubinstein, an art pediatrician, and writer, the lives, careers, and collector and business founder of Jewish and achievements of the woman who created one of Catholic orphanages, creator the first cosmetic empires in of a modern pedagogy that twenty-six individuals the world, revolutionizing supports the autonomy and in greater depth. the idea of beauty. rights of the child. The Legacy gallery’s Parliament, co-founder of n Sara Schenirer, creator of companion book is Legacy of the Institute of Judaic a network of pioneering Bais Polish Jews, edited by Barbara Sciences in Warsaw, and a Yaakov schools, which Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and leader in Jewish communal transformed the education of Tamara Sztyma, published by life in Poland during the Orthodox Jewish girls by POLIN Museum of the History inter-war years. offering secular subjects, and of Polish Jews, 2020. n which continue to this day in n Joseph Rotblat, nuclear Copies of the e-book can be Europe, North America, physicist who worked on ordered at: Israel, and South Africa. the atom bomb, but https://ebookpoint.pl/ksiazki/ abandoned that project to n Abraham Stern, brilliant legacy-of-polish-jews-barbara- devote himself to research mathematician and inventor, kirshenblatt-gimblett-tamara- on the devastating effects of active in the 18th and 19th sztyma,e_1wzg.htm. radiation, and who received centuries, the first Jew the Nobel Peace Prize for admitted to the Warsaw Barbara Kirshenblatt- his advocacy for nuclear Society of the Friends of Gimblett, PhD, is the Ronald disarmament. Science. S. Lauder Chief Curator of the n Raphael Lemkin, lawyer Core Exhibition and Advisor n Helene Deutsch, disciple who created the word to the Director at POLIN of Sigmund Freud, co- “genocide,” after the Museum of the History of founder of the Vienna Holocaust, and who fought Polish Jews in Warsaw. Psychoanalytic Institute, tirelessly for the United pioneer in the study of Nations Convention on the Tamara Sztyma, PhD, is female psychology. Prevention and Punishment Curator of Exhibitions at POLIN Museum of the History n Moses Schorr, rabbi, of the Crime of Genocide, of Polish Jews. historian, Member of which was ratified in 1948.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 19 Wilhelm Sasnal: Such a Landscape Temporary Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews June 17, 2021–January 10, 2022

n June 2021, a new exhibition of works by IWilhelm Sasnal, one of the most outstanding contemporary Polish artists, opened at POLIN Museum. The exhibition presents paintings and drawings depicting familiar and remote landscapes juxtaposed with well-known figures.

Set against the “landscape” of the Shoah, this exhibition is part of POLIN Museum program activities in which artists explore the history, culture, and First of January (Back), 2021, oil on canvas. legacy of Polish Jews. The Courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw exhibition, curated by Adam imately sixty artworks will be debate on the difficult past and Szymczyk, promises to draw presented for the first time. art (October), and a lecture on international attention to new Wilhelm Sasnal’s abstract Wilhelm Sasnal’s work has been ways of (re)configuring the land painting (November). For inspired by visual information in relation to its peopled history. information on the Sasnal derived from various sources In 2003–14, Szymczyk was at exhibition and activities, and contexts, including Kunsthalle Basel, and during please visit: television, the internet, and the 2014–17 served as artistic https://www.polin.pl/en/ press. Sasnal also draws director of Documents 14 in wilhelm-sasnal and inspiration from works by other Athens and Kassell. https://www.polin.pl/en/ artists, especially photographers. The exhibit features works on geop-online-activities-and- n loan from the artist, interna- Online events will accompany initiatives. tional collections, and public the exhibition. The program and private collections in will include a discussion on the Poland, including POLIN lasting impacts of Holocaust Museum. Some of the approx- landscapes (September), a

20 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Sweet Home Sweet: A Story of Survival, Memory, and Returns Jakub Nowakowski Galicia Jewish Museum August 2021–July 2022

When [my father] was in the Kraków ghetto he was still taking photos, and those photos were buried in Płaszów and discovered after the war, he hid them in a pickle jar, a glass pickle jar in Płaszów . . . So I sat with him in his home with these photographs and I asked him who everyone was in the Clockwise from top left: Lutz Bergman, Ernest (“Erni”) Abraham, Adam Goldberger, photo . . . and he told me. and Richard Ores. Likely in late 1941 or early 1942 in the Kraków Ghetto. Courtesy of Michelle and Nina Ores He remembered their names, he remembered if family and their relationship to remove the dead they survived the war, he to Poland. The exhibition bodies in a wooden cart. will explore how Holocaust When they got near me, remembered everything memory and narratives are about them. transmitted through the I spoke and scared them. —Michelle Ores generations, and how the “Sorry,” I said. “I am children and grandchildren still alive. Could you weet Home Sweet: A Story of survivors engage with take me to the hospital, Sof Survival, Memory, contemporary Poland. and Returns, an upcoming please?” exhibition at the Galicia Background on the ―Richard Ores’s testimony Jewish Museum in Kraków, Ores Family Poland, is devoted to three Two men came with a Oskar Ryszard Ores, known as generations of the Ores stretcher . . . and started Richard, was born in Kraków

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 21 in 1923, into an assimilated Jewish family. His father held several jobs and his mother’s family owned a kosher sausage factory in Kraków. After the outbreak of World War II, Richard was forced to live in the Kraków ghetto with his mother and sister. In March 1943, he was marched to Płaszów, a nearby labor camp. In the final months of the war, he was a prisoner Irena Keller, Richard Ores’s first wife, in the early years of the war. in three other concentration Photograph by Richard Ores. Courtesy of Michelle and Nina Ores camps: Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, and finally and care of many of the city’s work has focused on Jewish Dachau, where he was Jewish heritage sites, with the history and heritage. Many liberated in April 1945. Ronald Lauder Foundation. other members of the family For these actions, he was have forged their own various Richard was the only one in awarded the Knight’s Cross relationships to Poland and his immediate family who of the Order of Merit of the the Holocaust. survived. After the war, he Republic of Poland, the Cross recuperated in a US Army of the , and the The Galicia Museum hospital and, a few years later, Oświęcim Cross. He was Exhibit attended medical school in also a consultant on the film I lived in Kraków for two Bern, Switzerland, emigrating Schindler’s List as the film years, that’s where my to New York in 1955. But he depicted several of the places never forgot about Poland. in which he survived the war. grandfather grew up. He was there during the war, Richard maintained a Though Richard died in he was in the Płaszów relationship with Poland 2011, the second and third after the war, returning generations of his family concentration camp. frequently and staying in have continued to be When I was in Kraków, touch with friends in Kraków, involved with Polish Jewish for most of the time I among them heroes from the life. His daughter Michelle lived a ninety-second walk Kraków Ghetto like Julian is engaged in the Kraków Aleksandrowicz and Tadeusz Jewish community and the away from the apartment Pankiewicz. In New York, preservation of Jewish life my grandfather lived in he raised funds for hospital and heritage in Poland. One of before the war . . . and the equipment for a clinic in her sons, Adam, has lived in market I would always Kraków and for the renovation Poland since 2017, where his

22 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 go to was right across the street from it. . . . I would pass by the cemetery where there’s a monument for his family members and a little plaque for his family members who were killed in the Holocaust, and I gave tours of the concentration camp that he was in . . . and of the ghetto that he was in. I went to Rosh Hashanah Richard Ores (hidden in middle) and two friends, likely during forced labor on a services in 2018 in the farm in Prokocim in 1941. Photograph preserved by Richard Ores. Courtesy of Michelle and Nina Ores room where he was Bar Mitzvahed in the life today. Richard visited about the relationship between High Synagogue. Poland frequently, bringing ethnic Poles and Jewish his family to visit Kraków and survivors and visitors, with ―Adam Schorin Warsaw during communism, the goal of understanding this Many Polish Holocaust the early days of democracy relationship today. in the 1990s, and the current survivors and their The exhibition will be period of Jewish renewal. The descendants understandably arranged in a modern and family’s story offers a path of have a view of Poland that visually attractive style. It will how one family formed their resembles the Poland of their present both historical objects own vibrant connections to the parents’ or grandparents’ (letters, documents, photos) country of their roots, while childhood and the horrors and audiovisual materials: still living with the pain and of the war. The Ores family, interviews and testimony trauma of the Holocaust. through its continued from Richard, recorded in engagement with Poland, While Poland has become the 1990s and early 2000s, as has a relationship with the an important destination for well as interviews with family country that, while very Jewish heritage tourism over members recorded specifically centered on the Holocaust the last few decades, there for the exhibition. n and their family history, is rarely any meaningful has a strong connection to interaction between visitors Jakub Nowakowski is Poland as a whole and to the and locals. This exhibit will Director of the Galicia Jewish renewal of Jewish Polish raise challenging questions Museum in Kraków. n

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 23 A Grandson’s Reflection on Sweet Home Sweet: The Ores Family Exhibition

Adam Schorin

or the past nine months, I have been on the curatorial team behind Sweet Home Sweet, the FGalicia Jewish Museum’s upcoming exhibition on Richard Ores and his family’s relationship One of the photographs Richard Ores buried in Plaszόw. to Poland. Unique among the curators, I am It depicts, from left: Adam Wnuczek, Rena Rosenberg, two unidentified people, Lusia Łuszczanowska, Helga also a member of this family—Richard was my Łuszczanowska, Irena Keller, Władek Ratner (or Rath), grandfather. I didn’t know him very well: he was Helena Haber, and Richard Ores. somewhat estranged from the family, having left Courtesy of Michelle and Nina Ores my grandmother nearly thirty years before I was you notice the arched wall of the ghetto stretching born. My grandmother, Celia, is also a Holocaust from the edge of the frame, peaking in a small hill survivor. I grew up seeing her several times a over Irena’s head. week and I’ve known her story of survival as long as I can remember. But Richard’s story What to make of these images? What do they tell was something of a mystery to me. There were us about the people and events they depict, and the comments he’d made to me about Kraków in the person (or persons) behind the camera? Richard latter years of his dementia (comments I hardly continued to take photographs (and videos) for the remember now), the framed Jude star he kept in rest of his life, leaving behind boxes and trash bags his living room (I didn’t even know if it had been and film canisters with thousands of images across his), and the handful of wartime stories passed continents, marriages, families. He often appears down by my mother. himself, handing the camera off to a wife, a child, or a friend, smiling goofily or looking formal and It wasn’t until I moved to Poland in 2017 that I composed. Taken together, these photographs finally watched Richard’s testimony and looked and videos form a kind of auto-ethnography of through the photographs he buried in a glass jar Richard, a narrative threaded through the various in Płaszów. These were photographs of his family states and stages of his life. Even though I knew and friends from childhood, as well as some taken him only obliquely, it occurred to me recently that in the early years of the war, at a forced labor I’ve seen more images made by Richard than by farm in Prokocim and in the Kraków Ghetto. anyone else in my family—probably more than In one photograph, of several friends including by anyone else I know. That’s been near the heart Richard and his future first wife Irena, everyone of the work I’m doing with the museum team in seems to have removed their armband (which preparing this exhibition: coming to know my Jews were forced to wear and which appear in grandfather through the images he saved and the other photos), or hidden it behind the arm of the ones he created. n person next to them. They look like any group of young people from the past, some smiling, some Adam Schorin is a writer and former co-director stiff, some (Richard included) not looking at the of FestivALT. Based in Warsaw, he is a former camera. You don’t realize anything is wrong until assistant editor for Gazeta.

24 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 REPORTS Kraków to Stop the Sale of Magda Rubenfeld Koralewska “Lucky Jews”

he city of Krakόw Easter Emaus market. For didactic conversation about recently announced many visitors to Poland, and these objects, stereotypes, Tthat it would stop the sale many of us who live here, and cultural representation. of figurines of Jews holding these objects are obviously It spawned a 72-hour virtual coins. “These figures are anti-Semitic, as they call to “Lucky-Jew-a-Thon” in anti-Semitic and it is time mind the harmful stereotype November 2020, in which, for us to realize that,” said of Jews as greedy financiers. among performers from around Robert Piaskowski, the On the other hand, for many the world, Mr. Piaskowski Plenipotentiary for Culture who buy and sell the objects, and Nina Gabryś, the of the Mayor of Kraków, in they are a positive symbol, mayor’s advisor on issues of an interview with Gazeta representing the promise of discrimination and equality, Wyborcza. “In a city like capitalism in the latter years held a compelling discussion Kraków, with such a difficult of communism, celebrating about how the objects are heritage and a painful past, Jews’ perceived capacity for treated in Kraków. they should not be sold.” business, and functioning as That same month, FestivALT, a remembrance of Poland’s Figurines of Jews have in cooperation with the Czulent destroyed Jewish community. appeared in Poland for more Association, the Autonomia than a century. They were For the last four years, Foundation, and the Villa originally sold alongside FestivALT (of which I am a co- Decius Institute for Culture, other Polish archetypes, director), an alternative Jewish launched the first in a series of such as peasants, priests, arts and activism collective roundtable discussions under and highlanders. In the early based in Kraków, has produced the title “Addressing Poland’s 1980s, figurines of Jews “Lucky Jew,” a project in ‘Lucky Jews.’” At this first reappeared in Poland, this which a performer dresses up meeting, a task force was time holding coins or bags of as a traditional Jew and tries established to advise the city money, and were bought and to sell images of himself. (See on issues relating to Jewish sold as charms guaranteeing Adam Schorin’s article about heritage. I am excited and financial luck. They’ve performing as the Lucky Jew humbled to the be on the task become particularly popular in the Summer 2019 issue of force, along with Artur Wabik, in Kraków, where they can be Gazeta.) The project, at once Berenika Błaszak, and Piotr found in most crafts markets serious and funny, engages Kwapisiewicz. and, especially, at the annual passersby in an open, non-

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 25 Jewish figurines holding bags of money at the Emaus market in 2019. Photograph by Adam Schorin. Used with permission

To date, some sixty individuals, and civic engagement are key conversation on “The Future including leaders from to creating lasting change in of the Lucky Jew in Kraków,” Poland’s Jewish communities, the community. At FestivALT, at the Galicia Jewish politicians, and leaders in we’re thrilled to see a public Museum, featuring myself, the arts and culture sector, art project actually build Mr. Piaskowski, and others. have met to investigate and greater awareness around a We will stream the discussion unpack the problem of these social issue and lead, in part, live on our Facebook page: Jewish figurines. The process to real action and reform. https://www.facebook.com/ resulted in the announcement FestivaltKrakow. In September 2021, we the city made in early June, a will take part in the third Magda Rubenfeld formal recommendation to end roundtable discussion, at Koralewska is a co-founder the sale of “Lucky Jews” in which the task force will and co-director of FestivALT Kraków’s public spaces. present its recommendations and Regional Coordinator The experience has shown to the municipality. And on for Limmud for Central and that conversation, education, July 3, 2021, there will be a Eastern Europe.

26 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Changes in Governance at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Antony Polonsky State Museum in Poland

our members of an Edward Kosakowski. The He is a long-standing member advisory council for the appointment of Szydło has of the committee, and spoke FAuschwitz-Birkenau State also been harshly criticized by in 2020 at the seventy-fifth Museum in Poland have the son and grand-daughters anniversary commemoration resigned after the government of one of Poland’s legendary of the liberation of the camp. appointed former Polish Prime World War II resistance heroes, He was also a key figure in the Minister Beata Szydło, a top Captain . founding of POLIN Museum member of the country’s right- of the History of Polish Jews, The advisory council is wing ruling party, to serve on and has remained active in its separate from the International the council. activities to this day. According Auschwitz Council, which to Christoph Heubner: Culture Minister Piotr Gliński includes Holocaust survivors recently appointed Szydło and international experts. Marian Turski has for many to a four-year term on the Perhaps in order to create years been one of the most Auschwitz-Birkenau State a counterweight to the important political voices of Museum Council, a nine- politicization of the advisory the survivors of Auschwitz, who member body made up of council, in June 2021, are urgently needed in these Poles who meet once a year to Christoph Heubner, vice- days marked by anti-Semitic advise the museum’s director. president of the International hatred and the new willingness Auschwitz Council and a to engage in violence of right- The first advisory council member of the Committee wing extremists emerging member to resign was n of the Foundation for everywhere. philosopher Stanisław International Youth Encounters Krajewski, who said he took Antony Polonsky, PhD, is in Auschwitz, announced that the step to protest what he Chief Historian at POLIN Marian Turski had been chosen called the “politicization” Museum of the History of to succeed Roman Kent, who of a group so far made up Polish Jews. died in May 2021, as Chairman of experts. He was followed of the International Committee. by historians Marek Lasota, (See Roman Kent’s obituary in who also belongs to the ruling this issue of Gazeta.) Turski, party, Krystyna Oleksy, a born in Łódź in 1926, is an former deputy director of Auschwitz survivor and a the Auschwitz Museum, and prominent Polish journalist.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 27 CONFERENCES

International Online Conference on the Antony Polonsky History of the General Jewish Workers’ Alliance—the Bund

n April 15 and 22, 2021, the Global Education an online international Outreach Project of Oconference, “For , POLIN Museum of the for Freedom. The Jewish History of Polish Jews Bund: History of Yesterday, in Warsaw; and Laura Memory of Tomorrow,” Quercioli Mincer, explored the history and Associate Professor memory of the General of Polish Literature Jewish Workers’ Alliance, or and Culture at the the Bund, one of the major University of Genoa. Jewish political movements The inaugural lecture in the Tsarist Empire and was given on April 15 Poland. The conference took by Włodek Goldkorn place under the auspices of on “Three Crucial the Department of Modern Aspects of the Bund. Languages and Cultures of the An Account of a World University of Genoa and the of Fraternity.” His Primo Levi Cultural Centre, wide-ranging address in association with the Italian discussed the Association for Jewish- implications of three German Studies. The members An election poster of the General Jewish Labour aspects of the Bund: of the organizing committee Bund hung in Kiev, 1917. Heading: “Where we that it was a party of live, there is our country!” Inside frame: “Vote List were Piero Delio Strologo, 9, Bund.” Bottom: “A democratic republic! Full Jewish workers, that President of the Primo Levi national and political rights for Jews!” it was opposed to Wikimedia Commons Cultural Center and Councilor and sought to of the Union of Italian Jewish expressed through a modernized resolve the problems of Jews Communities; Włodek Yiddish language and culture where they lived in the Tsarist Goldkorn, who left Poland in Empire and subsequently The remainder of the 1968 and has been for many independent Poland, and that it conference took place on April years responsible for the aimed to establish a socialist 22. The morning session cultural section of the Italian state in which Jews would enjoy offered four papers. The first, weekly L’Espresso; Antony non-territorial autonomy presented by Reyzl Zylberman, Polonsky, Chief Historian of

28 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Antony Polonsky Director of Studies and of Study of the History and the Jewish Fighting Jewish languages at Sholem Culture of Polish Jews at the Organization (Żydowska Aleykhem College in University of Warsaw, Organizacja Bojowa), who Melbourne, and Dvora examined “The Real History was killed on the second day Zylberman, teacher of Yiddish of the Polish Bund and Its of the Warsaw Ghetto and Jewish Studies at the same Distortions in the Current Uprising. Before the uprising, college, examined “The Jewish Mass Media’s Coverage.” Irena and her mother were Labour Bund Down Under: Grabski explained the smuggled out of the Ghetto How the Movement Thrives in problems of presenting an and later emigrated to New Australia.” Antony Polonsky accurate history of the Bund in York after the war. Irena gave the second paper, “The Poland today. described herself as “a Bund in Polish Political Life survivor, a poet, a lesbian and In the afternoon session, the 1935–39.” As he explained, the a translator of Yiddish” and first paper was presented in political crisis which followed also as “an eternal Bundist fluent Italian by David the death in 1935 of Marshal and Yiddishist, secular Jew Fishman, Professor of Jewish Józef Piłsudski, the charismatic and socialist.” Her account of History at the Jewish Polish leader, and the the Bundist milieu, which Theological Seminary, and worsening of the situation of included Vladka Meed, examined “The Years 1890– the Jews that ensued, created Bernard Goldstein, Marek 1914: The Golden Period of new opportunities for the Edelman, and other the Bund in the Tsarist Bund, which had been only a participants in the Ghetto Empire.” It was followed by marginal player in both Polish uprising, provided a deeply Laura Quercioli Mincer’s and Jewish politics. moving end to the conference. comprehensive presentation, It highlighted the tragic fact Frank Wolff, professor at the “An Art for the Jews, an Art that in Poland the Bund University of Osnabrück and a for the World: the Jewish effectively came to an end member of its Institute for the Avant-Garde During the with the suicide in 1943 of Study of Migration, presented Times of the Bund.” Włodek Szmul Zygielbojm, the “In Other Streets: How the Goldkorn’s paper, “The Bundist representative on the Bund Turned Transnational.” Future of Memory. The Case Polish parliament in exile in He analyzed how Jewish of the Bund,” generated much , who expressed his migrants brought the values of thought-provoking discussion. “most profound protest the Bund to Western Europe, The final presentation, “My against the inaction with North and South America, and : More Than a which the world watches and the Antipodes. The final Memory,” was given by Irena permits the destruction of the presentation, by August Klepfisz, daughter of Michał Jewish people.” n Grabski of the Mordechaj Klepfisz, one of the leaders of Anieliewicz Center for the

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 29 Symposium in Honor of Professor Antony Polonsky: “The Holocaust Michael Fleming, François Guesnet in Eastern Europe. Sources, Christine Schmidt Memory, Politics”

n March 16, 2021, the also raised questions about Institute for Polish Jewish how such artifacts should OStudies, the Department of be classified and about their Hebrew and Jewish Studies future use, for example, in at University College London museums. She also contrasted (UCL), and The Wiener the divergent interests of Holocaust Library convened archeological exploration and an online symposium in honor commemorative practices. of Professor Antony Polonsky Agnieszka Wierzcholska on the occasion of his eightieth (German Historical Institute, birthday. Entitled “The Paris) discussed everyday life Holocaust in Eastern Europe. in Tarnów during the German Sources, Memory, Politics,” occupation and the Holocaust. the symposium brought Using untapped source together established and Professor Antony Polonsky. material, such as court cases junior scholars researching the Photo courtesy of A. Polonsky brought against Poles by Holocaust in Eastern Europe In the opening session on Jews who faced increasing and provided a timely overview “Sources,” Katarzyna Person levels of persecution and of the state of knowledge. (Jewish Historical Institute, lawlessness before the final Professor Polonsky’s immense Warsaw) provided a detailed deportations of the summer contribution to the broad and nuanced discussion of 1942. Dr. Wierzcholska field and his critical role in micro-narratives of everyday offered penetrating insights constituting the field of Polish life revealed through an into social interactions Jewish studies was recognized. analysis of the Ringelblum between neighbors living Connie Webber, the Managing Archive. This was followed by under such extreme Editor of the Littman Library Hannah Wilson’s (Nottingham circumstances. of Jewish Civilization, in her Trent University) discussion The second session focused moving tribute to Professor of the work of archeologists on “Memory” and opened Polonsky, pointed to his at the Sobibór death camp. In with Lukasz Krzyzanowski decades of work on Polin: her paper, Wilson highlighted (Warsaw University). Building Studies in Polish Jewry, that the discovery of particular on his recent important book, his collegiality, generosity, artifacts has helped identify Ghost Citizens, the speaker and wisdom. individual victims, but has

30 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 elaborated on how survivors The final session explored sources and highlighted of the Holocaust in Radom the contemporary political some of the challenges of commemorated those who implications of the Holocaust researching and writing about had perished, and through and its repercussions. the Holocaust in the context their memory practices Joanna Michlic (UCL) of an assertive and well- marked their presence in the discussed the early post- funded state-backed historical post-Holocaust city. Piotr war testimonies of child policy in Poland as well as Forecki (Adam Mickiewicz survivors and showed how in the more general context University, Poznań) analyzed these testimonies undercut of debates over memory. The Holocaust revisionism in the skewed narratives of the conference papers will be contemporary Poland. Drawing Holocaust promoted by the published in early 2022 in on the statements of politicians, current Polish government’s Jewish Historical Studies: officials, articles in the press, historical policy. Darisuz Stola Transactions of the Jewish and works of various historians, (Polish Academy of Sciences) Historical Society of . Prof. Forecki convincingly considered how, following the The sessions can be viewed argued that Holocaust fall of communism, Poland online at The Wiener Holocaust distortion is widespread. The became a leader among Library’s Youtube channel: developments of recent years post-communist states in http://bit.ly/Polonsky21. n suggest that the willingness confronting its difficult past. François Guesnet, PhD, is to confront a difficult past, as In public debates, scholars Professor of Modern Jewish demonstrated in the Jedwabne not only provided empirical History in the Department of debates of the early 2000s, material but helped shaped Hebrew and Jewish Studies at has declined significantly, to the constructive form of University College London, be replaced by a reassertion those debates. The erosion and is co-chair of the editorial of national mythologies and of respect for scholarly board of Polin. Studies in heroic narratives. The session expertise and the jettisoning of Polish Jewry. closed with Mary Fulbrook’s conciliatory memory policies (UCL) discussion of conflicting has undermined both scholars Michael Fleming, PhD, is accounts of guilt and complicity and the tenor of debates on a historian at The Polish and the difficulties historians the past. Antony Polonsky University Abroad, London. face in relating personal provided expansive expert He is the author of Auschwitz, experiences and atmosphere commentary on the papers and the Allies and Censorship of in their work. Prof. Fulbrook joined other participants of the Holocaust, Cambridge called for a comparison between the symposium in a rigorous University Press. the different trajectories of discussion of the issues raised. anti-Semitism in Western and Christine Schmidt, PhD, is The symposium showcased Central Europe, on the one Deputy Director and Head some of the ways in which hand, and eastern Central and of Research at The Wiener scholars are making use of new Eastern Europe, on the other. Holocaust Library in London. or hitherto underresearched

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 31 “What’s New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies” Online Conference at POLIN Museum October 3–7, 2021

his international in the humanities and social interdisciplinary sciences shaping Jewish Tconference will explore new studies? How are scholars directions in the study of East working in a broad range and Central European Jews. At of disciplines, from history the heart of POLIN Museum and the social sciences of the History of Polish Jews to literature, visual and is a multimedia narrative performing arts, and other exhibition that draws upon disciplines, contributing to the the best recent scholarship in field? What interdisciplinary a broad range of disciplines. approaches are contributing to Scholars in Poland, the field? What is the impact Israel, and North America of studies of Jewish life in collaborated on creating an the former Polish-Lithuanian open historical narrative that Commonwealth on a wider begins in the 10th century understanding of world and comes forward to the history? present. Methodological and The meeting’s distinguished theoretical issues raised by Academic Committee, with the exhibition have inspired Dr. hab. Artur Markowski “What’s New, What’s Next? of POLIN Museum as Innovative Methods, New official conference convener, Sources, and Paradigm is chaired by Prof. Barbara Shifts in Jewish Studies.” Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Ronald The conference will address S. Lauder Chief Curator, many important questions, POLIN Museum Core such as: What constitutes Exhibition. n Jewish studies today, and in which direction should we be heading? Which paradigms are guiding the field today? How are theoretical and methodological developments

32 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) Conference to Meet Online, August 2–5, 2021

he Board of Directors and the Conference Committee of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies have decided that the 2021 IAJGS Conference will be held online. Initially, Tthe conference was planned to convene in Philadelphia, but concerns about health risks and travel restrictions caused the change to an online format.

The conference is hosted by the IAJGS, an umbrella organization of more than ninety Jewish genealogical organizations worldwide. The organization seeks to foster a network of Jewish genealogical research organizations and partners working together as one coherent, effective, and respected community—enabling people to research Jewish ancestry and heritage.n

“Restoring Jewish Cemeteries of Poland: The Task Ahead” Online Conference at Jewish Heritage Europe.

n July 1, 2021, Jewish Heritage Europe hosted an online conference which Oaddressed the important topic of “Restoring Jewish Cemeteries of Poland: The Task Ahead.” Speakers included Jarosław Sellin, Secretary of State at the Poland Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sports; Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon, Chargé d’Affaires, Israel Embassy, Warsaw; Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress; and other distinguished panelists. The conference was intended as a continuation of Jewish Heritage Europe’s conference on this same topic from 2020.

Video presentations from the conference can be found at this link: https://jewishheritagepoland.org/conference.html. n

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 33 ANNOUNCEMENTS Books

Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Antony Polonsky Service During the Nazi Occupation By Katarzyna Person Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021

his moving and disturbing during the great deportation book, based on a of the Jews of Warsaw to Tlarge range of primary and the Treblinka death camp secondary sources, is a detailed in the summer of 1942. account of the functioning This is a major study of the of the Jewish Order Service, difficult question of Jewish usually referred to as the collaboration, as it deals with “Ghetto Police,” in the Warsaw the complex moral questions Ghetto during World War raised by the author in a clear II. The sources used include and dispassionate manner. documents from the wartime It should be read by all those period, diaries, German and interested in the Holocaust Jewish official documentation, in Poland. n and ghetto newspaper articles. These are supplemented by post-war materials, trials of saw themselves as a barrier former members of the Jewish between the Jews in the ghetto Order Service, which took and the German authorities place in Poland and Germany, and Polish police, its members as well as interviews with quickly became corrupted former policemen and those in the difficult situation in who witnessed their actions. which they found themselves. The study examines both Given that most policemen the opinion about the police were not paid, bribery became in the ghetto and the way widespread and a degree of that members of the force brutality was widely accepted. developed a mechanism for As a result, the force was coping with this and justifying subjected to harsh criticism by their actions. the inhabitants of the ghetto. The book also explains how The picture which emerges the police became a tool of is a dark one. Although the Nazi occupiers and how it initially the Ghetto Police came to play a nefarious role

34 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Islands of Memory: The Landscape of the (Non)Memory of the Holocaust in Polish Education between 1989–2015 By Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs Krakόw: Jagiellonian University Press, 2021

his book addresses issues of Holocaust memory among young Poles and the attitudes toward Jews and the Holocaust in the comparative context Tof educational developments in other countries. The book is divided into three parts: “Memory,” “Attitudes,” and “Actions.” All three parts, although aimed at analyzing an ongoing process of reconstructing and deconstructing memory of the Holocaust in post-2000 Poland, are grounded in different theories and were inspired by various concepts. Ambrosewicz-Jacobs shows the diversity of phenomena aimed at integrating Jewish history and culture into national culture, including areas of extracurricular education (often against mainstream educational policy), in order to discover the place that Jews have (or do not have) in the culture of memory in Poland, home to the largest Jewish community in pre-war Europe. n

The Stage as a Temporary Home By Diego Rotman Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021

he Stage as a Temporary Home explores the fascinating life and career of the most important comic duo in Yiddish theater, Shimen Dzigan and TIsroel Shumacher. Spanning half a century—from the beginning of their work at the Ararat avant-garde Yiddish theater in Łόdź to their Warsaw theatre—they produced bold, groundbreaking political satire. The book further discusses their wanderings through the Soviet Union during World War II and their attempt to revive Jewish culture in Poland after the Holocaust. It concludes with a description of their time in Israel, first as guest performers and later as permanent residents. Despite the restrictions on Yiddish actors in Israel, the duo insisted on performing in their language and succeeded in translating the new Israeli reality into unique and timely satire. In the 1950s, they voiced a political and cultural critique unique on the Hebrew stage. Dzigan continued to perform on his own and with other Israeli artists until his death in 1980. n

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 35 The Rebellion of the Daughters By Rachel Manekin Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020

he Rebellion of the Daughters investigates the flight of young Jewish T women from their Orthodox, primarily Hasidic, homes in Western Galicia (now Poland) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In extreme cases, hundreds of these women sought refuge in a Kraków convent, where many converted to Catholicism. Those who stayed home often remained Jewish in name only.

Relying on a wealth of archival documents, including court testimonies, letters, diaries, and press reports, Rachel Manekin reconstructs the stories of three Jewish women runaways, Michalina Araten, Debora Lewkowicz, and Anna Kluger, and reveals their struggles and innermost convictions. Exploring the estrangement of young Jewish women from traditional Judaism in Habsburg Galicia at the turn of the 20th century, the book brings to light a forgotten, yet significant, episode in Eastern European history. n

Hasidism, Suffering, and Renewal: The Prewar and Holocaust Legacy of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira SUNY Series in Contemporary Jewish Thought Edited by Don Seeman, Daniel Reiser, and Ariel Evan Mayse Albany: SUNY Press, 2021

alonymus Kalman Shapira (1889–1943) was a noted Hasidic leader and mystic who wrestled with forces of modernity that were confronting KPoland’s Jews, especially the need for more education in an increasingly secularizing community. During the Nazi occupation, Shapira became an important spiritual and communal leader in the Warsaw Ghetto, until he and his close family perished in the Holocaust. Recent publication of his writings and sermons in the Warsaw Ghetto has generated considerable scholarly interest in Shapira’s ideas about educational reform and his spiritual concepts and contributions. This collection of essays presents studies by scholars from a variety of fields, from history to theology and anthropology, who examine Shapira’s thought and impact, the world in which he lived, and broader issues related to the study of Jewish mysticism. n

36 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 The Touch of an Angel By Henryk Schönker. Translated by Scotia Gilroy Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021

he Touch of an Angel is the extraordinary story of a child’s survival of the Holocaust. Henryk Schönker was born in 1931 into one of the most Tprominent and highly esteemed Jewish families of Oświęcim—the Polish town renamed Auschwitz during the German occupation. He and his family managed to flee Oświęcim shortly before the creation of the Auschwitz death camp, and survived the war through sheer luck and a strong will to survive. The Schönker family’s return to Oświęcim in 1945 provides a fascinating glimpse of challenges faced by Jews who chose to remain in Poland after the war and attempted to rebuild their lives there. Schönker’s testimony also reveals an astonishing fact: the town of Oświęcim could have become the departure point for a mass emigration of Jewish people instead of the place of their annihilation. Documents included with the narrative provide support for this claim. Although he was only a child at the time, Henryk Schönker’s life experience was the Holocaust. Even so, death and the threat of death are not the focus of this memoir. Instead, Schönker, with a touching personal style, chooses to focus on how life can defy destruction, how spirituality can protect physical existence, and how real the presence of higher powers can be if one never loses faith. His story has been made into an award-winning documentary film in Polish and German, The Touch of an Angel, directed by Marek T. Pawłowski. n

Tale of a Niggun By Elie Wiesel Illustrated by Mark Podwal New York: Schocken Books, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Group, a division of Penguin Random House, 2020

ased on an actual event that occurred during World War II, Elie Wiesel’s heartbreaking narrative poem about history, immortality, and the power of song is accompanied by magnificent full-color Bpaintings by award-winning artist Mark Podwal. Wiesel tells the story of the evening before the holiday of Purim, when the Nazis have given the leaders of a nondescript Eastern ghetto twenty-four hours to turn over ten Jews to be hanged to “avenge” the deaths of the ten sons of Haman, leading the Ghetto’s rabbi to call up spirits from centuries past for advice. Wiesel’s tale is a testament to the wisdom of Jewish sages and to the Jewish communities who perished, ending with an unending collective song. n

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 37 The Towns of Death: The Pogroms of Jews by Their Neighbors By Mirosław Tryczyk Lexington Books, 2021

n The Towns of Death, Mirosław Tryczyk describes attacks by non-Jewish Poles on their Jewish neighbors in 128 towns of the Podlasie region of IPoland in 1941–42. Based on witness testimony in legal proceedings, German and Russian sources, and materials gathered by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), he describes murderous events that occurred following the German invasion of June 1941. Initially most of the violence was justified to rid the region of the “Bolshevik Jew,” a staple bogeyman of Polish nationalists, fascists, and anti- Semites. Then the murders and looting escalated, but without linkage to the communists, and often with the support and even encouragement of the Catholic clergy and the local intellectual and political elites.

The author, an intellectual born in northeastern Poland, wrote the book to come to grips with events that deeply affected his own family. “One must fight not only with the passage of time whichshrouds, erases, and destroys everything,” he writes, but also with “our civilization’s preoccupation with the present and its avoidance of the problems of the past and the future.” n

Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews By Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2021

his pathbreaking illustrated book describes the plant-based medicines and procedures of Ashkenazi healers. Its discussion covers the materia Tmedica of plants and herbs essential to Ashkenazi folk medicine, as well as applications and other aspects of a herbal tradition long hidden from outsiders by language and cultural barriers. n

38 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland By Andrew Kornbluth Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021

ndrew Kornbluth analyzes the “August Trials,” held in Poland after World War II to provide justice for Jewish victims and survivors of the AHolocaust. He concludes that the thousands of trials were a serious attempt to reveal the truth, but that they also uncovered extensive local participation in illegal and violent acts against Jews during the Nazi occupation. Poland’s new communist government, seeking to buttress its position and unify the nation, gradually moved away from frank confrontation with the past and instead favored a heroic vision of national resistance to the Nazi occupation and genocide. This foundational myth, Kornbluth argues, failed to provide justice to the Jewish victims and left a lasting mark in Polish–Jewish relations. The author further argues that other attempts to bring justice for victims of genocide in both Eastern and Western Europe also largely failed. n

Philo-Semitic Violence: Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives By Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski Idaho Falls: Lexington Books, (July) 2021

riginally published in Polish and now available in English, this book examines the current scholarly and pedagogical vogue for a philosemitic Onarrative based on a perceived multicultural past that was destroyed by the Nazi occupation of Poland and the succeeding communist regime. The authors argue that the emphasis on a common past has obscured deep processes and cultural patterns essential for illuminating the realities of the East European Jewish Diaspora and of the Holocaust. They argue that anti-Semitism remains a community-building force and a powerful political tool behind the collapse of liberal democratic institutions in Poland. They further claim that the philosemitic narrative’s emphasis on common history between Polish Jews and non-Jews before the Holocaust helps buttress the ultranationalist myth of a unified Polish people and nation, without removing the underlying anti-Semitic beliefs about Jews as a separate, non-Polish component. n

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 39 ANNOUNCEMENTS Awards Barbara Engelking Receives 2021 Irena Sendler Memorial Award

aube Philanthropies identifies small Polish towns as has named Professor “death traps” for Jews in TBarbara Engelking as the hiding during the Holocaust. recipient of its 2021 Irena The intense public debate Sendler Memorial Award, in generated by government recognition of her outstanding criticism of the book in Poland scholarly contributions is discussed in the Winter 2021 to Holocaust research. A issue of Gazeta. An abridged sociologist by training, English-language version will Prof. Engelking founded be published later this year by and directs the Center for Prof. Barbara Engelking. Indiana University Press. Holocaust Research at the “Professor Engelking is an Plans for the annual award Polish Academy of Sciences. outstanding and internationally ceremony, which is usually At this globally recognized respected Holocaust scholar,” held at the Jewish Culture research center, she explores said Tad Taube, Chairman of Festival in Kraków or at new directions in research and Taube Philanthropies. “Through POLIN Museum in Warsaw, interdisciplinary methodology. the Irena Sendler Award, Taube will be announced. She has published dozens Philanthropies expresses our of books and articles, edited deep appreciation and respect Taube Philanthropies estab- several volumes of primary for her stellar accomplishments.” lished the Irena Sendler Memo- Holocaust sources, and with rial Award in 2008 in memory Jacek Leociak has written the One of Prof. Engelking’s most of Irena Sendler, whom Yad most authoritative monograph ambitious works is Dalej jest Vashem named a Righteous on the Warsaw Ghetto. As noc: losy Żydów w wybranych Among the Nations. Each year, lead scholar and co-curator for powiatach okupowanej Polski the award is presented to those the Holocaust gallery in the (Night Without End: The Fate who have been exemplary in eight-gallery Core Exhibition of Jews in Selected Counties of preserving and revitalizing of POLIN Museum of the Occupied Poland), a two-vol- Poland’s Jewish heritage. History of Polish Jews in ume work co-edited with Jan Nominations for the award are Warsaw, she helped to create a Grabowski of the University of reviewed by a panel of Taube compelling historical narrative Ottawa and published in 2018. Philanthropies advisory board that meets the highest It analyzes nine counties in members and Jewish cultural scholarly standards. Nazi-occupied Poland and leaders in Poland. n

40 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 21 Józef Hen Receives the 2021 Cyprian Kamil Norwid Lifetime Reported by Gazeta Achievement Award

he awarding of this year’s four categories: literature, Statuettes of Norwid music, visual arts, and theater. Tis a special event marking The award committee includes two jubilees: the 200th outstanding artists, art anniversary of the birth of theoreticians and critics, and Cyprian Kamil Norwood and representatives of the Warsaw the twentieth anniversary of departments of Polish artistic the Cyprian Kamil Norwood associations and councilors of Award. The recipient of this the Masovian voivodeship year’s Dzieło Życia (Life from the Culture and National Achievement Award) is Józef Heritage Commission. n Hen, a playwright, director, Józef Hen at the 2013 Warsaw Book Fair. journalist, and author of more Wikimedia Commons than thirty books, thirty-two film and theater scripts, and through novels and four TV series. The award biographical works, drama, ceremony will take place on film scripts, and even September 24, 2021. journalism. One member of the committee, Marek Tomasz Miłkowski, speaking Wawrzkiewicz, declared Hen on behalf of the award “writes better and better.” committee, praised Józef Hen as “an outstanding writer, The award is named for doyen of Polish writing, a Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821– presence in our literary culture 83), a highly regarded Polish since 1947. In those powerful Romantic poet, playwright, times, his writing painter, and sculptor, and was accompanied many established in 2001 by the generations.” Miłkowski Masovian Regional Council characterized Hen as “a (Sejmik Województwa versatile, extremely sensitive Mazowieckiego). It is writer,” prolific in virtually all conferred annually on a fields, from short stories Masovia-based artist in one of

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 41 ANNOUNCEMENTS In Brief Stanford Libraries Receives International Military Tribunal Nuremberg Trial Archives

he International Court of of Taube Philanthropies, “the websites, and sharing Justice in The Hague has opportunity to help Stanford scholarly annotations. The Tauthorized Stanford University finance this project is a great consolidation of the Libraries to digitally preserve personal honor.” documents in one globally and host the records of the accessible online archive will In partnership with the war crimes trial conducted at greatly enhance scholarly Stanford Center for Human Nuremberg after World War II. research, something that Rights and International The proceedings of the tribunal “would not have been possible Justice, Stanford Libraries will at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946 without the significant support provide a unique multimedia established the principle that of Tad Taube and Shana Penn research and educational individuals, including heads of the Taube Philanthropies,” resource for scholars, students, of state, can be held criminally Keller said. n and the public. For the first accountable for war crimes and time, all of the Nuremberg crimes against humanity. All tribunal’s documentation, current international tribunals including film, audio such those at the United recordings, photographs, Nations are based on ideas and evidence, and other precedents established by the documents, will be hosted Nuremberg court. online in one location. Until Support from Taube now, explained Michael Philanthropies will enable Keller, vice provost and Stanford Libraries to host the university librarian at records and will also create Stanford, materials have been an endowment to ensure the scattered in many repositories archive remains secure in and institutions, making the Stanford Digital Archive, access difficult. This has been where it will be known as a significant barrier to the Taube Archive of the research owing to the International Military difficulty of comparing Tribunal of Nuremberg. “As documents, annotating pages a survivor of the Holocaust,” and images of trial said Tad Taube, Chairman proceedings, linking to related

42 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Jewish Historical Institute Dedicates Jan Jagielski Heritage Documentation Department

n June 9, 2021, the Emanuel Ringelblum OJewish Historical Institute unveiled a plaque dedicated to the late Jan Jagielski, a longtime employee of the institute and a steward of Jewish heritage in Poland. The plaque commemorates the naming of the institute’s Heritage Documentation Department in his honor.

The unveiling of the plaque was attended by the director of the Jewish Historical Institute, Monika Krawczyk; Piotr Wiślicki, Chair of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland; and Halina Hila Marcinkowska, Chair of the Council of the Plaque commemorating the Jewish Historical Institute’s Jan Jagielski Heritage Union of Jewish Religious Documentation Department. Communities in the Republic Courtesy of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. to fulfill the unwritten will of “We are meeting here to Mr. Janek, that is, to protect commemorate our colleague, a Jewish heritage in Poland.” longtime employee of the Jewish Historical Institute, in fact, the Editor’s Note: Please see creator of the Documentation Jan Jagielski’s obituary in n Department,” said Monika this issue of Gazeta. Krawczyk. “We will continue

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 43 GEOP: Global Education Outreach Program of POLIN Museum What’s New, What’s Next? Events and Programs

Online Conversations Aleksiun. (Read more: and Konrad Zieliński. (Read https://polin.pl/en/event/ more: https://polin.pl/en/ Under the general title What’s jewish-historiography- event/pogroms-historical- New, What’s Next?, POLIN holocaust.) agents-book-talk.) Museum began two series of podcasts exploring important n Hasidism: A New History n From Left to Right: Lucy topics that will be examined in by David Biale et al. (Read S. Dawidowicz, the New depth later this year at a major more: https://polin.pl/en/ York Intellectuals, and international conference, event/next-stage-history- the Politics of Jewish “What’s New, What’s Next? hasidism.) History by Nancy Sinkoff, whose interview by Innovative Methods, New n Sarah Schenirer and the Samuel Kassow appears Sources, and Paradigm Shifts Bais Yaakov Movement: in this issue of Gazeta. in Jewish Studies,” in October A Revolution in the Name (Read more: https://polin. 2021 (see details below). of Tradition by Naomi pl/en/event/left-right- One podcast series consists of Seidman. (Read more: transformation-pioneering- book discussions hosted by https://polin.pl/en/event/ holocaust-historian.) Prof. Antony Polonsky, Chief revolution-name-tradition- Historian of POLIN Museum book-talk.) n Key Concepts in the Study of , edited by and its Global Education n Przemoc antyżydowska w Sol Goldberg, Scott Ury, Outreach Program (GEOP). The wyobrażenia społeczne. and Kalman Weiser. The other podcast series explores białostocki 1906 editors spoke with Monika thematic questions of scholarly roku (Anti-Jewish Violence Adamczyk-Garbowska and methods, sources, and concepts. and Social Imagery. The Robert Blobaum, and Prof. The book-discussion Białystok Pogrom of 1906) Antony Polonsky was the podcasts, presented in by Artur Markowski, and moderator. (Read more: English, bring together Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach https://polin.pl/en/event/ renowned international polskich w XIX i XX wieku. study-antisemitism.) scholars to discuss the latest Tom 2: Studia przypadków publications on the history (do 1939 roku) (Pogroms of The thematic series of of Polish Jews, and include Jews in the Polish Territories podcasts has offered two the following books: in the XIX and XX Century, presentations to date: Vol. 2: Case Studies [to n Conscious History: Polish n Prof. Marcin Wodziński 1939]), edited by Artur Jewish Historians before discussed “Jewish Studies Markowski, Kamil Kijek, the Holocaust by Natalia after the Epidemic.”

44 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 n Prof. Havi Dreifuss spoke participation of unarmed Check for updates at https:// about “The Future of fighters) in the Ghetto before www.polin.pl/en/geop. Digital Research and Jewish and during April 1943. (Read The Global Education Studies in Light of These more: https://polin.pl/en/ Outreach Program is made Uncertain Times.” event/warsaw-ghetto-uprising- possible thanks to Taube and-role-civil-resistance.) More information about the Philanthropies, the William K. thematic podcasts is available Call for Applications: Bowes Jr. Foundation, on Spotify and the POLIN GEOP Interdisciplinary and the Association of the Museum website: https:// Research Workshops 2022 Jewish Historical Institute polin.pl/en/podcasts-geop- of Poland. n POLIN Museum—through the whats-new-whats-next. Global Education Outreach Online Conference Program—invites scholars in October and academic institutions to propose three-day research POLIN Museum has closed workshops to be held at the the call for applications for museum in 2022. Workshops the conference “What’s New, may address any topic relevant What’s Next? Innovative to Polish-Jewish studies, Methods, New Sources, and including history, cultural Paradigm Shifts in Jewish studies, art history, public Studies.” This international history, museology, memory interdisciplinary conference studies, and related subjects. will be held online on October The museum invites applications 3–7, 2021, and will explore new that explore new and innovative directions in the study of East perspectives and it especially and Central European Jews. encourages interdisciplinary (Read more: https://www. and comparative research. For polin.pl/en/whats-new-whats- details see https://polin.pl/en/ next-2021.) news/2021/03/18/call-applica- Ghetto Uprising and tions-geop-interdisciplinary- Civil Resistance research-workshops-2022. On the occasion of the Subscribe to the GEOP’s seventy-eighth anniversary newsletter to follow of the Warsaw Ghetto opportunities and events: Uprising, scholars debated https://www.polin.pl/en/ the significance of civilian nauka-i-zbiory-dzialalnosc- resistance (both civil naukowa-global-education- disobedience and the outreach/geop-newsletter.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 45 New Foundation to Support LGBTQ+ Communities in Poland

he new Equaversity Foundation has Tannounced an initiative to raise funds for LGBTQ+ rights groups in Poland, citing increasing anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination as the reason for its formation. Campaign Against Homophobia, the Love Does Not Exclude Association, and the Polish Association of Anti- Discriminatory Law are among the organizations to receive money from Equaversity. The foundation’s co-founders and board include such prominent figures as film director, Angiezska Holland, Queer Eye television star Antoni Porowski, singer Mary Komasa, writer and activist, Olga Tokarczuk, film director Kasia Adamik, and model Anja Rubik, who stated that the LGBTQ+ community “can’t count on aid from within the country.” n Pride Parade in Warsaw 2021. For more information go to: Photo by Anna Szcześniak. Used with permission https://www.equaversity.org.

46 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 OF SPECIAL INTEREST The Rediscovered Caricature Art of Nathan Diament J.D. Kirszenbaum-Duvdivani

ive years ago, Gazeta published an article on Fmy granduncle, the Polish- born painter and caricaturist, Jechezkiel David Kirszenbaum (1900–54). Kirszenbaum was one of the few family members to survive the Holocaust. Fifteen years of research had uncovered nearly 400 paintings and a wealth of caricatures in collections of museums throughout Europe, such as Poland, , Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, as well as in Israel. Solo J.D. Kirszenbaum in his studio in Paris, circa 1952. Courtesy of Nathan Diamant exhibitions of the artist’s works were organized in 2013 and a dating back to his pre-war and findings regarding my number have been mounted time in Germany, where he great-uncle’s artistic career. since then in France, Croatia, studied at the Bauhaus with He explained that he had been and Germany as well. painters such as Paul Klee and involved in the research and Wladimir Kandinsky, had been restitution of paintings stolen, Among the most exciting destroyed. The Nazi regime or those that had gone missing, discoveries were had designated Kirszenbaum, during World War II and offered Kirszenbaum’s caricatures, and many of his fellow artists, to look into whether any of published in the German press “degenerative artists.” Kirszenbaum’s works were in the early 1920s and into the among those discovered. early 30s under the pseudonym One day, I was at the Ben Duvdivani (“Kirszenbaum” Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, on A few weeks later, he contacted in Hebrew). The discovery of my way to India. I ran into an me and informed me that his caricatures was especially old friend, a lawyer named Joel although his research had been noteworthy as, from the Levy. We had served together complicated by the artist’s beginning of my research, in the Israeli Army unit devoted use of a pseudonym, he had I was convinced that most to public communication. I discovered that Kirszenbaum of Kirszenbaum’s works told him about my research had been one of the leading

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 47 Left to right, top and bottom: “The Movie Stars,” Untitled, “Always Drink Harder,” “Film Stars,” “Representatives of the People.” All images from the Kirszenbaum-Duvdivani Collection, 1926–27. Heidelberg University archives. Courtesy of Nathan Diamant

The story of the existence of these works and their significance to Jewish art history is nothing less than incroyable mais caricaturists of the 1920s and The story of the existence early 30s. vrais! Too amazing to of these works and their be believed! significance to Jewish art This discovery proved that history is nothing less than traces of his early artistic period Beginning on August 26, 2021, incroyable mais vrais! Too survived and that beyond amazing to be believed!! creating portrayals of shtetl life adult education centers across and having been active in the Germany will be exhibiting For further reading and Paris school, Kirszenbaum- the caricatures produced in information about the artist and Duvdivani was well known as Berlin in the 1920s and 30s. his work, please visit: https:// So far, around twenty adult a caricaturist in Berlin before www.kirszenbaum.com/bio. n World War II. education centers have agreed to showcase the exhibition, Nathan Diament is a Holocaust That was only the beginning including multimedia platforms survivor and the great-nephew of the discovery. Since then, and institutions in Paris and of J.D. Kirszenbaum-Duvdivani, Duvdivani’s caricatures have Warsaw. The details of the whose work he has devoted been included in exhibitions on multi-sited concept are being his life to preserving and the artist’s career and will soon prepared by the curator, Dr. disseminating. be the feature of a documentary Bernhard Post, under the produced by the Willy Brandt auspices of the Weimar Adult Center in Jerusalem. Education Center.

48 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 POEM The Tale of a Niggun (Excerpt) by Elie Wiesel. Illustrated by Mark Podwal

A ghetto, of the old Jews in our place. somewhere in the East, to the rabbi, And the rabbi, during the reign of night, who listens their guide, under skies of copper breathlessly. feels his knees weakening, and fire. The enemy demands the blood rushing to his face, ten Jews, his chest is ready to burst, The leaders of the community, chosen by us and the room is turning, good people all, and handed over to him turning, courageous all, before tomorrow evening. turning around him, fearing God and loving His Law, Tomorrow is Purim, and so is the earth, came to see and the enemy, and so are the skies, the rabbi planning to avenge and soon, who has cried and cried, Haman’s ten sons, he feels, and has searched will hang ten of our own, he will fall darkness says the oldest as falls the blind man, for an answer of the old Jews. a victim of night with such passion And he asks: and its prowlers. that he no longer What are we to do, rabbi? can see. He demands an answer, Tell us what to do. says the oldest It’s urgent, And his colleagues, of the old Jews, they tell him, brave people the enemy demands an answer; it’s more than urgent; though frightened, tell us what it must be, it’s a matter repeat after him: your duty is to guide of life or death What are we to do, rabbi? just as ours is to follow. for some Jews Tell us what to do. and perhaps What should we do all Jews. We are afraid, or say? says the oldest ask the leaders Speak, of the old Jews, of the ghetto says the rabbi, afraid to make a decision— somewhere in the East tell me all: afraid to make the wrong under forbidden I wish not to be spared. decision: and cursed skies; This is what the enemy demands, Help us, rabbi, what can we do says the oldest decide for us—and so as not to be doomed?

Excerpt and image reprinted from The Tale of a Niggun by Elie Wiesel. Illustrated by Mark Podwal. New York: Schocken Books, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Group, a division of Penguin Random House, 2020. Used with permission

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 49 OBITUARIES

Roman Kent Antony Polonsky (1929–2021)

oman Kent, an indomitable and Rindefatigable fighter for the rights and memory of the survivors of the Holocaust, died on May 21 at his home in New York City at the age of ninety-two. He was born in the Polish textile town of Łódź in 1929 as Roman Knyker, one of four children of a prosperous factory owner, and enjoyed a carefree youth, horseback riding, and cycling Twenty-fourth Annual Holocaust Remembrance Program at the Lincoln Theater, in the summers at the dacha Washington, DC, on April 26, 2017. owned by the family thirty USDA Photo by Lance Cheung. Public domain miles outside Łódź. Leon he was assigned to a afterwards from the effect of her wartime ordeals. The All this changed with the work detail in Auschwitz. other sister, Renia, married in Nazi occupation of his native Subsequently, after the camp’s Sweden where she remained. town and the establishment closure in January 1945, they were sent to the concentration there in February 1940 of a Roman and Leon were camps of Gross-Rosen ghetto, the second largest in among the first of the Jewish and Flossenburg and were Poland. In 1943, his father, Holocaust survivors to liberated by the United States Emanuel, succumbed to emigrate to the United States Army while on a death march the widespread disease and in 1946, in spite of the post- to the camp of Dachau in April malnutrition. When the ghetto war restrictions, as a result 1945. His two sisters had also was liquidated in August of a special directive from survived Auschwitz and had 1944, Roman was sent with President Truman admitting been able to find sanctuary in his brother, two sisters, and a few thousand orphans. Sweden, and the four siblings mother to Auschwitz, where They were settled with were reunited there. Sadly his mother, Sonia, was foster families in Atlanta, one sister, Dasza, died soon murdered. With his brother where both attended Emory

50 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 University. Leon became a Kent asserted that it and to the pursuit of neurosurgeon and Roman reparations. In the words of was the obligation of established a successful Greg Schneider, Executive international trading company. adults to teach children Vice President of the He subsequently moved to Conference on Jewish to understand “what New York, where he married Material Claims Against Hannah Starkman, also a happens when hatred Germany: native of Łódź and a survivor and prejudice are From negotiating billions of three concentration camps. of dollars in pensions and She died in 2017. allowed to flourish.” compensation for Jewish His experiences during Holocaust survivors from “what happens when hatred World War II dominated his the German government, and prejudice are allowed to life and determined his later championing survivor flourish.” He also believed activities. As he put it during interests with insurance that Germany needed to repay a 2019 visit to the Auschwitz companies, German industry, the remnants of European exhibit at the Museum of and Eastern European Jewry for what they suffered. Jewish Heritage in Lower governments, to advocating At the same time, in the words Manhattan: “How can I forget for Holocaust education, of Ronald Lauder, president the smell of burning flesh that to taking on Facebook, of the World Jewish Congress, constantly filled the air? Or demanding that they remove with whom he worked on the heartbreak of children torn Holocaust deniers from their Auschwitz commemoration, from their mothers? Those platform, no task was too “He was not seeking revenge, shouts of terror will ring in my large or too overwhelming. he was seeking justice. He ears until I am laid to rest.” Even as his own health waned, was a person who looked he continued to fight against Kent was convinced that to the future instead of the anti-Semitism and hatred. the world needed to be past.” Because of this he was reminded of the six million determined to memorialize Kent held the positions of vice Jews who perished at the and materially assist non- president, and, from 2011, hands of the Germans and Jews who had hidden Jews or president of the International their collaborators. In a helped them escape. Auschwitz Committee, speech he gave in 2015 on established by survivors of He played a key role in the seventy-first anniversary the camp in 1952; chairman mobilizing the survivor of the liquidation of the Łódź of the American Gathering of community and devoted ghetto, he asserted that it was Jewish Holocaust Survivors himself unstintingly to the obligation of adults to and their Descendants; and Holocaust commemoration teach children to understand president of the Jewish

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 51 Foundation of the Righteous, He was determined Award, the Elie Wiesel an organization that provides Holocaust Remembrance to memorialize and financial assistance to those Award, and the Officer’s Cross recognized as Righteous materially assist non- of the Order of Merit of the Among the Nations. He was Federal Republic of Germany. Jews who had hidden from 1988 a board member He is survived by daughter of the Claims Conference, Jews or helped them Susan Kent Avjian, son- which negotiated most of the escape. in-law Robert Avjian, and $80 billion that Germany has son Jeffrey Kent as well as paid in assistance to survivors Assets in the US and in three grandchildren, Dara and for educational and October 2011 by President Avjian, Eryn Kent Roberts, memorial programs, serving Obama to the United States and Sean Avjian, with a as treasurer on the Leadership Holocaust Memorial Council, great-granddaughter, Hannah Council, special advisor to the body that oversees the US Leona Avjian Roberts. To the president, and co-chair Holocaust Memorial Museum. them we express our heartfelt of the Claims Conference condolences. He is a person negotiating committee. Stuart Roman Kent was the author of who is truly irreplaceable. n E. Eizenstat, a former Deputy two books, an autobiography, US Treasury Secretary and the Courage Was My Only conference’s chief negotiator, Option (New York, 2008) praised his skill in these and one for children, My discussions: Dog Lala (Auburn Hills, [He] made it his personal 2006), which tells how his mission to advocate for pet dog was taken from him his fellow survivors to the when he was confined in the very end, participating on Łódź ghetto. He also played negotiations calls as recently a key role in the making of as last week. His strength and Children of the Holocaust, fortitude were unmatched, and a 1980 documentary film his drive and determination to dedicated to the memory of see justice served knew the children who died during no bounds. the Holocaust. Among his many honors are the Medal In 1998 he was appointed of Honor and Recognition by President Clinton to from the Polish Government, the Presidential Advisory the Interfaith Committee of Commission of Holocaust Remembrance Humanitarian

52 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Jan Jagielski Emanuel Ringleblum Jewish Historical Institute (1937–2021)

oland’s Jewish community mourns the passing of Jan PJagielski, a social activist and guardian of Jewish cemeteries in Poland. “For us,” declared the website of the Jewish Historical Institute, “he was first of all Mr. Janek, who treated the ŻIH as his second home.” Born in Toruń and trained as a chemical engineer, Jagielski worked for decades at the Institute of Industrial Chemistry in Warsaw. Though not Jewish himself, he made a Jan Jagielski. life’s work of recovering and Courtesy of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute preserving the Jewish heritage cemetery in Warsaw, organized to the preservation of Jewish in Poland, a quest begun during readings and film screenings, heritage in Poland (2009), the the communist years, when and began drawing up a list of Knight’s Cross of the Order he traveled widely in Poland Jewish cemeteries in Poland. of Polish Rebirth awarded by in search of cemeteries and President Lech Kaczyński in synagogues and compiled an Jagielski joined the staff 2008, the Prize and important archive of personal of the Jewish Historical the Nireńska Polyneto in 2005, notes and photographs. In the Institute in Warsaw in 1991 as well as the Gloria Artis Silver late 1970s, he was a founder and became director of its Medal for Culture in 2015. of the so-called Jewish Flying Heritage Documentation University—a semi-clandestine Department. He also chaired “Jan was everyone’s teacher and study group—and in 1981 the Foundation of Eternal mentor in showing us the way he co-founded the Citizens’ Remembrance, established in to preserve Jewish cemeteries Committee for the Care 1993 on the initiative of the and memory,” wrote Poland’s of Jewish Cemeteries and Polish Government. His many Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Monuments. Among its many awards include the Taube in one of many tributes made on efforts, the committee helped Foundation’s Irena Sendler the announcement of Jagielski’s restoration efforts at the Jewish Award for contributions made passing. n

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 53 In Tribute to the Life of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman Tressa Berman (1919–2021)

aye Schulman was 101 (along with a brother who had when she passed away escaped from the Nazi labor Fon April 24 of this year. Born camp), and historically as the Faigel Lazebnik, she grew up only photographer to have in the small town of Lenin in captured Jewish partisan life the Polesia region of Poland, inside of the camps. Indeed, separated from Russia by a her photography skills saved bridge and the Sluch River, her life, as the Nazis recruited which townspeople could her to document their activities only cross with a government- and atrocities. After witnessing issued visa. In her 1995 the murder of her family and autobiography, A Partisan’s the destruction of Lenin, she Memoir, she recalled a happy fled to join the Molotava childhood in her family’s Brigade, a group of Russian sprawling home, built by soldiers and officers who her father and shared with Faye Schulman with her Compur themselves had escaped from her parents and six siblings. camera. Nazi prisoner of war camps. As Photo courtesy of A Partisan’s Memoir: She described Lenin as a Woman of the Holocaust by Faye Schulman, she described in her memoir, vibrant village of markets published by Second Story Press “We faced hunger and cold; and orchards, where Jews and we faced the constant threat of non-Jews lived peacefully We were not like lambs death and torture; added to this together. Until 1942. In that going to the slaughter. we faced anti-Semitism in our year, Nazi occupiers sealed the own ranks. Against all odds Many fought back. shtetl, relocated able-bodied we struggled.” men to labor camps (including villagers’ and her own family’s In her photographs, we glimpse one of her older brothers), demise. A third time, when she then murdered its remaining both quotidian partisan life returned to Lenin with a group (building boats, loading Jewish inhabitants—an act of Russian Partisans, she lit the which she witnessed twice. supplies, waiting, always on match that burned her family the move) alongside shocking The first time was when it home to the ground. occurred right before her eyes; images of mass graves and the second time was when she Faye Schulman’s life was epic demolitions. In her witnessing, was forced to develop the films and extraordinary. Foremost she was both deliberate and taken by Nazi occupiers that was her triumph as a survivor prolific. As she stated in the Daring documented the horror of the of her massacred family 1999 PBS documentary

54 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 to Resist, she wanted to show that “we were not like lambs going to the slaughter. Many fought back.” I first encountered Faye Schulman’s life and photographs fifteen years ago, when I worked with the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, a San Francisco- based nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and distributing educational materials about Jewish

Partisans. I became entranced Faye Schulman with fellow partisans, 1942. and inspired by the power Photo courtesy of A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust by Faye Schulman, published of her life story, conducted by Second Story Press exhibition research, and wrote descriptive scenes generated photographs, in the leopard- really cannot separate one from her images, including a skin coat given to her by her from the other.” One well- work-in-progress. I regret that I family that kept her from known photograph (pictured did not get to meet her toward freezing to death in winter on p. 54) shows her, in her the end of her celebrated life. under beds of leaves on the eighties, holding the treasured ground of the forest. camera. She kept it through After the war, she and her all as an accompaniment and husband Morris Schulman—a Trained as a nurse during her remembrance of the “most fellow partisan—lived in the time in the resistance, she painful time of my life,” as Landsberg displaced persons tended to fellow partisans, she wrote of the scorching, camp in West Germany, where was a humanitarian who unforgettable, and necessary they worked on behalf of temporarily adopted an truths that she showed to the Israeli independence. In 1948, orphaned girl in the forest, and world. For her example and her they emigrated to Canada, above all, was a brave woman life, we can all be grateful. where they raised a family. with the observational skills Faye Schulman continued of a soldier and a journalist, Faye Schulman was preceded in working with photographic flanked by a sixteen-shot death by her beloved husband, collections, though no longer rifle on one shoulder and a Morris Schulman, who died as a photographer. Zeiss Ikon Compur camera in 1992, and is survived by on the other. Referencing the their son and daughter and six Not only was her life an more than 100 photographs grandchildren. n example of fierce courage, that are her legacy, she said it was also a testament to in a video interview, “Every Tressa Berman, PhD, is an grace and beauty, poised, as picture is a story, and the anthropologist, writer, and she is often depicted in her stories are my memories. So I managing editor at Gazeta.

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 55 Marek Web, Historian, Journalist, and YIVO’s Former Chief Archivist Joanna Lisek (1938–2021)

ad news unfortunately exceptionally lovely person, travels all too fast. We Web was always happy to Sregret to inform you that our help Polish researchers and friend Marek Web passed visitors who turned up at away in New York City on YIVO for whatever reason. May 14, 2021. Historian, His assistance was crucial journalist, and former head for many successful projects, of the YIVO archive in New including creation of the York, Web was born in 1938 Babiniec—Women in Yiddish in Łódź to a secular family. Culture exhibit at the White His parents moved in left- Stork Synagogue in Wrocław. wing circles and supported Editors’ Note: In an interview Yiddish language and culture. with Teresa Torańska, “We He survived World War II Marek Web in Wrocław in 2014. Chidusz Jewish Magazine. Used with Are Here: Jewish Narratives with his mother in Uzbekistan, permission of Poland’s March 1968 while his father joined the Events,” Marek Web talked Anders Army and traveled campaign in Poland. A year about his life in Poland before with it along the military later he was employed by the he was expelled as a result route from Russia through YIVO Institute in New York of the 1968 anti-Semitic/ Iran to Palestine, where he City, where he played a key anti-Zionist campaign. was demobilized. The family role in the modernization of the https://wearehere68.com/the- moved to Łódź after the war. archives and was eventually journalist-marek-web. n In the early 1960s, Marek made chief archivist. Web taught history at the Web was a valued expert Joanna Lisek, PhD, a literary Sholem Aleichem Jewish high on issues related to Jewish scholar, translator, and faculty school in Wrocław. He began culture in Poland. He co- member of the Tadeusz Taube working at the editorial office edited a guide to the YIVO Department of Jewish Studies of Folks Sztyme in Warsaw archives and published at the University of Wrocław, in 1964. Poyln, an extremely valuable is studying Jewish poetry and In 1969, he emigrated with album of Alter Kacyzne’s the participation of women in his family to the United States photographs taken from Yiddish culture. as a result of the anti-Semitic the YIVO archives. An

56 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 Remembering Jewlia Eisenberg Naomi Seidman (1971–2021)

ewlia was proud to be mostly warehouses. As “punk” Jewish. I’m aware as I write as Jewlia was, she wasn’t Jthat sentence how inadequate afraid of seeming uncool or it sounds, like something square. Maybe the “punkiest” you’d hear in a Jewish summer Jewish thing Jewlia did was camp pep talk or in a Bar go back to school to become Mitzvah sermon or in a more a cantor. There was nothing conventional obituary. But ironic about how she went Jewlia was not conventional, down that path. In a KPFA and my relationship to her was interview with her that was more personal. Jewlia’s Jewish replayed a few weeks after pride was of a different type Jewlia Eisenberg z”l performing in she died, Jewlia explained Tel Aviv, August 25, 2007. altogether. Who else do you Wikimedia Commons to the host of the radio show know who changed the spelling that the rabbi was in charge of their name to write in the cantors and the Yiddish press of teaching the congregation, word Jew? On the secular left, and poets and chanteuses. But while a cantor was in charge in Jewlia’s various overlapping she wasn’t shy about writing of the spiritual and emotional circles, Jewishness can be a herself into those chains of experience they were having of complicated thing, tinged with inheritance, as well as she the service. This was clearly a insecurity (“How Jewish am could, in her politics and her calling she took very seriously. I really?”) or embarrassment music. All while being entirely My husband and I lead very (“Look at what those Jews are of the times and places she doing!”) or confusion (“What different lives—he’s a musician, lived, New York and Berkeley, I’m a professor—and our social does Jewish mean anymore?”). and especially punk. Jewlia wasn’t insecure, or circles rarely intersect. But embarrassed, or confused Jewlia’s name marked her as they intersected at Jewlia. We about being Jewish—she was unmistakably Jewish, but it met her separately, a year or crazily passionate about it, the was also a punk rock Jewish so before we met each other. way she was about music and name, unimaginable outside Jewlia was an undergraduate at the people in her life. It’s true, the particular era in which she Berkeley while I was a doctoral a lot of what she loved about thrived, of Charming Hostess, student, and we met in Bluma being Jewish were things from a punk music band that played Goldstein’s Yiddish literature an earlier, richer and more in the south-of-Market-Street class in the early 1990s. Yiddish radical era—a world of Jewish nightclubs in San Francisco, was rarely taught, and there was anarchists and immigrants and when “south of Market” was something of a pioneering spirit

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 57 to the class. It was a graduate done with the band The Ark to myself I started imitating seminar, but Jewlia, then a Ensemble. It was so clear with them, allowing myself in my freshman or sophomore, talked Jewlia that there was more. privacy with the animals to her way into the seminar. What But there was also regret, for make sounds I didn’t know I I remember most is her chunky missed opportunities, and could make. Most of us don’t Doc Marten boots, which she one particular unfortunate use the full range of our voices, put up on the chair across from event. Back when we were but keep to a narrow path, the seminar table. I think I’ve all younger, John was at the where the sounds that come out already said she wasn’t shy. Starry Plough music venue of us stay inside the lines of in Berkeley to hear some normal, proper, feminine, male, John met her at a Passover music, and the topic of the human. Jewlia busted through seder in his apartment. She’d new Charming Hostess record those lines, and not only in her been invited by his housemate, came up and someone asked singing, but every time she who was a teaching assistant him what he thought of it. John opened her mouth. for a course on Zionism that said, “Well, it was like being she was taking. The housemate yelled at by three women for I listened to the KPFA radio remembers her, too—basically, forty-five minutes.” And there interview from bed. The all he remembers of the course was Jewlia, behind him, having interviewer asked her about where he met her was Jewlia heard every word, booming out Charming Hostess, and Jewlia arguing with the instructor. It’s with that wild laugh of hers. started laughing. “Every time I no surprise she was invited But he felt awful, and that was think about Charming Hostess to that seder. Jewlia had a what he was remembering, I think about what John Schott talent for more-or-less instant among all the other things, in said about it, that it was like friendship, leaving aside all those days after Jewlia died. listening to a bunch of women questions of social status or yelling at you. I have to give a age and with all preliminary I had regrets, too. I hadn’t shout out to my buddy John, stages shrunk into five minutes, seen Jewlia all that much in a great musician and friend. to get to the juicy parts, the past fifteen or so years, In case you’re listening, John, which were about life. By the although we lived close by I love you!” evening after that first seminar each other, and every time we meeting, we were zooming did meet it felt like a party, Jewlia had uninterrupted around the Berkeley Hills on like a red-letter day. Jewlia chi, until she didn’t. In case you’re listening, Jewlia, I love my motorcycle, with Jewlia Eisenberg! Hearing her voice n screaming in ecstasy. She didn’t reminded me of something you, too. hold back. If you’ve heard her one of my son’s pre-school Naomi Seidman, PhD, is sing, you know what I mean. teachers had said after a three- Jackman Humanities Professor year-old had slammed full at the University of Toronto. John was devastated by force into me: “Uninterrupted Jewlia’s death. He wasn’t chi.” Jewlia had uninterrupted done with her, with their chi—forceful energy. I was friendship, with making once in the zoo on a snowy music, with traveling around day, and all the animals were together, the way they had indoors, and having the place

58 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 2 . Teresa Zabin´ska-Zawadzki Reported by Gazeta (1944–2021)

ith the death of Teresa Żabińska-Zawadzki, Won January 30, the Warsaw Zoo lost a living connection to two of its most famous staff members. Żabińska-Zawadzki was the daughter of Jan and Antonina Żabiński, who saved hundreds of Jews from the She always talked with pride about her parents and their heroism.

Holocaust by hiding them in their residence at the zoo or in empty animal enclosures. Yad Vashem recognized Teresa Żabińska-Zawadzki. the Żabińskis as Righteous Courtesy of Zabinski Foundation Among the Nations, and Hollywood told their story in (d. 2019), who was twelve a widely viewed movie, The years her senior, brought food Zookeeper’s Wife. to those in hiding and was featured in the movie. n Żabińska-Zawadzki was born at the zoo in 1944 but chose to live in Denmark after the war, before returning to Poland recently. According to a spokesperson from the zoo, “She always talked with pride about her parents and their heroism.” Her brother Ryszard

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 n 59 Wilhelm Sasnal, First of January (Back), 2021, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw

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