Volume 28, No. 1 Gazeta Winter 2021 Orchestra from an orphanage led by (pictured center) and Stefania Wilczyńska. , 1923. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Institute. Used with permission

A quarterly publication of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture Editorial & Design: Tressa Berman, Daniel Blokh, Fay Bussgang, Julian Bussgang, Shana Penn, , 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 FEATURE ARTICLES Paweł Śpiewak: “Do Not Close the Experience in a Time Capsule” ...... 6 From Behind the Camera: Polish Jewish Narratives Agnieszka Holland and Roberta Grossman in Conversation ...... 11

EXHIBITIONS When Memory Speaks: Ten Polish Cities/Ten Jewish Stories at the Galicia Jewish Museum Edward Serrota ...... 15

Traces of Memory in Japan ...... 19 Where Art Thou? Gen 3:9 at the Jewish Historical Institute ...... 20 REPORTS Libel Action Against and ...... 21 Revolution Returns to : Feminists Lead Largest Demonstrations Since the End of Communism ...... 24

ANNOUNCEMENTS CONFERENCES Conference Launches Volume 33 of POLIN: Studies in Polish Jewry ...... 28 Commemoration of ...... 30 IPJS Symposium in Honor of Professor Antony Polonsky ...... 30 BOOKS AND JOURNALS : Biography of a Language. By Jeffrey Shandler ...... 31 Przechytrzyć Historię (Outwitting History). By Aaron Lansky Translated by Agnieszka Nowak-Młynikowska ...... 31 The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater. By Alyssa Quint ...... 32 Jewish Today. Between Memory and Everyday Life. Edited by Marcelo Dimentstein and Ewa Tartakowsky ...... 32 Barefoot Through Thorns and Flowers. A Memoir By Ester Rachel Kamińska ...... 33 Zagłada cmentarzy żydowskich (The Destruction of Jewish Cemeteries). By Krzysztof Bielawski ...... 33

2 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph. By David Shneer ...... 34 Polin Volume 33, Jewish Religious Life in Poland Since 1750 Edited by François Guesnet, Antony Polonsky, Ada Rapoport-Albert, and Marcin Wodziński ...... 34 Eastern European Jewish Affairs Announces Changes in Leadership ...... 35

BOOK ESSAY Reflections onThe People on the Beach. By Rosie Whitehouse ...... 36 AWARDS The 2020 Gierowski-Shmeruk Prize ...... 38 On the Gierowski-Shmeruk Prize to Marcin Wodziński and Waldemar Spallek Antony Polonsky ...... 40 Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Awards from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research ...... 42 Yossi Klein Halevi—Man of Reconciliation ...... 43 Recipients of the Maria and Łukasz Hirszowicz Award ...... 43 2020 National Jewish Book Awards (U.S.) Annual Biography Award ...... 43 IN BRIEF Agnieszka Holland Elected New European Film Academy President ...... 44 Online Archive of An-sky’s The Dybbuk ...... 44 Opening of the Korczak Digital Archive ...... 45 GEOP Announcements ...... 46 OF SPECIAL INTEREST Saving the Great Synagogue of Slonim Michael Mail ...... 48 Tribute to Maria Piechotkowa Shana Penn ...... 51 POEM “The Well” Tadeusz Dąbrowski ...... 55 OBITUARIES David Shneer ...... 56 Piotr Grącikowski ...... 58 Krzysztof Śliwiński ...... 60

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 3 President, American Association Message from for Polish-Jewish Studies

Irene Pipes Founder of Gazeta

Dear Members and Friends,

Greetings from Florida where I am still sitting out this unprecedented crisis which has lasted much longer than any of us could have anticipated. I hope you are comfortable and safe and that we shall be able to resume normal activities in the foreseeable future. The beginnings of a widespread vaccination does provide some light at the end of the tunnel. We are determined to carry on our important work. It is amazing how much one can do with podcasts and Zoom. One notable event has been the opening of the Legacy Gallery at the POLIN Museum in Warsaw. Curated by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Tamara Sztyma, and designed by Arnaud Dechelle, Irene Pipes the gallery is located in a beautiful space on the main floor of the POLIN Museum, overlooking the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. It honors Polish who have made a major contribution to the life of Poland and the wider world. The gallery highlights twenty-six such people and more, as discussed in the book, Legacy of Polish Jews, which accompanies the exhibition. A series of online events has marked the opening. We all hope that we will soon be able to visit it in person. The Global Education Outreach Program (GEOP) of the POLIN Museum has also organized a series of online discussions of recent books on the history of Jews in Poland as part of the program What’s New, What’s Next? Jewish Studies in the Time of Pandemic, which is intended to lead up to the international conference What’s New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies, scheduled for October 2021. (A full listing of GEOP events can be found in this issue of Gazeta.) In January, an online conference was held to celebrate the publication of Volume 33 of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, which is dedicated to Jewish religious life in Poland since 1750. The volume reflects the recent advances in the history of Jewish religious life in Poland, examined from a series of fresh perspectives, as reported on in this issue. The event honored the memory of the late Ada Rapoport-Albert, Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies and former head of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College , who was one of the editors of the volume.

We wish you the best of health, and that you find inspiration in the programs and publications described here.

With best wishes,

Irene Pipes President

4 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Message from Chairman and Executive Director, Tad Taube and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life Shana Penn & Culture

Recovering and preserving our history is a vital enterprise, but it is also a demanding one, as this issue of Gazeta reveals. In one of our stories, Paweł Śpiewak explains to his interviewer the many challenges he faced during his decade-long tenure as director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. Upon entering his position in 2011, he found the institution suffering from years of underfunding. The building’s physical structure demanded attention, but even more effort was needed to reinvigorate the programs, update the services and technology, and move the institute to the center of the Tad Taube Jewish historical research community. In another of our stories, two notable filmmakers, Agnieszka Holland and Roberta Grossman, discuss their mutual fascination with the great themes and events of the 20th century and the challenge of trying to understand Jewish and Holocaust subjects. “We constantly have to find ways to discover and understand the keys to the past,” says Holland, “because this will somehow enlighten our choices today.”

And for real commitment in the face of challenges, consider the decades-long efforts of Maria Piechotkowa and her husband Kazimierz to document the wooden synagogues of the Polish lands, all destroyed during the Nazi occupation. As explained in a tribute Shana Penn obituary in this issue, these remarkable Jewish buildings were known by few until the Piechotkas published their pathbreaking study in 1957. The Communist regime’s efforts to discourage research in all things Jewish did not prevent the book from circulating abroad, with remarkable results that we are enjoying today.

Recovering and preserving our history, these stories reveal, is not a matter of pushing a button and letting a computer do the work. It requires personal dedication, effort, and persistence, along with quite a bit of imagination. We at Gazeta are proud to be part of that effort.

Tad Taube and Shana Penn Chairman and Executive Director

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 5 FEATURE ARTICLES “Do Not Close the Experience in a Time Capsule”: Pawe /l Śpiewak in Conversation with Olga Drenda Translated by Przemysław Batorski

n the eve of his Oretirement as Director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Professor Paweł Śpiewak reflects on his decade of leadership over this preeminent institution, collection, and archive, and its historic pre-war building.

Olga Drenda: Maybe let’s Professor Paweł Śpiewak. start from the beginning, Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute from 2011. such a way of life. I imagined not unimaginable to me. The Paweł Śpiewak: I became that for the rest of my life idea of directorship intrigued the director of the Jewish I would be a rebellious and surprised me. There was Historical Institute almost by academician—writing essays, something adventurous, new accident. Previously I had not articles and books, like the and risky about it. considered such a possibility. proverbial shoemaker, working I had no managerial I was introduced by Minister for someone who knocks and ambitions. I knew something Bogdan Zdrojewski to rings to order an article for a about the JHI, had a good an institution that looked more or less popular weekly. understanding of the existing dilapidated from the outside. My anvil, my computer, was Jewish community, learned I made reconstruction of full of such contracts. about Jewish traditions, wrote the space a priority. What commentaries on the Torah I had—as the saying goes— is most beautiful—the for Tygodnik Powszechny, various adventures in my architecture typical of the but did not wish to take up a career (I have been a member 1930s, resembling the interior managerial career and work of the Polish Parliament for of the Emigration Museum for the so-called Jewish street. two years, an exciting waste in Gdynia or the YIVO of life), and the fact that a new building in —was then It was not and is not an easy opportunity might appear was obscured. The building of street. I had not considered

6 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 the current Jewish Historical Drenda: What was the cause arouse any particular interest. Institute, as one of the few of this state of affairs, simply Unfortunately, the JHI was community Ghetto buildings, entropy? treated as a marginal academic survived the war. It remained and archival institution. Śpiewak: My predecessors a strong sign of presence and The greatest treasure, the operated under difficult memory of the Central Judaic archives, including the largest conditions. The salaries were Library (there was no trace of of them, the Ringelblum outrageously low, lower by it) and of the Judaic Institute. Archive (ARG), were being half compared to the lowest During the war it performed edited. If anyone made them salary in the Polish Academy important functions. It public, it was certainly not of Sciences. A significant part was here that Emanuel the JHI and its employees. of the expenses was covered Ringelblum—the patron of It was in the JHI that the by the support of the always the Institute since 2009—and documents from Jedwabne gracious Taube Foundation, a large group of his associates were kept, as well as the diary without which the Institute came to work every day. of a ghetto policeman from would not be able to function —Calel Perechodnik. The building has something at all. Those were years Fortunately, some of this extraordinary about it: traces of economic turmoil. The legacy was published by the of fire on the floor. As in the change came together with Polish Center for Holocaust picture from Hiroshima. The the transition of the JHI to Research. The institution nation died, only a trace of the the authority of the Ministry was technologically at fire remained. When the Great of Culture. Thankfully the the level of a typewriter, Synagogue was blown up in late Minister Tomasz Merta, computers were more of an May 1943, a fire penetrated a wonderful man, managed ornament. The website was the building and burnt the to arrange it. Dr. Eleonora extremely modest. In my ceilings and stone. The Bergman was re-organizing opinion, the Jewish Historical temperature must have been the Institute for three years. I Institute was heading toward enormous. had the impression that I was marginalization. I can say that entering a forgotten institution I feel that this is an extremely when I entered the JHI, I did hidden behind a skyscraper, important sign that I think of not even realize how difficult covered with autumn leaves in biblical terms. In one of the a task awaited me. My social for years. The otherwise midrashim we read that God and sociological knowledge beautiful building stood, but wrote the Tablets of Moses has also changed a lot. was no longer visible in a with white and black fire. I social sense. I like to come back to one treat this trace as a sign of quote from Machiavelli’s what is most important in our Nobody visited this place, The Prince: a prince who Jewish history. Our covenant unless they were doing takes control of a state in a tablets and our fate are written research. There were very state of decay is in a favorable in fire. Not to be erased. few exhibitions, one in position, because any move he Unforgettable. ten years, and they did not

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 7 makes to restore order will be “Apart from us, no support from various grants a move forward, will change one could deal with the and foundations. The Taube something. It is easier to build Foundation, which contributes something when institutions memory of the Jewish greatly to the development of are non-functional and poorly artists who died during our institution, the Rothschild staffed. The first goals are Foundation, the Koret then quite easy to achieve. the war. It was a long Foundation, and others, are The second thing is that, I road to go and it is not also helpful; recently the admit, I hadn’t had much to do Norwegian and EEA Grants with the Institute before. My over yet.” play an important role. They ex-father-in-law was once the –Professor Paweł Śpiewak now account for at least a third director, in the most difficult of our overall budget. We have period, 1969–70. He resigned a lot of money for our research, after some minor conflict with digitization of materials. They publishing, exhibition, Professor Marian Fuks. had to be made available, as digitization etc. This is our well as books, magazines, great achievement, which can Drenda: What was it like documents written on paper, be continued in the coming putting together the JHI? often of the poorest kind, had years. An important element Śpiewak: To some extent, this to be saved. Now we have of our role in the Jewish process started bottom-up. If a fantastic scanning center, community is cooperation with today I know what the mission we have rebuilt the website the Taube Center and the Hillel of the Jewish Historical once again, and many new Polska Foundation. Institute is, it is not because people with great competence A publishing department I came there with a clear plan. and amazing commitment appeared at work. was also needed. A long time One thing became clear to ago, there had been one book me, that apart from moving The first task was to published every seven years, the bookstore from the middle strengthen the administrative and I thought there should be of the hall, throwing away and accounting side. We almost twenty books a year. unnecessary wardrobes from managed to organize our In my nine years, we have the building’s lobby, and relations with the Association published nearly a hundred tidying up the space, it was a of the Jewish Historical books, not counting the ARG requirement that the Institute Institute. We now have a series. A significant place is should be technologically good and lasting agreement held by Kwartalnik Historii modernized, moving from defining the property Żydów [Jewish History the era of typescript to the relations and the principles Quarterly], edited by Dr. internet era. It was not only of mutual cooperation. Jan Doktór. We managed to increase its volume by one about the website, but also— Not only has the basic third (here the help of the which was criticized by some budget of the JHI increased, Association was essential and JHI employees—about the but also specific donations,

8 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 significant). Our publishing house and a beautiful bookshop are the showpieces of the Institute.

Of course, the publishing house requires not only editors, graphic designers, printing houses, but also considerable funds. Here we are aided by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and other institutions.

Each researcher has the opportunity to publish their Part of the permanent exhibition on the Warsaw Ghetto Archives, opened in 2017, curated by Professor Paweł Śpiewak. texts. Quite an interesting Photographed by Grzegorz Kwolek. Courtesy of Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute collection has assembled in this way. A separate place is established and I created a The education department taken by the publication of long-term exhibition program. conducts many classes for subsequent volumes of the Many of the exhibitions are students, researchers, and Polish Ringelblum Archive (there worth remembering, they and foreign students. Academies are thirty-eight of them), plus were accompanied by really for teachers are very important translations of these volumes good catalogs. I am thinking to us. We used to conduct one into English. It is a huge of exhibitions devoted to such session every year. Now achievement of Prof. Tadeusz Polish rabbis, Julia Pirotte’s there are two each year. Many Epsztein, Dr. Eleonora photography, anti-Semitic lesson scenarios have been Bergman, and Dr. Katarzyna caricatures, Polish art about the prepared and published on the Person. The Institute itself, Shoah, and an exhibition Hate Delet portal. whose employees enjoy Speech—I Exclude Exclusion. The Archives Department a serious scientific status, Of course, the most important is our backbone. They look benefits from this. for us are the two permanent after millions of pages of exhibitions. One is dedicated Once there also was no documents (digitization is to the Oneg Shabbat group and exhibition department. We ongoing). New documents the other is called the House of didn’t have a way to show come to us all the time. Prayer. Apart from us, no one our huge and little-known art We respond to numerous could deal with the memory collection, which was basically official inquiries. Our library of the Jewish artists who died unedited when I came on board. works very well. We buy during the war. It was a long In a few months, a museum all important books on the road to go and it is not over yet. and exhibition department was history of Jews. We devote

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 9 considerable resources to this have created a huge collection This article was reprinted in goal. The library’s inventory of Jewish and Judaic data part from a longer version has been completed. The book and documents, one of the published on January 12, collections were put in order, largest in the world. The list 2020 on the Jewish Historical including the manuscripts and of achievements is long and Institute website. To read the antique books department. worthy of a separate report. the full article, please visit: We gained access to many https://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/ Drenda: [What] is the research portals, including pawel-spiewak-do-not-close- division of tasks between JSTOR. We are working on the-experience-in-a-time- institutions, cooperation, and a new bibliography of the capsule,2195. the positioning of Jewish Biuletyn [Bulletin of the institutions in Poland? Jewish Historical Institute] and Quarterly of the Jewish Śpiewak: The geography of Historical Institute. Jewish institutions in Poland has certainly changed during The genealogy department my term of office. We have has been strengthened over to constantly reposition the years. Currently, the team ourselves. The emergence consists of five outstanding of the POLIN Museum and specialists, who are invited to local initiatives has had a all international conferences good effect, because Jewish on genealogy. Over the years, issues are more present in we have been visited by the public discourse. We also thousands of people from all become caught up in serious over the world, and everyone historical debates. Anti- received knowledge of the Semitic slogans will always highest quality. We work with appear, but I believe that this all the world’s major research is a marginal phenomenon, institutions and museums because the Jewish community dealing with Jewish history, after 1989 is no longer starting with the fragile. People brought up Institute and as Catholics discover their Museum in Washington. We Jewish ancestors, many people have signed many bilateral convert. Jewish culture is agreements, recently, with the returning thanks to many NS Dokuzentrum in , researchers, scientists, and where we want to open filmmakers who are interested an exhibition on the Oneg in it in Poland. We are all Shabbat group in two years. entitled to this heritage. n Thanks to digitization, we

10 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 From Behind the Camera: Polish Jewish Narratives Agnieszka Holland and Roberta Grossman in Conversation

ditors’ Note: The November 19, 2020 Eepisode of TJHTalks (Taube Jewish Heritage Talks) is devoted to the cultural impact of films that explore Jewish and Holocaust subjects. Hosted in cooperation with the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, this session features two universally acclaimed filmmakers, Agnieszka Holland and Roberta Grossman. Below is an excerpt from that conversation. Agnieszka Holland Roberta Grossman Roberta Grossman: times.’ ” You refer to it as Holocaust, of course, but it was In 2013, when you were doing a saying. I think of it as a also Communism translated into publicity for your series, curse. I’m wondering what the Stalinist practice. It was the Burning Bush, about Jan in your personal background Second World War. It was the Palach and his fraught self- and your life experience have long oppression in communist sacrifice that led ultimately kept you coming back in your countries. It was colonization to a democratic revolution films to the Holocaust and the and decolonization. It was in then Czechoslovakia, communist era [in Poland]? the birth of the modern vision you said in a speech in of gender and of the new role Agnieszka Holland: Thank Washington, DC, that you of women, the birth of ... you, Roberta. I think that all were most interested in human rights, and living beings’ times are difficult somehow and modern times, namely the rights...[I]t’s why I find this time interesting somehow, but yes, the 19th century and what you fascinating and I think somehow first part of the 20th century was refer to as the “perversely that we are rooted in this period, a time when a lot of issues and captivating” 20th century. in this first part of the 20th challenges and dangers [that] And you said, “according to century. It’s not an accident that we are living through now, were a popular Chinese saying, so many things that are going on born, and developed. It was the ‘may you live in interesting now are referring somehow to

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 11 Communism or to Fascism. And a Greek or Jew, that we all the reference to fascists becomes have the right to justice, to very obvious, very relevant, protection, to equality, and somehow, which is dangerous, so on. And in the praxis, in but at the same time pushes us reality, appeared to be at least to ask if we are unable to invent partly very wrong. new ideologies or new utopias or Fascism was another side of new dystopias. the heritage of Christianity, We constantly have to this dark side of that, with find ways to discover and nationalism as a main tool, understand the keys to the past and then racism as in the because this will somehow case of Nazism. It’s a very enlighten our choices today. important and very powerful tool and it became clear Grossman: I wanted to ask you that by creating an enemy, a about your 1990 film, Europa In Darkness, 2011. scapegoat, that it’s possible Europa, because it seems to “We are rooted in the to organize through hate an me that everything that you extremely efficient system. just spoke about is expressed first part of the 20th in that film. I think the thing century. It’s not an And then it was Zionism, which that draws me to history and accident that so many tried to instill in Jewish people especially extreme periods living in Europe, in Africa, and of history is the sadness and things that are going then in the Americas, with the confusion about how the on now are referring feeling that they can always individual can react. So how be destroyed, to give them the does the life experience of the somehow to Communism hope that it can be possible to main character, Solomon Perel or to Fascism.” come back to their roots and —and of course this was based to create a place where they on his true story—how does –Agnieszka Holland will be safe and create also— his life experience exemplify taking from different ideas and these currents that you were just form of Fascism—and it from different utopias—a new referring to, these ... major was Zionism. Those three society that will be better and historical currents of the things have been parallel more just than the society they 20th century? and then fighting and then are coming from. trying to create a new utopia, Holland: I was thinking that a new paradise. In the case So somehow, all those people, it was three very important of Communism, it was as the individuals, who found ideologies or waves or the idea, something very themselves in the middle of new currents in the first inclusive and novel, a kind of those three currents, they part of the 20th century. new Christianity somehow, became toys in the hands of It was Communism, it was that people are equal, that history, in the hands of the Fascism—Nazism like some you would not be considered regimes. And that was quite a

12 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 typical destiny for citizens— magical that it is your penis especially of Central and that can save your soul. Eastern Europe—in the first And my concept when I part of the 20th century and was writing the script was even longer, even up to the that it has to be a bit like a fall of Communism. And I philosophical fairy tale, like was interested in that, because Voltaire, like Candide, for it was my destiny also. My example. But told in the style roots are half Jewish, half of comic books. I never did Polish. The family of my want to go too deeply into the father was killed in the psychology. It’s supposed to Holocaust, most of them. My be a bit external, but at the father survived as a young same time, in some moments, communist, escaping to Soviet we are approaching his soul or Russia. My mother was in the Theatrical release poster for his feelings very closely. And [Polish] , which Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland. afterward, we are distancing was underground. They met Promotional material, used with permission ourselves. So I think that after the war. They believed gives some kind of storytelling that it was possible, after “The filmmaker is energy to the film. But I was the war, to create a more somebody who can afraid, first of all, that the real just and right society, where feel what’s going on hero in this, Solomon Perel, we will all be not Greek would be accused of being a or Jew. They failed, and I underneath and to maybe kind of Nazi. was able to observe their capture something which frustration as a child and then didn’t happen yet, but Grossman: Like a as a teenager and as a young collaborator? person, and my personal which is coming.” Holland: Right. And I didn’t experience was the experience –Agnieszka Holland with the Communists, want to hurt him, especially because I admired his honesty with the oppression of the [W]hat I found in Solomon and courage to speak about Communists. Perel was his honesty, because the darkest moments inside his what was intriguing in his story And so what was in the story own persona. And secondly, and was very risky, was very of Solomon Perel reflected I was afraid that the Jewish provocative, was that he, in the experience of my country, audience would refuse the some way, became a Nazi—in of my region, and also of the film as not noble enough his heart and in his head—and generation of my parents and or not have having enough he felt like his Nazi fellows. partly my own generation. gravitas. But that didn’t Except for one little thing, And at the same time, I found happen. The film became which was a piece of skin on this very universal because it very, very popular, with the his penis. So I found it very was the story of identity and Jewish audience especially. who we are. paradoxical and somehow very

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 13 We did huge tours in several countries and there were a lot of meetings with the audience. And at the beginning of the ’90s, when the film came out, there were many Jewish survivors who had never told their stories, because that started quite late, the openness to tell their stories. Who Will Write Our History, 2018. So this film provoked a lot of people so that they came to “The thing that draws me to extreme periods of history me afterward and told me their is the sadness and confusion about how the individual stories. Every time it began can react.” like this: “It’s a fantastic film. Thank you so much. It’s –Roberta Grossman an incredible story, but my story…” And the only people say. I feel that we are living who can feel what’s going who attacked me, and called in this interesting time, very on underneath and maybe the film “anti-Semitic,” were intense, and I’m spending my capture something which the Germans. time mostly watching what’s didn’t happen yet, but which Grossman: Just in terms of going on in the world, and I is coming. So that will be my n looking at your future work, have the impression that I’m ambition. watching a TV series, reality do you know what your next To watch the hour-long films are? shows, one on the American presidential elections, another interview, please go to: Holland: Well, it’s difficult was Polish presidential https://www.youtube.com/ to tell because the COVID elections. And lately I can watch?v=wcfM0VcQV9g pandemic has taught us that observe the women’s protests we know nothing about and the awakening of Polish Agnieszka Holland is a Polish the future. But I feel now feminism. Another reality film and television director that I would like to make series is the pandemic and and screenwriter, best known a contemporary film. And what it does to states and for her political contributions yes, I would like to make the societies and human beings. to Polish cinema. film with women of strong And all those changes and character. I’m looking for the challenges I was talking Roberta Grossman is an something like that. If it about in the beginning, they American filmmaker whose will happen, I don’t know. are now in flux and we don’t documentaries range from What will be the cinema, the understand very well where social justice to historical independent cinema after things are heading. I think subjects, with a focus on the pandemic, is difficult to the filmmaker is somebody Jewish history.

14 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 EXHIBITIONS When Memory Speaks: Ten Polish Cities/ Edward Serotta Ten Jewish Stories. A New Exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum

en Polish Jews, the subject of the exhibition, were Tborn in the 1920s and grew up in secular homes or religious ones. Two families were upper middle class, the others were poor and struggling. They lived within the borders of inter-war Poland, and like all teenagers, they were focused on sports, school, friendship, poetry, and first loves.

The world they lived in came to an end in September 1939, Poster for Ten Polish Cities/Ten Jewish Stories. and the horrors would not stop Courtesy of Galicia Jewish Museum until May 1945. All of them would lose members of their These are the stories we tell in The Backstory families. Some would survive Ten Polish Cities/Ten Jewish Centropa was founded in the terrors of Nazi ghettos and Stories, a second permanent and Budapest in 2000 concentration camps, while a exhibition in the Galicia with the goal of interviewing few would flee into the Soviet Jewish Museum, which over a thousand elderly Jews Union so they could outrun opened on January 27, 2021. still living in Central and the German army. One was This is a very different sort Eastern Europe. They never hidden by a complete stranger of exhibition, because every used video in those interviews, in a Polish village, two fought story it displays is told by nor did they focus primarily with the Soviet army. One those interviewed by Centropa on the Holocaust. Instead, found a rifle and joined the between 2002 and 2006. they wanted to digitize tens of Partisans. When the fighting This is not an exhibition about thousands of old family stopped, eight of them chose 20th century history. This is pictures and to ask their to remain in Poland. Two about what the 20th century respondents to share stories of started life over in the did to the people in this an entire century, just as they United States. exhibition. lived it. The idea was to

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 15 Central Europe University in Anka Grupińska, an activist Budapest. In order to fund the in Solidarity in the 1980s, program, Centropa turned to led the Polish team of the Claims Conference, the interviewers, translators, Austrian and German transcribers, and scanners. governments, regional banks, Between 2002 and 2006 they and American family interviewed seventy elderly foundations. Jews still living in Poland and had scanned nearly 1,500 It was harder to find support of their old family pictures. for the Polish interviews. More than a few family Cover of the Ten Polish Cities/ Using Old Pictures in Ten Jewish Stories walking tour foundations felt Centropa Educational Programs guide of Kraków, based on Teofila should focus on Polish Jews Silberring’s oral history conducted In 2011, theU.S. State living in North America and by Centropa. Department provided seed Courtesy of Galicia Jewish Museum. , but that is not how funding for Centropa’s Used with permission Centropa’s historians saw it. educational programs in publish their findings in an Enter Tad Taube. Born in Poland. The Taube Foundation online searchable database. Krakόw and raised in Torun, stepped in to help, and There had never been an oral Taube and his family left for Centropa has been working history project like this before. the United States in 1938. After closely with its partner, the It is certainly too late to receiving a master’s degree in Galicia Jewish Museum in launch one now. When the engineering at Stanford Kraków, ever since. University, Taube became a website www.centropa.org With a traveling exhibition major investor in real estate launched in 2002, it was based on Centropa’s Polish and technology in northern written up in The Guardian, interviews, and multimedia California. After the 1989 fall Times of London, New York films along with online of Communism in Poland, he Times (twice), Ha’aretz, Die content in Polish, 236 teachers began playing an active role in Zeit and Der Standard. have taken part in the nine rebuilding Jewish life— Centropa/Galicia Jewish Spearheading the project were supporting academic and Museum seminars, which have young Jewish historians and cultural programs in Warsaw, been held in Białystok, community activists in Kraków, Wrocław, and , Warsaw, Kraków, Budapest, Prague, Novi Sad, elsewhere throughout Poland. and Kyiv. All of them were and Wrocław. The Taube Foundation, along children and grandchildren of Where do those teachers come with the Koret and the Holocaust survivors and they from? Ninety-three of them, or Kronhill-Pletka foundations, had guidance from oral 39%, teach in towns with all provided the funding for historians at Hebrew fewer than 50,000 residents, Centropa’s Polish interviews. University in and and most of those are former

16 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 shtetls, a fact which seems to More than a few family pandemic—museums need indicate that the smaller the foundations felt Centropa to bring their exhibitions to town, the closer people feel to their visitors. its Jewish heritage. should focus on Polish Kraków, the historic and Jews living in North Despite the rightward bent of cultural center of southern the current government in America and Israel, Poland, does not need another Poland, Centropa and the but that is not how historical museum about the Galicia Jewish Museum have German occupation nor registered an ever-increasing Centropa’s historians another Holocaust-related interest in their seminars. In saw it. exhibition, especially since fact, Centropa’s European Auschwitz-Birkenau is so education director, Fabian close at hand. year so that schools Ruehle, stated that aside from throughout the country can Jakub Nowakowski, the Ukraine, more Polish teachers create video walking tours Galicia Jewish Museum’s continue to use Centropa—and and websites about their director, said, “what is needed bring in new teachers—than towns’ Jewish history. In is a platform in both a any other country in Europe. 2018, eighty-eight students museum environment and on Centropa’s seminars are from fourteen schools in the web—one that will allow different because they aren’t southern Poland gathered at Polish Jews to tell us about frontal. While they do bring in the Galicia Jewish Museum to their lives during the 20th at least one historian to speak, show off their projects. century—from the small most of the seminars are comedies of everyday life to conducted by the teachers An Exhibition You Can the great tragedies that befell themselves, so they can share See on the Walls, Listen them. This project will also best practices and lesson plans, to as You Walk, and Find serve as a unique extension to then brainstorm with each on the Internet the themes that the museum other on what works best in With more than 200 Polish already presents and discusses their classrooms. Indeed, teachers using Centropa every at the Traces of Memory core Ruehle said the most important year, the next logical step was exhibition.” lesson he learned is that “no to take the most compelling With that goal in mind, the one can teach a teacher better Centropa interviews and turn Galicia Jewish Museum and than another teacher.” them into a permanent exhibition—not just on the Centropa teams set about While investing in teachers walls of a museum— also as a securing the funding to make is surely the way to create website and even a walking it happen. The German a sustainable model in tour app of Kazimierz, Foreign Office became the education, the Galicia Jewish Kraków’s Jewish quarter. lead sponsor, with the Taube Museum and Centropa hold That’s because—especially Foundation joining the donors student competitions each during the COVID-19 circle in 2019, as did the

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 17 Exhibition installation of Ten Polish Cities/Ten Jewish Stories, including the story of Tad Taube (pictured in exhibition panel), Chairman of Taube Philanthropies. Courtesy of the Galicia Jewish Museum

Lerman-Neubauer Foundation actors read you the stories in have turned Tosia’s stories of Philadelphia and the Polish, Hebrew, English, and into a walking tour app, Kronhill-Pletka Foundation of German. There is nothing even designed and programmed by New York. remotely like it in Poland. the Viennese app developer Nous, which has also made Monika Bielak, a Polish One of the panels tells the apps for the Louvre and the exhibition designer, helped the story of Teofila, or Tosia, Berlin Jewish Museum. Centropa/Galicia Jewish Silberring, who lived only a Museum team envision what few streets away from the Just as important, all ten of Ten Polish Cities/Ten Jewish Galicia Jewish Museum. Tosia the panels, as well as Tosia’s Studies should look like. They was born in Kraków in 1925 walking tour app, are now being readied for the web, so decided to tell the ten stories and died there in 2010. Except that students (and the general on oversized panels, each of for the six years she suffered public) who may never come them backlit and built of through life in Nazi hell, she to Kraków can delve into polymer, glass, and plastic. very rarely left her city. 20th century Poland, as told by ten Jews who will share their With reduced lighting in the Tosia’s Centropa interview is stories with you. n room during the day, entering unique, in that she remembers the exhibition is like stepping Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter, Edward Serotta is founder into a giant family photo literally by door number, and Director of Centropa. album, one you walk through which is why the Galicia and listen to on an app as Jewish Museum and Centropa

18 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Traces of Memory in Japan Jakub Nowakowski

n 2020, the travelling version of the Galicia Jewish Museum’s core Iexhibition, Traces of Memory. A Contemporary Look at the Jewish Past in Poland, was presented throughout Japan.

The exhibition was displayed at the Hyogo International Association in Kobe, the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, and Chiyoda City Hall in Tokyo.

Updated in 2016, Traces of Memory explores a variety of subjects, motifs, and themes related to Polish Jewish history and heritage. The exhibition offers a unique insight into Jewish Poland by describing a series of different processes which, although rooted in the past, directly influence today’s world and our future.

The Japanese iteration of the exhibition is accompanied by a brochure containing captions of the travelling version of the exhibit translated into Japanese by Professor Taku Shinohara.This project has been executed cooperatively with the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Poster for Traces of Memory in Japan. Courtesy of Galicia Jewish Museum and the Polish Institute in Tokyo, and co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund. n

Jakub Nowakowski is Director of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków.

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 19 Where Art Thou? Gen 3:9 Temporary Exhibition on the 80th Commemoration of the Closure of the Warsaw Ghetto Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw. November 16, 2020–April 25, 2021

n November 16, 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto was Ocreated, and the city of Warsaw was divided into two parts by a wall. Jews trapped in the ghetto were separated from their relatives, from information, from trees, and from the view of the sky to the horizon. The exhibition Where Art Thou? Gen 3:9 symbolically refers to this moment. Poster for Where Art Thou? Gen 3:9. Temporary exhibition for the eightieth Instead of a typical chronolog- commemoration of the closure of the Warsaw Ghetto. ical and factual narrative, the Courtesy of Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute organizers proposed a different approach by bringing the Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, Mateusz Jewish Historical Institute, as audience closer to the emotional Damięcki, and Martin part of the commemoration of states experienced by the Budny. The recordings are the eightieth anniversary of the hundreds of thousands of accompanied by images and closure of the Warsaw Ghetto. It people crammed into the photographs taken in the ghetto. was co-financed by the Ministry “Jewish residential district.” of Culture, National Heritage As an “open,” self-guided and Sport, with the following The exhibition space is exhibition, the sections are contributors: divided into eleven positions designed to bring a sense representing states or feelings, of the experience of the Curators: Paweł Śpiewak, such as uncertainty, fear, ghetto, without any attempt Piotr Rypson hunger, timelessness, intimacy, at staging or using expressive Curatorial collaboration: Anna compassion, or faith, marking scenography. As the curators Duńczyk-Szulc, Agnieszka Olsten the burden of life and death in state, “we would like the Exhibition arrangement: Marcin the Warsaw Ghetto. viewers to find a universal Kwietowicz, Aneta Faner message referring to other You can understand the places and events in the Graphic design: Jakub Woynarowski significance of subsequent border states we touch at Honorary patronage: President of the places by listening to the war the exhibition.” Capital City of Warsaw reports available on specially prepared audio guides, read by The exhibition was organized Media patronage: Polskie Radio n actors Magdalena Lamparska, by the Emanuel Ringelblum Program II

20 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 REPORTS Libel Action Against Barbara Gazeta Editorial Report Engelking and Jan Grabowski

n January 2018, the Polish Poland, Warsaw, 2018) and Jan Parliament passed legislation Grabowski, one of the editors Ithat amended the law on the of the book, for libel. The libel prosecution of crimes against the suit is based on the following Polish Nation. It was rescinded passage in the book: in June of that year, but a clause Having lost her entire was retained, stating: family, Estera Drogicka Protecting the reputation of (née Siemiatycka), equipped the Republic of Poland and [Night Without End: with identity papers she the Polish Nation shall be The Fate of Jews in Selected bought from a Belarusian Counties of Occupied Poland], governed by the provisions edited by Jan Grabowski and woman, decided to leave for of the Civil Code Act of 23 Barbara Engelking, published work in Prussia. The village April 1964 (Polish Journal by Polish Center for Holocaust elder Edward Malinowski Research, 2018. of Laws of 2016, items offered her his assistance 380, 585 and 1579) on The case has disturbing (and, using the opportunity, the protection of personal implications for also robbed her) and in rights. A court action aimed December 1942 she found at protecting the Republic academic freedom in herself in Rastenburg of Poland’s or the Polish Poland and has been (today’s Kętrzyn), working Nation’s reputation may accompanied by a as domestic help in the be brought by a non- house of a German family governmental organization barrage of anti-Semitic named Fittkau. That’s where within the remit of its comments on right-wing she met her second husband statutory activities. Any websites in Poland. (a Pole, also working in resulting compensation or Prussia), but also started damages shall be awarded foundation, Defenders of the a commercial exchange to the State Treasury. Good Name of Poland (Reduta with Malinowski, sending Dobrego Imienia)—is suing him packages with items On the basis of this, Filomena Barbara Engelking, author of for sale. She visited him Leszczyńska—the eighty- one of the articles in the two when she went “home” on year-old niece of a village volume Dalej jest noc: Losy vacation. Even though she elder, Edward Malinowski, Żydów w wybranych powiatach knew that Malinowski was from Malinowo in the Podlasie okupowanej Polski (Night guilty of betraying many region in eastern Poland, without End: The Fate of Jews in Jews who were hiding in and supported by the Polish Selected Counties of Occupied the woods, and were later

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 21 in (that’s because the elders could select people to be sent as forced laborers in Germany). He responded with a question—“have you saved anything from the ghetto?” So, I told him that I have shoes, a dress, a shirt Statement by Barbara Engelking and bed linens. I listed all of these things to him and he and Jan Grabowski following the said that he would go and February 9, 2021 verdict: fetch all of them. I had a very nice sweater, so he took it e are very grateful to all people and institutions from Poland away from me and he gave and around the world for their support and solidarity during the me his wife’s old sweater, I Wtrial initiated by Filomena Leszczyńska (and launched with support had some silk underwear, so and participation of the Defenders of the Good Name of Poland) he took that away too. I also regarding the alleged defamation of her uncle, Edward Malinowski had 100 German marks, and who, during the war, was a village elder in Malinowo. We would also he took away fifty. like to express our gratitude to our attorney, Mr. Michał Jabłoński. Drogicka later learned that The Warsaw District Court decided that we have to offer apologies Malinowski had taken her to Mrs. Leszczyńska for having written in the book that Malinowski things (which had been robbed Estera Siemiatycka and that he was involved in denouncing deposited with her neighbors), Jews in hiding to Germans. While respecting the verdict, we do not but told her that he had found agree with it, and we shall file an appeal to a higher court. nothing. Finally, she stated that there were twenty-two (Published on Jan Grabowski’s Facebook page, February 10, 2021.) Jews hiding in the forest, together with their children. A forest ranger found delivered to the Germans, and I reached Malinowo. I them and “together with during his post-war trial, met a young boy, not more Malinowski, they went to she delivered false than eight years old, and he fetch the gendarmes, and statements in his favor. said: “you, Jew, you have they killed all of them, and no right to live!” I looked Engelking based her account the children, they killed around, I asked about the them all.” In the footnotes, primarily on the extensive village elder, I went to this testimony recorded by Estera Engelking adds that after the Malinowski Edward, the war, Drogicka testified in Drogicka for the Shoah village elder, he told me that Foundation. This is what she Malinowski’s defense when this was his name. I told he was tried for involvement had to say about Malinowski: him that I have an Ausweis I ran away from the forest; it in the murder of these Jews. (German identity papers), so This trial collapsed when took me half an hour, seven perhaps I can go and work kilometers, or more. I ran, the witnesses against him,

22 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 perhaps terrorized by the “I regret the attacks on right-wing websites in Poland, anti-communist underground researchers who, in closed on January 12 and a active in the area, withdrew judgement was expected on their charges. Drogicka accordance with the best February 9, 2021. explains her testimony as practices and standards Update: On February 9, follows: in force in the scientific After the war, he would 2021, Judge Ewa Jończyk of have received a death world, pursue the mission the Warsaw Regional Court penalty. I saved him, of discovering facts and found Professors Engelking and Grabowski guilty of despite the fact that he phenomena concerning committed evil acts against defamation. She ordered them me, but so what? It was one of the most tragic to apologize to the plaintiff really awful when I had to periods in the history of Filomena Leszczyńska, the niece of Edward Malinowski, testify, I was in real trouble, Poland and the world.” but I saved him. for “violating his honor” ―Zygmunt Stępiński by “providing incorrect According to Engelking, information” that during the “Estera testified in favor of damages because of her right war he had robbed Estera the village elder at the trial. “to enjoy the remembrance Siemiatycka and caused the I think that she wanted to of a deceased person,” her death of Jews hiding in a forest. do him a favor and show “right to one’s national pride According to the judgment, this gratitude for his having and identity,” her “right apology should take the form of saved her life, although she to a fact-based history of a letter to Ms. Leszczyńska, and didn’t have a particularly World War II,” her “right to in subsequent editions of the good opinion of him.” In the protection of dignity,” book, the sections dealing with her opinion, Malinowski and her “right to receive Malinowski should be changed. was “neither a hero nor a truthful information from The judge rejected the claim for blackmailer, but somewhere historical research funded by monetary compensation. in between. During the her taxes.” She is entitled to occupation there were many Responding to the verdict, make this claim because of Professor Grabowski said, such complex situations. I did her membership in an ethnic not write that I believed he “I respect the court’s verdict, group (the Polish Nation), and but it is difficult to agree with its had handed over Jews. I gave because she is the niece of the opinion of a witness.” findings. I hope that we will be Edward Malinowski. She was vindicated in the appeal.” n In her plea, the plaintiff demanding an apology and claims not only did her uncle damages of 100,000 zloties Note: An English translation not murder Jews, he even (approximately $27,000 USD). of the two-volume collection, Night Without End: The Fate risked his life to rescue them The case, which has disturbing of Jews in Selected Counties and had been acquitted of implications for academic of Occupied Poland, will the charge of involvement freedom in Poland, and has be published by Indiana in the murder of the Jews been accompanied by a barrage University Press in 2021. in the forest. She claims of anti-Semitic comments on

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 23 Revolution Returns to Poland: Gazeta Editorial Feminists Lead Largest Demonstrations Report Since the End of Communism

ditors’ Note: On January government’s latest 27, 2021—since the near-total abortion Ewriting of this report and as ban, marking a Gazeta goes to press—the formidable blow to Polish government passed the the government. restrictive abortion legislation and public protests resumed. The protests drew momentum from Beginning on October 22, two previous 2020, and continuing through nationwide the wintry weeks of November pro-choice into December, hundreds of demonstrations, thousands of Polish citizens in 2016 and poured into the streets 2017, when the in the largest nationwide government demonstration since the fall introduced sweeping of communism. This time, legislative bans however, the target was on abortion. not communism, but ultra- Incensed feminist nationalism in alliance with activists quickly the Polish . mobilized protests The underlying core demand via social media. One of the posters for the Women’s Strike, by in 2020, as in the 1980s, was They launched a Joanna Musiał. The inscription reads: “Freedom restoration of democracy, new movement, the is a Woman.” dignity, and justice. One Women’s Strike. Courtesy of Joanna Musiał. Used with permission notable difference is that Under the banner which black-clothed women today, the lead organizers are “Black Protest,” women demonstrated publicly for feminists, many under thirty and men dressed in black Poland’s independence and years old. Led by the OSK marched in cities and towns. reunification. (Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet, The choice to dress in black All Poland Women’s Strike), made historical reference to “[The year] 2016 will go they rallied citizens of all ages the women-led resistance down in history as the birth of and backgrounds in nearly against 19th century Czarist the mass women’s movement 600 cities and towns to protest occupation of Poland, known in Poland,” declared Warsaw the (PiS) as the National Mourning, in feminist scholar and activist

24 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Agnieszka Graff. That old lawyer, told year, and again in 2017, reporters, “The the government withdrew revolution that has its anti-abortion legislation begun is not just after feminist protests won about abortion. It is the day. Activists celebrated, a fight for freedom although they recognized that has been that PiS would try again. The brutally violated, legislative ban, proposed then and abortion and now, would terminate is its symbol.” abortion in the case of fetal Protest facilitators defects, which make up organized a around 98% of all legal Consultative abortions in Poland. Council to draft demands and In October 2020, the negotiate with government planned to roll government out the new legislation in the representatives, midst of the pandemic, which although they they surmised would curtail reached no public protest. However, the agreements or Palace of Culture in Warsaw, with Warsaw Mayor plan backfired, instead fueling compromises. After Rafał Trzaskowski waving a lightning bolt, symbol feminist fury and an eruption six weeks or so, the of the protests. Photo by Aleksandra Sajdak. Used with permission of mass protests. And not only protests dwindled in feminist fury. size, as the pandemic for memes. This is a rebellion Opinion polls showed surged and the government of the smartphone generation: a majority of the public issued new health-related individualism, network and opposed the government- restrictions. a specific sense of humor controlled constitutional reign in it. Each and every court’s anti-abortion decision Gender and Generations one obeys personally and in and supported the protests, A new player entered the their own way. Together, they whose demands exceeded the arena, noted Graff, in create history and are aware anti-abortion legislation to the collective persona of of it.” embrace calls for safeguarding Generation Z. These twenty- , recipient of LGBTQ+ rights and ending year-olds, as she characterized the Nobel Prize in Literature, church-state governance. them, “act as if they never regarded the protests as Citizens knowingly risked heard of the Big Compromise “civilizational change,” she their health to take to the [between church and state] told journalist Masha Gessen. streets during an upsurge in … [F]or them, John Paul II Participants born after the fall the pandemic in Poland. is a historical figure, not a of Communism, she noted, saint; they treat the symbols of Protest organizer Marta comprise the first generation Solidarity as a source of ideas Lempart, a forty-one-year- to fully enjoy the results of

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 25 EU membership. They know and equally strong “how to live elsewhere. They desires to be modern speak foreign languages and and European. are very familiar with what Homophobic human and civil rights mean municipalities and in the 21st century.” Their church officials shut fearless outrage attracted down a number of supporters from all walks of the first equality life, even the police officers pride marches. and officials who were ordered to restrain them. Framing the rights At a meeting with university of homosexuals as rectors the minister of Nazi ideology, the education warned of budget official hate speech cuts should the campuses and the fear of continue to support protests. sexual minorities, then and today, Jewish Advocacy follow the tropes Many Jewish organizations and patterns of anti- marched in the demonstrations. Semitism in 20th From the JCC Krakόw’s century Poland, note JCC Kraków’s Hanukkah poster shows support for four-story building, staff hung gender and Jewish the Women’s Strike and LGBTQ rights. Courtesy of JCC Kraków banners with the Women’s studies scholars. Strike red lightning-bolt They point to a “Gay in front of and inside symbol and the LGBTQ+ = Jew” rhetorical formula that churches. “The Jewish rainbow. For Hanukkah, the emboldens today’s politicians experience of living for two JCC designed a poster of a to establish “gay-free zones” thousand years in the diaspora menorah with eight burning and promote slogans such as teaches us how important the candles shaped as rainbow- “Lesbians to the gas” and “It’s separation of religion and state colored lightning bolts, which not a myth, it’s true—you is. Recent events in Poland signified its solidarity with see a gay, you see a Jew.” underscore its necessity,” he both women and the LGBTQ+ This pre-war ultra-nationalist said. When asked specifically community. script under a new guise has about abortion, Schudrich united Jewish and LGBTQ+ explained that Jews believe Government and popular anti- communities. life begins with birth, not gender campaigns began soon conception. “We also believe In October, Poland’s Chief after Poland entered the EU in that Jews should be guided, Rabbi Michael Schudrich May 2004. A public discourse in their approach to abortion, about homosexuality became spoke to the Polish Press by Jewish religious law,” he a divisive topic politicizing Agency (PAP) about the explained, “but that this right, the private sphere, revealing anti-abortion ruling and or any other religious law, contradictions between the feminist-led protests, should not be a state law.” religious conservativism including some that occurred

26 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 “The real stake is our collective power. perception of ourselves In each case, a passionate activism as a society. The protests dominated by will probably expire soon, young people threw a (red) lightning PiS will do what it wants bolt at the power about abortion, but the structure. Each movement drew cultural change will be people who had irreversible.” never before been involved in political ―Agnieszka Graff activism. Each time, a government Comparisons with overplayed its hand, Solidarity caught unprepared By all accounts, participants for the collective and observers of the demand for change. October demonstrations All considered, felt the exhilarating winds the deepest of revolution for the first A Warsaw tram during the protest. The sign reads: reverberations of time in decades. At the “Women, we are with you!” today’s feminist Photo by Aleksandra Sajdak. Used with permission annual conference of the demonstrations Association of Slavic, East may actually Whatever our understanding European, and Eurasian represent a repudiation of of the current situation, Polish Studies last November, Solidarity for its inability women have become critical and in social media forums to dignify women’s to democratic activism. “The since the protests began, citizenship or to prevent real stake is our perception colleagues who experienced religion from dominating of ourselves as a society,” or studied the Solidarity democratic governance. declared Graff. “The protests movement were comparing Although Solidarity aspired will probably expire soon, PiS it to the current feminist to be democratic, it did will do what it wants about mobilization. Certainly, there not fulfill this objective, abortion, but the cultural are connections to be explored as was particularly evident change will be irreversible.” n between the Solidarity past in its gender policies and and the feminist present. treatment of women activists Spanning a generational as secondary support to their divide of thirty years, Poland male counterparts. The recent championed two nationwide demonstrations placed gender mass mobilizations of historic justice front and center for the proportion, each generating first time in a pro-democracy an exultant sense of society’s mass mobilization in Poland.

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 27 ANNOUNCEMENTS Conferences Online Conference Launches Antony Polonsky Volume 33 of POLIN: Studies in Polish Jewry

n January 11, an online both liberal and Orthodox, conference was held to offer more nuanced insights Ocelebrate the publication of the into this key issue. Other new volume of Polin: Studies research areas represented in in Polish Jewry, which is the volume include the material dedicated to Jewish religious history of Jewish religious life life in Poland since 1750. It in Eastern Europe, and the shift was organized by the Institute of emphasis from theology for Polish-Jewish Studies to praxis in the search for the and the Institute of Jewish defining quality of religious Studies, University College experience. The contemporary London, and co-organized and reassessments in this volume, supported by the Embassy of with their awareness of the Republic of Poland and emerging techniques that have the Polish Cultural Institute in the potential to extract fresh London, with the assistance insights from source materials of JW3, a leading Jewish Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry both old and new, show how Volume 33: Jewish Religious Life in cultural venue in London, and Poland since 1750, edited by Ada our understanding of what it the American Association for Rapoport-Albert, François Guesnet, means to be Jewish continues Antony Polonsky, Marcin Wodziński, Polish-Jewish Studies. The published by The Littman Library of to expand. event honored the memory of Jewish Civilization in association with the late Ada Rapoport-Albert, Liverpool University Press; abridged The conference was opened Professor Emerita of Jewish edition (February 28, 2021). by introductory addresses by Studies and former head of Arkady Rzegocki, Ambassador religious life in Poland from Hebrew and Jewish Studies at of the Republic of Poland, a range of interdisciplinary University College London, Vivian Wineman, President of perspectives. The long- who was one of the editors of the Institute for Polish-Jewish established interest in Hasidism the volume. (See her obituary Studies, and François Guesnet, is considered from new angles, in the Summer/Fall 2020 issue Chairman of the Institute for as are women’s religious of Gazeta.) Polish-Jewish Studies and practices in a focus, away Professor of Modern Jewish Drawing on important from elites to a consideration History in the Department of advances in recent years in of the beliefs and practices of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the study of religious belief, ordinary people. Reappraisals University College London. The this volume embodies a fresh of religious responses to participants in the first session understanding of Jewish secularization and modernity, were the three remaining

28 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 editors of the volume: Marcin legislation as it was applied Polish Jewry and Israel-Poland Wodziński, Professor of Jewish in Galicia. Relations at University Studies and Head of the Taube and director of the Center for Department of Jewish Studies, The screening of the Research on the Holocaust University of Wrocław; Antony photographs of Hasidic in Poland at Yad Vashem, Polonsky, Chief Historian of life taken by Agnieszka analyzed Jewish religious life the POLIN Museum of the Traczewska, a film producer in Poland during the Holocaust, History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, and photographer living describing the way a group and Professor Emeritus of in Kraków, was followed of young Gerer Hasid Jewish Holocaust Studies at Brandeis by an exchange between youngsters throughout Poland University; and François the photographer and Prof. established an underground Guesnet. The session combined Wodziński, with lively movement that attempted an introduction to the volume responses from Zoom to maintain strict religious with reminiscences of Ada participants. observance, and thus defeat Rapoport-Albert. The final session of the the Nazi attempt to destroy their religious faith. She also The first session was followed conference examined the reconfigurations of Jewish examined how rabbis were able by one on Jewish religious life to retain much of their spiritual in the 18th and 19th centuries. religious life in Poland in the 20th century. The first paper was authority under Nazi rule. The first paper was given by The final presentation, by Tali Moshe Rosman, Professor delivered by Wojciech Tworek, who completed his doctorate (Naftali) Loewenthal, a teaching Emeritus in the Koschitzky fellow lecturing in Jewish Department of Jewish History under Ada Rapoport-Albert and is now Assistant Professor spirituality at University College of Bar lIan University in Israel, London, was an examination who discussed “Two Models of in the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of the literary genre of the Jewish Women’s Piety: Bayla Orthodox Holocaust memoir in Falk and Leah Horowitz.” The of Wrocław. In it, he discussed the unsuccessful attempt English and its significance for next paper was delivered by its primary readership, members Alicja Maślak-Maciejewska, by the rabbi, Yosef Yitshak Schneersohn (1880–1950), of the contemporary haredi lecturer in the Department community. of Jewish History in the the leader of Habad Hasidism, Institute of Jewish Studies at to establish a more elaborate More than 100 people the Jagiellonian University commemoration of 19 Kislev, participated in this engaging in Kraków. It analyzed the referred to by the Hasidim as the exchange, which was a links between progressive Festival of Redemption, which fitting memorial to the life synagogues in Galicia and marks the anniversary of the and creativity of our dear the Kingdom of Poland in release of the founder of Habad, colleague Ada Rapoport- the 19th and 20th centuries. Shneur Zalman of Liady (1745– Albert, both of whose children 1812), from imprisonment in The final paper, presented by took part in the meeting. n Rachel Manekin, Associate the Petropavlovsk Fortress in Professor of Jewish Studies at 1798. The second contribution, Dr. Antony Polonsky is the University of Maryland, by Havi Dreifuss, Professor Chief Historian of the POLIN analyzed rabbinic perspectives of Jewish history and head of Museum of the History of on Austrian marriage the Institute for the History of Polish Jews.

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 29 Commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto: “...The News Came Like a Bolt from the Blue” Online Conference at the POLIN Museum. November 16, 2020

n November 16, 1940, armed guards appeared in the streets leading to the “Jewish residential district” established by the Germans in Warsaw. OThis symbolic date marks the creation of the largest Jewish ghetto in Nazi- occupied Europe. In November 2020, to mark the eightieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto being sealed off, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, and the Polish Center for Holocaust Research organized the academic conference “...The News Came Like a Bolt from the Blue.” The conference’s aims were to discuss various aspects of the Warsaw Ghetto’s establishment. Panelists discussed diverse issues surrounding the theme of the eightieth anniversary, including German policy and actions, the Jewish population’s dilemmas, and the perception of ghettoization by Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. Scholars explored the little- known stories of non-Jewish who found themselves imprisoned in the ghetto, and the director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute presented a new temporary exhibition at the institute, Where Art Thou? Gen 3:9 (announced in this issue of Gazeta). n

IPJS Symposium in Honor of Professor Antony Polonsky March 16, 2021

he Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies will host “The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: Sources, Memory, Politics,” a symposium honoring Antony Polonsky, Chief historian of the POLIN Museum Tof the History of Polish Jews. The event will take place (online) on March 16, 2021. The symposium will bring together senior scholars of the Holocaust with the authors of significant recent studies in this area. It will reflect on archaeological investigations, the voice of witnesses and survivors, and also present-day contextualizations of engaging with the mass murder of the Jews of Europe. It is organized in cooperation with the Wiener Library on the occasion of the eightieth birthday of Professor Polonsky. Organizers: Dr. Michael Fleming (Polish University Abroad, London) and Professor François Guesnet (UCL, HJS), IPJS. n

30 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 ANNOUNCEMENTS Books and Journals Yiddish: Biography of a Language By Jeffrey Shandler Oxford University Press, 2020

effrey Shandler, Rutgers University professor and scholar of contemporary Jewish culture, profiles Yiddish from its birth Jto the present day in Yiddish: Biography of a Language. Shandler relates the multifaceted history of Yiddish in the form of a biographical profile. Through a series of thematic chapters—from “Name” and “Date and Place of Birth” to “Religion” and “Life Expectancy”—he offers surprising insights into the dynamic interrelation of the language, its speakers, and their culture, and explores the varied symbolic investments that Yiddish speakers and others have made in the language. n

Przechytrzyc´ Historie (Outwitting History) By Aaron Lansky Translated by Agnieszka Nowak-Młynikowska Smak Słowa, 2020

rzechytrzyć Historię is Agnieszka Nowak-Młynikowska’s PPolish translation of Aaron Lansky’s 2004 classic, Outwitting History. As a twenty-four-year-old college graduate, Lansky discovered that innumerable Yiddish books were being discarded by American Jews unable to read the language of their ancestors. Outwitting History, which won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award, tells the incredible story of Lansky’s journey throughout the world to rescue over a million Yiddish books and his founding of the Yiddish Book Center. n

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 31 The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater By Alyssa Quint Indiana University Press, 2019

lyssa Quint, scholar-in-residence at YIVO Institute of Jewish Research, focuses on the early years of the modern Yiddish Atheater (roughly 1876 to 1883) through the story of its central pioneer, Russian playwright Avrom Goldfaden. Goldfaden’s theatrical works, which were among the first commercially viable Yiddish-language productions, shed light on the experience of Jews in imperial Russia. The book was a finalist for both a National Jewish Book Award and the Jordan Schnitzer Award. n

Jewish Europe Today. Between Memory and Everyday Life Edited by Marcelo Dimentstein and Ewa Tartakowsky Austeria Press, 2020

his book, published by Krakόw-based Austeria Press, explores groundbreaking research on European Jewish community trends Tto analyze the challenges and opportunities for Jews in Europe. Edited by social anthropologist Marcelo Dimentstein and sociologist Ewa Tartakowsky, it draws from papers delivered at the Third Conference of Emerging Researchers in Contemporary Jewish Europe, held in October 2017 at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. As the editors note: “Jewish life in Europe coexists between normalcy and vibrancy and the appearance of new vulnerabilities including anti-Semitism, terrorism, the place of minorities in society, and community demographics, which are emerging as prominent concerns impacting communities across the region. Not to mention the crisis brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown.” n To sample the chapters, please visit: https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/jewish-europe-today-between-memory-and-everyday-life/

32 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Barefoot Through Thorns and Flowers: Memoirs of the Mother of Yiddish Theater (Boso przez ciernie i kwiaty. Memuary matki teatru zydowskiego). By Ester Rachel Kamińska Translated by Mirosława Bułat PWN (Warsaw), 2020

ster Rachel Kamińska’s memoirs were published in the years 1926–27 in the Warsaw Yiddish daily Der Moment. The Ememories collected into this volume provide new insights into the actress’s youth and early career, introducing women from the generation of “pioneers” of Yiddish theater into the world of Jewish experiences, feelings, and dilemmas. This is the fifth volume of the series Jews. Poland. Autobiography. It is published under the direction of the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław and in cooperation with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. n

. Zagl/ada cmentarzy zydowskich (The Destruction of Jewish Cemeteries) By Krzysztof Bielawski. Więź Publishing, 2020

f the 1,200 Jewish cemeteries in Poland, virtually all have been devastated to a greater or lesser extent. No less than half have Obeen completely wiped out, and the remaining tombstones usually constitute a negligible percentage of their original number. Zagłada cmentarzy żydowskich (The Destruction of Jewish Cemeteries) is the most comprehensive documentation of this devastation. Using Jewish cemeteries as a starting point it explores local history and dispels myths such as the total German culpability for destruction of cemeteries. The author, Krzysztof Bielawski, is a researcher of Jewish cemeteries, a specialist on Jewish heritage at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the founder of the Polish Jewish Cemeteries website www.cmentarze-zydowskie.pl. n

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 33 Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph By David Shneer Oxford University Press, 2020

n January 1942, Soviet press photographers took pictures of the first liberation of a German mass atrocity, in which an estimated 7,000 Jews Iand others were executed at an anti-tank trench near Kerch on the Crimean peninsula. Dmitri Baltermants, a Soviet photojournalist, took photos that day that would have a long life in shaping the image of Nazi genocide in and against the . Presenting never before seen photographs, Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph shows how Baltermants used the image of a grieving woman to render this gruesome mass atrocity as a transcendentally human tragedy. Unlike images of emaciated camp survivors or barbed wire fences, Shneer argues, the Holocaust by bullets in the Soviet Union makes Grief a quintessential Soviet image of Nazi genocide. n

Polin Volume 33: Jewish Religious Life in Poland Since 1750 Edited by François Guesnet, Antony Polonsky, Ada Rapoport-Albert, and Marcin Wodziński The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in Association with Liverpool University Press, 2021

ollowing tremendous advances in recent years in the study of religious belief, this newly published volume adopts a fresh understanding of FJewish religious life in Poland. Approaches deriving from the anthropology, history, phenomenology, psychology, and sociology of religion have replaced the methodologies of social or political history that were applied in the past, offering fascinating new perspectives. The contemporary reassessments in this volume, with their awareness of emerging techniques, show how our understanding of what it means to be Jewish continues to expand. n

34 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 East European Jewish Affairs Announces Changes in Leadership by Natalia Aleksiun

his coming year ushers in a change in the editorial team of East European Jewish Affairs. Karolina Szymaniak and I will Tassume the mantle of editors in chief, Kamil Kijek will serve as book review editor, and Laurie Fialkoff will take over as managing editor. This is a great honor and an exciting moment, tinged with sadness at the untimely passing of David Shneer z”l. In preparing for the transition, we worked for several months with David Shneer z”l, Anna Shternshis, Nick Underwood, and Deborah Yalen, and we thank them all. Our thanks also go to the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for East European Jewry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to Eli Lederhendler and Semyon Goldin, whose help and support is greatly appreciated. Please keep us in mind if you are looking for a home for a completed article or are working on a new one.

East European Jewish Affairs—an interdisciplinary journal— serves as the leading global journal dealing with both Jews in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as Ashkenazic Jews wherever in the world they may be. Serving as a bridge between Jewish studies and Russian and East European studies, as well as between the scholarly community and the public, the journal welcomes scholarly submissions of single- or multi- authored articles, review essays, and annotated archival documents. In addition, we encourage those working in the field of Eastern European Jewish affairs, whether they be museum professionals or cultural activists, to submit for the new section, “East European Jewish Affairs in Action.” East European Jewish Affairs is supported by the University of Colorado Boulder, with generous contributions from the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto, and the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. n Please visit the Taylor & Francis website for more information about the journal: www.tandfonline.com/toc/feej20/current

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 35 ANNOUNCEMENTS Book Essay Rosie Whitehouse Reflections on The People on the Beach

ne summer’s night 20,000 Jews in 1941 in 1946, over 1,300 that made life OEuropean Jews waited silently unbearable. In the on an Italian beach to board civil war between a secret ship, the Josiah the Ukrainian Wedgwood. The plan was to nationalists and the try and smash through the Soviet forces, Jews Royal Navy blockade of the were caught in an Palestine coast and leave ethnic cleansing that Europe behind once and made it simply too for all. I stumbled across dangerous to this story while researching remain. The Jewish a travel guide to Liguria. partisans who had I assumed I could buy a liberated the city book with one click that with the would tell me who these also found people were, where they had themselves in a come from, and what they head-on collision had experienced. No such with Stalinism and book existed. To answer my decided find a way questions, I had to write it. to safety in Palestine. I travelled to the survivors’ No such book existed. To answer hometowns and villages and But that was not the my questions, I had to write it. then drove along the route that end of Jewish life in they took as they abandoned Rivne. Rabbi people are Jewish, he’ll do all the places they had lived for Schneor Schneersohn finds he can to help them. “The generations. people still come forward to catastrophe of the Shoah has tell him that they were not finished: I see it in Jewish In the Ukrainian city of Rivne, children who were not found, life all around me,” he said. once Rovne, in Poland, it but have no documents to became clear that it was not prove their Jewishness. When After the liberation, the Jews just the massacre of over he “knows in his heart” that found few who helped them.

36 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Survivors who returned home were often met with hostility – even murdered by their neighbors. Those who found themselves in the American- occupied zone in Germany faced anti-Semitism even from the American General George S. Patton.

The survivors who made their way to that moonlit Ligurian beach were not downtrodden The Haganah ship Medinat HaYehudim (Jewish State) at Haifa, 1947. and broken, but people with Wikimedia Commons agency. Their story is one of Rosie Whitehouse is a Jewish self-help by which the The survivors who journalist specializing armed, cultural, and religious made their way to that in Jewish life after the resistance of the wartime moonlit Ligurian beach Holocaust. She serves as years continued. were not downtrodden a historical advisor to In the displaced persons Centropa (Central Europe camps in occupied Germany, and broken, but people Center for Research and Jewish cultural life and with agency. Documentation). Zionism flourished. The survivors, who Holocaust and the founding of overwhelmingly wanted to the state of Israel. Why it was settle in Palestine, found forgotten begs many uncom- themselves facing a new fortable questions. That is why enemy—the British. They The People on the Beach is were far from colonialist not just a story of the past, but settlers. Rather, desperate one of the present. Along the refugees prepared to risk their route the survivors took out of lives to get to Palestine. Europe, Italians, Germans and It is odd for the survivors’ Poles retell their stories which story in the years 1945–48 to remind us that the Holocaust have fallen through the cracks, has contemporary relevance in n since it is the link between the European politics.

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 37 ANNOUNCEMENTS Awards Antony Polonsky The 2020 Gierowski-Shmeruk Prize

he Gierowski-Shmeruk Prize, a joint initiative of Tthe Jewish Studies programs at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and the Marie Curie Skłodowska University in Kraków, and financed by the Marcel and Maria Roth Foundation, is awarded annually for the best scholarly publication in the field of the history and culture of the Jews of the Polish lands. It is named in honor of two eminent academics whose cooperation has contributed greatly to these studies, Professor Józef Gierowski, Rector of the Jagiellonian University between 1981 and 1987, and Professor Chone Shmeruk, Professor of Yiddish Literature at the The 2020 Gierowski-Shmeruk Prize awardees. From left to right: Marcin Wodziński, Waldemar Spallek, Hannah Kozińska-Witt, Dagmara Budzioch. Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Courtesy of Jagiellonian University and University of Wrocław This year, the third time the prize has been awarded, eleven The selection committee, of the Jewish Historical Institute publications were submitted chaired by Professor Stanisław for her book Zdobione zwoje for consideration. Because of Sroka, Dean of the Historical Estery ze zbiorów Żydowskiego the pandemic, the presentation Faculty of the Jagiellonian Instytutu Historycznego na tle ceremony took place online University, awarded prizes to tradycji dekorowania megilot in the presence of Professor three books and honorable Ester w XVII i XVIII wieku. Dorota Malec, Pro-Rector of mentions to two additional T. 1. Zarys problematyki. T. 2. the Jagiellonian University for works. First prize was Reprodukcje (Decorated Scrolls international relations. awarded to Dagmara Budzioch of Esther in the Collection of

38 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 the Jewish Historical Institute Dagmara Budzioch laudatio on presenting the and Their Relation to the studied approximately second place prize, please see Tradition of Decorating Scrolls the article that follows. of Esther in the 17th and 18th 300 manuscripts, The third place prize was Centuries, Volume 1). The including in New York, awarded to Hanna Kozińska- issues raised by this subject are London, Tel Aviv, Witt of the Institute of Jewish addressed in Volume 2, Studies at the Jagiellonian Reproductions (Warsaw, and Zurich. University for her book Wydawnictwo ŻIH, 2019). particular Professor Andrzej Politycy czy klakierzy? This two-volume publication is Trzciński, who has acted as the Żydzi w krakowskiej radzie a remarkable achievement both supervisor of the grant which miejskiej w XIX wieku from scholarly and technical has made this project possible. (Jewish Politicians on the points of view. In order to I also express my gratitude to Krakόw City Council in the describe the tradition of the institutions, libraries, 19th Century, Krakόw, decorating scrolls of Esther read museums and private collectors Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu at the festival of Purim, the who made these valuable Jagiellońskiego, 2019). This author studied approximately manuscripts available to me.” book is based on extensive 300 manuscripts in public and archival research in Kraków, The second prize was awarded private collections, including Warsaw, and Lwów (Lviv), to Marcin Wodziński, Director New York, London, Tel Aviv, which enabled her to shed of the Taube Department of and Zurich, as well as those new light on the functioning Jewish Studies at the University which are part of the collections of local government in of Wrocław, and cartographer of the Jewish Historical Kraków both during the Waldemar Spallek of the Institute. The results are a period of the free city, and Institute for Geography and richly detailed and illustrated then under Austrian rule Regional Development at the analysis, now available as between 1846 and 1914, University of Wrocław, for beautiful manuscripts to the illustrating clearly the role of Chasydyzm. Atlas historyczny general public. Jewish councillors. In his (Hasidism. A Historical Atlas, laudatory speech, Krzysztof In her acceptance speech of Krakόw, Wydawnictwo Link-Lenczowski remarked: the award, Dr. Budzioch Austeria, 2019). This is a observed that “[it] is for me a comprehensive examination, “Dr. Hanna Kozińska-Witt, great honor that my work has through maps, illustrations, and with the skill and precision of been recognized in this way, text, of the emergence and an experienced researcher, particularly since the topic of spread of Hasidism, a movement describes the most important Hebrew manuscripts has only for Jewish religious revival points of contact between two rarely been researched in which came to be marked by worlds—the non-Jewish and Poland. I should like to thank charismatic leadership and a Jewish—and how both all those who had contributed stress on mystical communion overcame their long- to my scholarly evolution, in with God. For my detailed established world view.” n

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 39 On the Gierowski-Shmeruk Prize to Marcin Wodzin´ski and Waldemar Spallek Chasydyzm. Atlas historyczny (Historical Atlas of Hasidism) Antony Polonsky By Marcin Wodziński, Cartography by Waldemar Spallek Wydawnictwo Austeria, 2019

t was a great privilege and the human realms. His and pleasure for me to teaching was also marked by Ipresent the second prize in its anti-asceticism, very the Gierowski-Shmeruk Prize different from the pessimistic to Marcin Wodziński and and sin-laden atmosphere his cartographer, Waldemar which had become a feature Spallek, who are responsible of the religious culture of for this beautiful and path- Polish Jewry. breaking work, which has On his death in 1760, the Besht also appeared in English and left behind only a small circle of already been awarded two middle of the 18th century as followers. It was they, and above prizes. It is a comprehensive the resident kabbalist, healer, all Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoe, examination, through maps, and leader of the beit midrash. and Dov Ber, the magid of illustrations, and text, of He did not, as some of the Mezhirech (in Polish the emergence and spread original historians of the Międzyrzec), who transformed of Hasidism, a movement movement argued, see himself what had been a circle of for Jewish religious revival as a radical or as called upon devoted followers into a major which came to be marked by to support the lower orders religious revival and made its charismatic leadership and a against the communal rapid expansion possible. Dov stress on mystical communion oligarchy. He was also not Ber seems to have been with God. Our understanding interested in creating anything responsible for the decision not of this phenomenon has been more than a small circle of to seek a single successor, but transformed by the scholarship like-minded mystics, and in rather to support a large of the last thirty years, to this respect resembled the number of different tsadikim. which Marcin Wodziński has many other circles of mystics As a consequence, from its himself made a very significant in 18th century Poland- earliest beginnings, Hasidism contribution. led by charismatic accommodated a variety of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, figures. What made him distinct and, at times, conflicting known as the Ba’al Shem Tov different was that he seems to opinions, directions, and (or Besht), the initiator of the have modified in a significant personal styles of spirituality movement, was invited to manner the concept of the which could, and occasionally come to the small town of tsadik, one who is transformed did, lead to inter-Hasidic Medzhybizh (Międzybóż) from a righteous person into a rivalries, bitter divisions, and (now in Ukraine) in the mediator between the divine controversies. This was in

40 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 keeping with Jewish religious Historical Atlas of wealth of illustrations, charts, tradition in which the concept of Hasidism is the first and tables, which chart the a single source of authority had movement’s emergence and long been alien. It meant that the attempt to synthesize the expansion. It documents its movement never generated recent research on this dynasties, courts, and prayer mechanisms for the imposition houses, its spread to the land of of uniformity and control. movement through the Israel and the New World, and This initial absence of any innovative use of maps the crisis of the two world wars centralized framework of and the Holocaust, and its authority in early Hasidism was and illustrations. remarkable post-war rebirth. accentuated by the rapid The book also demonstrates proliferation of Hasidic schools Hasidism expanded rapidly how geography has influenced and the expansion of the into the rest of Ukraine and, not only the social movement into areas outside its more slowly and with less organization of Hasidism but Podolian-Volhynian base, success, into Galicia, the also its spiritual life, types of which compelled it to adapt Kingdom of Poland, and the religious leadership, and to very varied local customs former Grand Duchy of cultural articulation. Like and conditions, and Lithuania. It was unable to much recent scholarship, it contributed further to its find a foothold in focuses not only on Hasidic variegated character. Wielkopolska. Outside the historic borders of Poland- leaders, but also on their The Hasidim were certainly Lithuania, it also established thousands of followers living interested in proselytizing. itself in present-day Romania, far from Hasidic centers. It Hasidism was spread by Moldova, Slovakia, and examines Hasidism in its wandering preachers who Hungary. As Marcin historical entirety, from its established themselves in a Wodziński points out in the beginnings in the 18th particular place as tsadikim. introduction to this volume: century until today, and draws They recruited disciples and “Although not all Jews living on extensive G18-processed developed networks of in these areas were followers databases of historical and sympathizers. The Hasidim also of Hasidism, the development contemporary records to publicized their views in print, of the Hasidic movement present the most complete establishing more than twenty influenced the lifestyle not just picture to date of this thriving printing presses for this purpose. of Hasidim and their families, and diverse religious They took great care to place but of nearly all the Jews movement. It is easy to read, Hasidic shokhetim (ritual living in this area.” and its maps and illustrations slaughterers) and mohelim are closely related to the text. (circumcisers) in individual Historical Atlas of Hasidism is It deserves the widest possible communities and attempted to the first attempt to synthesize readership and illustrates not penetrate the complex Jewish the recent research on this only Jewish spirituality but communal structure. movement through the religious life in general. n innovative use of maps and As a result, in the late 18th illustrations. It includes and early 19th centuries, seventy-four maps and a

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 41 Jan Karski and Pola Niren´ska Awards from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

he YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in TNew York and the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw have announced that Professor Daniel Grinberg and Dr. Joanna Lisek were named the recipients of the Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Award for 2019 and 2020, respectively. The awards were presented at an online event hosted by Jan Karski Award recipients for 2019 and 2020, Daniel Grinberg and Joanna Lisek. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Institute the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Administered by the long future in order to works into Polish, including YIVO, this annual award was continue honoring the memory The Origins of Totalitarianism endowed by Jan Karski in of Pola Nireńska and Jan Karski, by Hannah Arendt (with 1992 to honor his wife, the and as a symbol of YIVO’s Mariola Szawiel). dancer Pola Nireńska, who was history and its commitment to the sole survivor of a Jewish Polish-Jewish understanding,” Dr. Joanna Lisek is a literary family during the war. Each said Jonathan Brent. scholar, translator, and faculty year, the award is given to an member of the Tadeusz Taube author documenting Polish- Awardees Department of Jewish Studies Jewish relations and Jewish at the University of Wrocław. Daniel Grinberg is a historian, contributions to Polish culture. Among her interests are Jewish former director of the Jewish The members of the jury that poetry and the participation of Historical Institute (1990–95), selected the winners are Paweł women in Yiddish culture. She and a professor on the history Śpiewak (former director of the is a member of the Board of faculty at the University of Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish the Polish Society for Yiddish Białystok. Among his interests Historical Institute), Jonathan Studies, and the editor and are modern anarchist Brent (Executive Director of co-editor of works such as movements and the general the YIVO Institute for Jewish Silent Souls? Women in Yiddish history of the 19th century, Research), Joachim S. Russek, Culture, and an anthology of the history of ideas, historical Bella Szwarcman-Czarnota, translations from Yiddish sociology, the history of and Marcin Wodziński. women’s poetry, Moja dzika social movements and the koza (My Wild Goat), noted in emancipation of European “YIVO is committed to the the previous issue of Gazeta. n continuance of this award into Jews. He has translated several

42 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Yossi Klein Halevi from Jerusalem— Man of Reconciliation

he Polish Council of Christians and Jews awarded Yossi Klein Halevi its annual 2020 award as a Figure of Reconciliation. The Ttitle is presented for his writings on Jewish-Christian relations, his work in Poland, and his involvement in fostering spiritual, religious, and political dialogue in Israel. n Yossi Klein Halevi. Polish Council of Christians and Jews

Recipients of the Maria and Łukasz Hirszowicz Award from the Jewish Historical Institute

atalia Romik, , and Zdzisław Senczak received the Maria and Łukasz Hirszowicz Award in the Ncategory of “Artistic and Scientific Activity.” As Romik stated in her acceptance speech, “I am very touched to be granted the award. This is a great honor which only proves the potential of interdisciplinary, critical activities at the threshold of Jewish studies, architectural design and contemporary art. The award motivates me to continue my work with the spectral traces of Jewish history. Congratulations also to Jacek Leociak and Maria and Łukasz Hirszowicz Award logo. Zdzisław Senczak, who also received the award.” n Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Institute

The 2020 National Jewish Book Awards (U.S.) Annual Biography Award

naugurated in 1950, the National Jewish Book Awards is the longest running and most prestigious North American awards program of its Ikind. The awards are intended to recognize authors and encourage reading of outstanding English-language books of Jewish interest. Nancy Sinkoff’s From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History (Wayne State University Press) won the third Professor Nancy Sinkoff. annual Biography Award in Memory of Sara Berenson Stone as well as the Copyright: © Nan Melville 2016. Natan Notable Book for fall 2020. n Used with permission

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 43 ANNOUNCEMENTS In Brief Agnieszka Holland Elected New European Film Academy President

he more than 3,800 members of the European Film Academy (EFA) have elected Polish Tdirector Agnieszka Holland as the new president. Agnieszka Holland, having chaired the EFA Board from to 2014 to 2019, now takes over from German director Wim Wenders, who has been the president of the European Film Academy since 1996. “The time is challenging,” said Holland, “and to save the creative power of independent cinema and the involvement of our audience, we need to use all our experience and imagination...I believe there is an important role for EFA here and I am happy to be Agnieszka Holland in Berlin International Film Festival. part of it.” n Photograph by Martin Kraft. Wikimedia Commons

An Online Archive of An-sky’s The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds

his online archive is the product of a long fascination with S. An-sky’s masterpiece and Tits continued appeal to readers around the world. It inspired Agnieska Legutko’s research at Columbia University’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, and accompanies her forthcoming book, tentatively titled Dybbuk Afterlives. The book will explore the significance of The Dybbuk in modern cultural imaginaries. It serves as bibliographical notes for the performance and reception of the most frequently staged Yiddish play, An-Sky’s The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds, during the century from 1920 Shloyme Zanvl Rappaport (1863–1920), known as to 2020. It is also a multimedia educational resource S. An-sky (or Ansky). for courses on Yiddish and Jewish literature, culture, Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Institute theater, and history. Beyond academic use, the For more about the archives and performances, archive offers a platform for Dybbuk-inspired works visit: http://dybbukafterlives.com/ to be explored by all Dybbuk enthusiasts. n

44 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Opening of the Korczak Digital Archive Jerry Nussbaum

t is my great pleasure to announce, on behalf of the IJanusz Korczak Association of Canada, the recent opening of the Korczak Digital Archive, the first open access repository honoring the legacy of the esteemed Dr. Janusz Korczak. The archive is a unique online resource, making accessible for the first time in a single collection a wide range of Dr. Courtesy of the Korczak Digital Repository. Used with permission Korczak’s personal writings and documents, as well as the vision of universal children’s contributions from the writings of others on the subject rights is the foundation for the consortium members, including of his life, activities, and creative 1989 United Nations convention the Department of History at the output that had previously on this subject. Dr. Korczak (along been scattered in archives and was, for decades, director of with the KLIO Foundation), collections around the world. an orphanage, where he put the Digital Competence Center The repository is available in his pedagogical philosophy at the University of Warsaw, both English and Polish. into practice. He died, as he the Korczak Foundation, and lived, alongside his children, the Faculty of Education at the Dr. Korczak is universally at the hands of the Nazis in the University of British Columbia, respected as a doctor, activist, Treblinka concentration camp without which the vision could and author, but above all, a in 1942. never have become a reality. n mentor and spokesman for children’s rights. His innovative In 2017 the Janusz Korczak You can find more information educational system and way Association of Canada at the archives website: of raising children in the spirit conceived of the idea of the http://korczakarchive.ca/ and of mutual respect, partnership, Korczak Digital Archive and http://korczak.ckc.uw.edu.pl/ and self-governance is to this together with a number of very day an inspiration for other organizations formed the Jerry Nussbaum is President many teachers, pedagogues, Janusz Korczak Repository of the Janusz Korczak pediatricians, civic activists, and Consortium to implement Association of Canada. those involved in championing the project. The archive children’s rights. Dr. Korczak’s was the result of invaluable

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 45 GEOP: Global Education Outreach Program of the POLIN Museum

What’s New, What’s Next: Events and Programs

Conference: Extended Call Debate Series New Podcast Series for Submissions In December 2020, GEOP In conjunction with the lead- The conference What’s New, launched a new online series up to the October conferrence, What’s Next? Innovative of monthly conversations, GEOP has launched a new Methods, New Sources, and hosted by Chief Historian podcast series titled What’s Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Antony Polonsky. The first New? What’s Next? Jewish Studies has been postponed conversation was devoted to a Studies in the Time of until October 3–7, 2021, and publication by Natalia Aleksiun Pandemic. The series explores the deadline for panel and (Touro College), Conscious the conference themes— poster session proposals has History. Polish Jewish methodology, paradigm been extended to April 30. Historians before the Holocaust shifts, new sources, and new GEOP invites submissions (Liverpool University Press). approaches to old sources— in relation to the current and addressing such questions as: The January 14 conversation earlier epidemics, Jewish What constitutes Jewish studies focused on the book by David responses to them, and how today? In which direction Biale, et al., Hasidism: A New they have been studied from should the field be heading? History (Princeton University historical and contemporary What paradigms are guiding Press), which was one of the field today? How are perspectives. The podcasts Choice Reviews’ Outstanding demonstrate the kinds of theoretical and methodological Academic Titles of 2018. developments in the humanities presentations GEOP would and social sciences shaping The February 14 meeting is like to encourage for its Jewish studies? What are devoted to the book Sarah international conference. interdisciplinary approaches Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov You can find all the recordings contributing to the field? Movement: A Revolution in the on the POLIN Museum of What is the impact of studies Name of Tradition (Liverpool the History of Polish Jews’ of Jewish life in the former University Press), by Naomi website: https://www.polin.pl/ Polish-Lithuanian Seidman. Meetings will en/podcasts-geop-whats-new- Commonwealth on a wider continue monthly, in English, whats-next. understanding of world history? until June 2021. For more information visit https://www. Distinguished Lecture For more information visit polin.pl/en/news/2020/11/19/ Series https://www.polin.pl/en/whats- whats-new-whats-next-debates- new-whats-next-2021. Launched in 2015, the newly-published-books-field- Distinguished Lecture Series Contact: whatsnewconference@ jewish-studies. brings outstanding scholars polin.pl. in the field of Polish-Jewish history and culture from around

46 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 the globe to deliver lectures of the Federal Republic of resources, GEOP invites the at the POLIN Museum. In Germany to Poland, Dr. Arndt international community to 2020, the series premiered Freytag von Loringhoven. join in upholding one of its in its live online format with The discussion was hosted by core values as an institution a lecture by Shalom Sabar journalist Adam Szostkiewicz. in promoting and growing on Jewish nuptial rituals in You can follow the recording on the scholarship of Polish- the arts context of different the Facebook page “Friends of Jewish historiography. GEOP countries. Barbara Kirshenblatt- Polin”: https://www.facebook. wishes to connect seasoned Gimblett moderated the lecture. com/280080872599975/ and emergent scholars by Susannah Heschel provided videos/202931441338507. encouraging intergenerational an overview of the history of For more information on the communication from Poland Jewish feminism, discussed anniversary see Willy Brandt’s and other countries, as well the problems that face the tribute at the Monument to as institutions, to ensure the movement, and presented some the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes field’s continued prominence of the issues in Jewish studies. | Muzeum Historii Żydów for years to come. The meeting was moderated by Polskich POLIN w Warszawie. Karolina Szymaniak. Daffodils Campaign Debate in April In 2021, the series focuses Call for Applications for on the museum’s exhibitions, GEOP Interdisciplinary April marks the POLIN including the new Legacy Research Workshops Museum’s annual Gallery. GEOP will celebrate its in 2022. commemoration of the Warsaw opening with a series of lectures Application period: Ghetto Uprising. As part of this on the role of Jewish legacy in March–July 2021 commemoration, GEOP will join the 2021 online edition Western culture and civilization. GEOP Workshops presents a of the Daffodils Campaign. For more information visit unique opportunity for scholars For more information visit https://polin.pl/en/the-legacy- and academic institutions Daffodils Social-Educational gallery). to participate in a series of Campaign | Muzeum Historii workshops on a topic of their You can find all lectures Żydów Polskich POLIN w own choosing. Proposals may recorded on POLIN’s YouTube Warszawie. channel, Muzeum POLIN— be devoted to any topic of YouTube. relevance to Polish-Jewish Subscribe to GEOP’s newsletter studies, including, but not to follow opportunities and Fiftieth Anniversary Event limited to, history, cultural events: https://www.polin.pl/ studies, sociology, public en/nauka-i-zbiory-dzialalnosc- On December 7, 1970, German history, anthropology, art naukowa-global-education- Chancellor Willy Brandt made history, museology, memory outreach/geop-newsletter, and a symbolic gesture: he knelt in studies, or related subjects. check the GEOP website for front of the Monument to the GEOP especially welcomes updates at: https://www.polin. Warsaw Ghetto Heroes and proposals that advocate pl/en/geop. paid tribute to the victims of introducing new perspectives the Holocaust. GEOP marked The Global Education Outreach and methodologies, the fiftieth anniversary of this Program is made possible with an equal interest in event by inviting the public to a thanks to Taube Philanthropies, interdisciplinary approaches debate attended by international the William K. Bowes Jr. and comparative studies. guests including Marian Turski, Foundation, and the Association Chair of the POLIN Museum By opening up the museum’s of the Jewish Historical Institute n Council, and the ambassador space, expertise, and of Poland.

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 47 OF SPECIAL INTEREST Saving the Great Synagogue Michael Mail of Slonim

isiting heritage sites of the lost Jewish Vcommunities of Eastern Europe is often a very emotional experience, and the remarkable Great Synagogue of Slonim in is no exception. Built in the 1640s, the synagogue opened at a high point of the then Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, on the eve of the terrors of the Khmelnitsky Uprising. The Jewish community recovered and thrived, with Slonim becoming a center of Interior of the synagogue in Słonim. commerce and scholarship Courtesy of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage well into the 20th century. a haunting and majestic the Center for Jewish Art By 1939, Slonim was a Polish memorial to Jewish culture in at the Hebrew University town with a Jewish population of Eastern Europe. of Jerusalem to create an 17,000 out of a total population inventory of all of the 3,347 The London-based Foundation of 25,000. After the horrific mass historic synagogues of for Jewish Heritage was executions of World War II, only Europe. A crucial feature of 200 Jews survived. established with a unique focus to work internationally this research involved rating The last testament to that and exclusively on preserving each synagogue according to once-flourishing Jewish life Jewish built heritage—a its importance and condition is the Great Synagogue. In heritage that faces special in order to identify the most the years after the war, it was challenges for reasons so important at-risk sites. This used to store furniture and, for amply demonstrated by the mapping project brought the the past twenty years, it has story of the Great Synagogue. Foundation to Slonim. stood empty and abandoned, Belarus has a rich Jewish its condition deteriorating. A The Foundation set out to be history, and Slonim had been shattered presence close to pro-active and strategic in its a major center, producing the town center, it remains approach. We commissioned

48 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 scholars, rabbis, and community leaders, even spawning its own celebrated Hasidic dynasty. Its importance is reflected in the very ambition of the Great Synagogue, which was reputedly modelled on the Map of the historic synagogues of Europe. Great Synagogue of Vilna. Courtesy of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage The building, with its dramatic gabled roof and imposing carefully balanced against the commemoration, a pilgrimage exterior, features an impressive country’s close relations with destination, and a cultural venue group of paintings and carvings, Russia. This backdrop is just —delivered in such a way as to including a collection of murals one dimension of the many ensure its long-term future. depicting musical instruments, challenges of operating in a The site is owned by the scrollwork, and biblical scenes. place like Belarus. municipality of Slonim, To this day, it remains the best- The Foundation began and the Foundation preserved and most important its work by establishing signed a memorandum of Jewish heritage site in Belarus, a steering committee that understanding with the mayor and one of the most important included descendants of that gave immediate access endangered historic synagogues Slonim families. Natasha to the building. This enabled in all of Europe. Kaplinsky is a UK television initial work to be carried out, The neglect of the synagogue personality who took part in including a survey and some perfectly mirrored the post-war the BBC’s celebrated Who Do urgent repairs. Monitors were suppression of the events of the You Think You Are? family also placed over the cracks on Holocaust in what had become history program. In one of the walls to ascertain if the Soviet Slonim. The Shoah was the more moving moments of structural foundations were the most traumatic event in the episode, she found herself moving—thankfully they Slonim’s history and yet, to inside the Great Synagogue, were not! this day, there is no mention of listening to her Israeli cousin’s We also reached out to the it in the local museum. recitation of the kaddish Jewish community in Belarus memorial prayer for those who The Soviet legacy in Belarus and to local Slonim residents. perished in the Holocaust. continues to be strong, not However, there is no tradition Kaplinsky’s uncle Simon is the least in the politics of the of civil society activism, chair of the steering committee. country. Yet, Belarus has so our usual approach of recently begun demonstrating We established a broad seeking out and engaging local a growing openness to vision for what we wanted to stakeholders proved difficult. A addressing its Jewish achieve, namely, to preserve significant cultural divergence history as part of a cautious the synagogue building arose in our very different engagement with the West and adapt it to serve as an approaches to conservation and the European Union, educational center, a site of and assembling local teams.

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 49 However, over the past year and a half, we succeeded in forming a network of Belarusian advisors, including a Minsk law firm that represents our interests.

A key next step involved a feasibility study to research and test the viability of our plans. While working on this, a change of mayors resulted in the decision of the municipality to put the building up for Great Synagogue in Słonim. auction. The Foundation had Courtesy of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage been considering buying the synagogue but ascertained awareness and understanding Update: The synagogue that the conditions associated of Jewish history, and by building was put up for auction with the auction sale were doing so can challenge on December 29, 2020, and unachievable. We now hope to ignorance and prejudice the Foundation maintained its negotiate on this. Our efforts at a time when we are position of declining to take part. are taking place against a witnessing growing We nonetheless remain open and worsening political situation xenophobia and overt anti- hopeful for future cooperation that we are closely following Semitism in parts of Europe. with a new owner. n and could have a serious impact The Great Synagogue stands To find out more about the on our work there, especially as an abandoned ruin and will work of the Foundation for if it results in a complete break no doubt disappear from the Jewish Heritage, please with Western Europe. landscape as a critical cultural visit: www.foundation The Jewish story of the testimony to Jewish heritage forjewishheritage.com/, region remains immense and if no action is taken. The and the Historic Synagogues largely absent. This points building is a symbol of a lost of Europe website, to the problems we face, but community, and perhaps of a http://historicsynagogues also to the possibilities and wound in Slonim itself that, by europe.org/synagogue-home. significance of the project. By being ignored, has been unable saving the Great Synagogue, to heal. We will continue to Michael Mail is founder we can gain a profound place work to save this historic and Chief Executive of of education for the Jewish synagogue and reimagine it the Foundation for Jewish people, for the wider society, as again a place of meaning, Heritage. He is a Trustee and for the world. Restoring honoring the past while serving of ICOMOS-UK and the and preserving this sacred global Jewish heritage of today -based Future for site can help to promote and tomorrow. Religious Heritage (FRH).

50 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Tribute to Maria Piechotkowa Shana Penn (July 12, 1920–November 28, 2020)

he death of Maria Huber Piechotkowa brings to an Tend a remarkable story of how a seemingly esoteric scholarly fascination produced books that have touched the lives of readers, Jewish and not Jewish, throughout the world. Between the world wars, with her husband Kazimierz (1919– 2010), Maria Piechotkowa began researching, and later publishing, studies about the then obscure topic of wooden Maria Piechotkowa standing in front of the wooden synagogue model in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. and masonry synagogues Photograph by M. Starowieyska. Courtesy of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in the Polish lands. Their scholarship about Jewish “The Jewish heritage world has lost a giant. Maria spiritual space was embraced Piechotkowa, a pioneer in the study of synagogue not only by academic architecture in Poland and mentor to generations, has colleagues worldwide, but by the Polish general public, died in Warsaw, just months after her 100th birthday.” and especially by Israeli ―Ruth Ellen Gruber, Jewish Heritage Europe and diaspora Jews, many of whom had scarce connection the POLIN Museum of the Scholarly interest in wooden to functioning synagogues in History of Polish Jews. synagogues began in the their own lives. With the end second half of the 19th century. of communist rule in Poland, An Early Modern Polish Alois Breier took photographs the husband and wife team Architectural Tradition of synagogies, including those published even more studies Attaining their golden age in that did not survive World on synagogues, continuing the 17th and 18th centuries, War I, and in 1934 he their important contributions wooden synagogues were built published his Holzsynagogen to the nation’s Jewish cultural all around the Polish lands in Polen (Wooden Synagogues revitalization, notably at beginning in the 16th century. in Poland).

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 51 Wooden synagogues attracted The combination of primarily coniferous wood, the interest of the Piechotkas indigenous Polish typical of the region. during their academic studies In researching who built the in 1938 at the Warsaw architecture with Jewish wooden synagogues, the Polytechnic Institute under religious thought Piechotkas concluded that Professor Oscar Sosnowski, represented a “unique Polish carpenters and builders whose research included who were not Jewish must describing and inventorying example of intertwining have constructed them. The synagogues. cultures,” said combination of indigenous “I was fascinated by the Piechotkowa. Polish architecture with Jewish synagogues,” recalled religious thought represented a Piechotkowa. “Their unique Recovering What Was Lost “unique example of intertwining and rich architectural forms During the war, the Piechotkas cultures,” said Piechotkowa. were different from everything took part in the 1944 Warsaw Rich interior designs, in I’d seen before. At the same Uprising. After liberation they the form of the carved aron time, they were Polish in their married, pursued architectural kodesh, polychromes, furniture, character. I wanted to see careers, and resumed research fabrics, embroideries, and them in nature.” Thwarting on wooden synagogues. silver, were expressions of her dream, the Nazi invaders Extending their studies from Jewish craftsmanship. While burned down all the wooden architecture to Jewish history the architectural exterior of synagogues and killed and religion, they treated the the synagogue was largely Professor Sosnowski. wooden synagogue as both the product of Polish regional a historical document and a influences, the interiors, and “We decided to do something cultural artifact. In addition to their elaborate wall paintings, about it,” Piechotkowa providing detailed information signified a distinctly Jewish recalled, “to rescue them and on the design and construction art form. show them to more people.” of each synagogue, including They began to record the architectural drawings Inspiring New architectural detail of destroyed and measurements, they Understandings and buildings, with a special established historical links New Works focus on wooden synagogues. between the architecture The Piechotkowas’ seminal Notes Ruth Ellen Gruber and local traditions of work, Wooden Synagogues, of Jewish Heritage Europe, craftsmanship as well as appeared in Polish in 1957, “The Piechotkas always stylistic parallels with to a positive response from believed that their work was a . They experts, although it received continuation of, and an homage showed how the specific no publicity. “Those weren’t to, the field work of the great shape and construction of the the times to popularize such a researchers of the inter-war buildings were ingrained in topic,” explained Piechotkowa, years, almost all of whom were the building material itself, “especially considering the killed in the Holocaust.”

52 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 fact that we had also described Making History Tangible synagogues ... that were not The best-known expression within the borders of post-war of their work stands in the Poland. The censors made sure POLIN Museum of the that books were not touching History of Polish Jews. on this sensitive issue.” A partial replica of a wooden Meanwhile, beyond Poland’s synagogue placed at the borders and the Iron Curtain, center of the museum began Jews learned about Polish its life in a scholarly work, Bożnice drewniane (Wooden Resplendent Synagogue, wooden synagogues for Synagogues) by Maria and the first time. The English- Kazimierz Piechotka, published published in 2003 by by Budownictwo i Architektura Thomas Hubka, an American language version of Wooden Publishing House in 1957. Synagogues made a huge architectural historian. impression, especially in the and the Jewish communities Hubka selected the synagogue United States. Piechotkowa where wooden synagogues of Gwoździec, in present- remarked: “We were told once stood, such as Bogoria, day Ukraine, because of that we brought dignity to Odelsk, and Lanckorona. the completeness of its [and] restored the self-esteem photographic and historical When Poland’s political life of the so-called Ostjuden, records. loosened in the late 1980s, the the Jews from Central and Piechotkas received Culture The studies published by Eastern Europe, who had been Ministry support to return to Hubka, and more extensively perceived as culturally inferior the subject they held dear. by the Piechotkas, inspired to Western European Jews, Their third period of research another husband-and-wife who were seen as wealthier began at the Institute of Art team—Rick and Laura and better educated.” of the Polish Academy of Brown—to lead a project to Wooden Synagogues offered a Sciences in Warsaw. The fruits build, to an 85% scale, the connection to the lost Jewish of this research are their books, roof, ceiling, and bimah of culture of Eastern Europe, in Polish and English editions: the Gwoździec synagogue. and not only for Jews. In the Heaven’s Gates: Wooden The Browns’ Massachusetts- 1970s, the renowned American Synagogues in the Territories based Handshouse Studio artist Frank Stella, a Catholic, of the Former Polish- partnered with the POLIN was given the Piechotkas’ Lithuanian Commonwealth; Museum to construct the book by the architect Richard Heaven’s Gates: Masonry replica for the museum’s Meier. Inspired by the text Synagogues in the Territories permanent exhibition. Not and photographs, he created of the Former Polish- only did Piechotkowa’s 130 painted constructions, the Lithuanian Commonwealth, studies inform the stunning Polish Village Series (1970–73). and Jews in the Urban Space of project, but she helped to The monumental iron reliefs the former Polish-Lithuanian shape the larger narrative that bore the names of the towns Commonwealth. the POLIN Museum tells to

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 53 contextualize the cultural significance of the Polish wooden synagogue and how its memory has been preserved and continues. (See the POLIN Museum’s core exhibition companion book, POLIN: 1,000 Year History of Polish Jews, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Antony Polonsky, eds., particularly Adam Teller’s chapter, “The Jewish Town: 1648–1772.”)

Piechotkowa’s partnership with the POLIN Museum continued after the unveiling of the synagogue installation at the museum’s October 2014 grand opening. Her works have been reprinted in conjunction with the museum, and her scholarship became part of an Maria Piechotkowa (left) receiving the 2016 Irena Sendler acclaimed special exhibition, Frank Memorial Award from Taube Philanthropies Executive Director Shana Penn. Stella and Synagogues of Historic Photographed by Maciek Jaźwiecki. Used with permission Poland. Forty-three years after Stella’s artworks were first shown, the POLIN What a privilege and blessing to know her, Museum’s 2016 exhibition brought together the eighty-year-old artist and to learn from her, and to benefit from her the ninety-six-year-old Piechotkowa, indefatigable efforts to document Polish under an elaborately painted wooden wooden synagogues. synagogue ceiling at the POLIN Museum. The museum’s focus on the ―Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Ronald S. distinctively Polish character of wooden Lauder Chief Curator, POLIN Museum of the synagogues brings the Piechotkas’ History of Polish Jews legacy to bear on museum visitors of every age and background, and in this way, Piechotkowa’s research brings We will be forever grateful for having the history into the future. n opportunity to meet Maria and Kazimierz and to have them challenge us, set the bar Shana Penn is Executive Director of the Taube Philanthropies and so high, take us under their wings and share Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta. their precious life’s work together with us.

―Laura Brown, Co-Director, Handshouse Studio

54 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Tadeusz Dąbrowski. Photograph by Raphael Zubler. POEM Courtesy of the author Studnia / The Well By Tadeusz Dąbrowski. English Translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Nocny pociąg jak bobslej sunie w rynnie zimy, A night train glides like a bobsleigh down the gutter of winter, w dolinie spowite złotawą łuną snu down a valley wreathed in the amber glow of sleep, bezimienne miasteczko, w którym pierwszy raz a nameless little town, where I first dotykałem piersi A., nie będąc do końca pewnym, touched the breasts of A., not entirely certain czy nie zajdzie od tego w ciążę. Grudzień, późne if that could make her pregnant. December, the late lata dziewięćdziesiąte. Na rynku upstrzonym nineteen-nineties. On a marketplace speckled świątecznymi lampkami, w chmurze grzanego wina, with little Christmas lights, in a haze of hot mulled wine, z kieszeniami pełnymi zaczętych wierszy, które with pockets full of started poems, which dyskretnie nie pytały o przyszłość ani o sens, discreetly didn’t ask about the future or for meaning, czuliśmy się jak w środku pozytywki. Światem we felt as if inside a music box. The world nie rządził jeszcze bóg o wielu twarzach. Dotyk was not yet governed by a god with many faces. Touch był gwarantem istnienia. Nocny pociąg jak kot guaranteed existence. The night train rubs cat-like ociera się o łunę miasteczka, zbyt pośpiesznie, against the glow of the little town, too hurriedly, jak ja w późnych latach dziewięćdziesiątych o jej like me in the late nineteen-nineties against her blade i pełne piersi. Patrzę w tę łunę i nic full and pale breasts. I’m gazing at the glow and feeling nie czuję. Wjeżdżam w tunel. Śni mi się, że krzyczę nothing. I enter a tunnel. I dream that I’m shouting do studni: Jesteś tam jeszcze? I słyszę: Jesteś down a well: Are you still there? Then I hear: Are you tam jeszcze? Jestem – mówię. I słyszę: Jestem. still there? I am—I say. Then I hear: I am.

Tadeusz Dąbrowski is a poet, essayist, critic, and the editor of the literary bimonthly Topos. He has been published in numerous prestigious poetry journals, including the American Poetry Review and Review, as well as The New Yorker magazine. He has published eight volumes of poetry and his work has been translated into thirty languages.

Antonia Lloyd-Jones is the 2018 winner of the Transatlantyk Award for the most outstanding promoter of Polish literature abroad. She has translated works by many of Poland’s leading writers and served as co-chair of the Translators Association of the United Kingdom.

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 55 OBITUARIES

David Shneer Antony Polonsky (1972–2020)

avid Shneer, the holder Germany, Argentina, Russia, of the Louis P. Singer and elsewhere, and no longer, DEndowed Chair in Jewish as the title of the book suggests, History at the University of constituted a diaspora. Colorado in Boulder, died in His two subsequent books November of cancer at the reflected his interest in tragically young age of forty- the Jewish involvement in eight. He received his PhD photography and the ways in in history from the University which Jewish photographers in of California at Berkeley in the Soviet Union documented 2001, and, before moving to the Holocaust. The first was Boulder, directed the Center Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: for Judaic Studies at the David Shneer z”l. Photography, War, and the University of Denver. He was Holocaust (Rutgers University a prolific author of works 2005 in the Eastern European Press, 2011). This built on the concentrating on Soviet and section for the National Jewish relatively favorable picture he Jewish cultural history. Book Award. He followed had drawn of Soviet Jewish this with New Jews: The End His first book, Yiddish life in Yiddish and the Creation of the Jewish Diaspora (New and the Creation of Soviet of Soviet Jewish Culture and York University Press, 2005), Jewish Culture (Cambridge described how a group of which he co-authored with University Press, 2004), around twenty-five Soviet- Caryn Aviv, now rabbi of gave a sympathetic account Jewish photographers, among Judaism Your Way in Denver, of the effort of some local them Arkady Shaykhet, Mark and which reflected their Jews, with the not always Markov-Grinberg, Dmitri radical approach to Jewish whole-hearted support of the Baltermants, Evgenii Khaldei, issues. Its main argument was Soviet authorities, to create a and Max Alpert, attempted to that disillusionment with the Yiddish-based Soviet Jewish provide a photographic record Zionist project meant that many cultural identity, attempting of the Holocaust. Shneer Jews no longer saw Israel as to provide a corrective to the worked closely with the the center of the Jewish world. more negative assessment families of the photographers Instead they felt themselves dominant in scholarship on and amassed a large archive rooted in the countries in which this topic. It was a finalist in of previously unpublished they lived, the United States,

56 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 photographs. The book was a Shneer’s deep Who Cleared the Soul of finalist for the 2011 National commitment to a better Rubble, Berlin, Hentrich and Jewish Book Award in the Hentrich, 2014), an account Holocaust category and winner and more just world of the life of Lin Jaldati, born of the 2013 Jordan Schnitzer was widely admired, Rebekka Brilleslijper, a Dutch Prize in Literature, Arts, and and he was always Jewish Holocaust survivor, who Performance, awarded by the moved in 1952 to East Berlin Association for Jewish Studies. listened to with interest where she performed widely as An exhibition, Through Soviet and sympathy. a Yiddish chanteuse. Jewish Eyes, derived from Shneer was a frequent and the book, was shown widely, poignant account of the book eloquent lecturer, able to including at the Museum of at the Museum of the Jewish present his views to a wider Jewish Heritage in New York Heritage in Jewish audience. He also City, the Holocaust Museum barely two month before his published many popular articles Houston, the University of death. (The image can be found in both general and Jewish Louisiana’s Museum of Art, on the cover of the book.) papers, including Huffington and the Illinois Holocaust Shneer also co-authored a Post, Rocky Mountain News, Museum in Chicago. number of books. Queer Jews Denver Post, Forward, Only weeks before his death, he (Routledge, 2002), which he Pakntreger, Jewcy, and published Grief: The Biography edited with Rabbi Caryn Aviv, Notebook. He was for several of a Holocaust Photograph is an account of the impact years co-editor in chief of the (Oxford University Press), an of Jewish homosexuals on quarterly East European Jewish analysis of the history of a Jewish American culture. A Affairs. He fulfilled this office single photograph by the Soviet Captive of the Dawn. The Life admirably and was always open Jewish photographer, Dmitri and Work of Perets Markish to views different from his Baltermants, taken at the first (Oxford, Legenda, 2011), own, seeing the journal as an Soviet Holocaust site to be which he edited with Joseph important forum for discussion. liberated in January 1942, in Sherman, Gennady Estraikh, Although his views were the city of Kerch in eastern and Jordan Finkin, provides sometimes criticized as radical, Crimea. Using a shocking a comprehensive analysis of his deep commitment to a image of a grieving woman, the life and work of a leading better and more just world was who is probably not Jewish, Soviet Yiddish writer who was widely admired, and he was standing among a group of executed in 1952 in Stalin’s always listened to with interest bodies in a frozen landscape, post-war purge of Yiddish and sympathy. n he shows how Baltermants culture. Reflecting his interest used this moving image to in Yiddish culture he also bring out the universal aspect produced a short biography, of the human tragedy of the Lin Yaldati: Trümmerfrau der Holocaust. Shneer gave a Seele (Lin Yaldati: The Woman

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 57 Piotr Grącikowski Marcin Wodziński (1976–2021)

olish philologist, librarian, literary periodical, Sporadnik Jewish studies scholar, Obsesjograficzny Seplenzia, Pand ethnographer. Friend which ironically, and self- and companion of academic reflexively, commented on the research. Piotr Grącikowski experiences of a student of died on the night of January 3, Polish studies. 2021, at the age of forty-four. After graduation, Grącikowski Despite the hardships of his worked for a short time as a illness, he remained cheerful, teacher, then creative, open to other people an editor at the publishing and changes until his last days. houses Siedmioróg and We will miss him very much. Larousse Polska, and finally, Grącikowski was born in 1976 at the Ossolineum National Piotr Grącikowski. in Wrocław, Silesia. From Photograph by Marek Maziarz. Courtesy of Library, where he worked on 1991 to 1995 he attended University of Wrocław compiling the book collection. the 7th Secondary School in Grącikowski’s work But perhaps more important Wrocław, and then started than these professional roles Polish studies at the University sets a new gold were his scholarly passions, of Wrocław. He completed standard for a critical which he developed over the his master’s thesis in 2001, scientific edition. years. In his scientific work, advised by Professor Jerzy Grącikowski was a self- Worończak. At that time, culture and an attraction to conscious positivist, fully his most important scholarly forgotten, seemingly trivial, involved in establishing the interests, contacts, and or “frivolous” topics. It fundamentals of academic methodological preferences was precisely through these research. In 2005, he were formed. His fascination inclinations toward “unruly” applied to the Department with his outstanding teacher, topics (as he called them), of Jewish Studies at the Prof. Woronczak—and always such as Jewish games and his University of Wrocław with interesting conversations Yiddish flirtations, that his the idea of writing a doctoral with Prof. Bogusław interests were born. During dissertation. The choice very Bednarek—involved his Polish studies, he also quickly fell to the life of the shared interests in Jewish published the satirical and Jewish ethnographer, Regina

58 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 Lilientalowa, whose life and We sometimes joked that Marcin Wodziński is professor work he spent many years Lilientalowa was the and chair of the Department studying. We sometimes of Jewish Studies at the joked that Lilientalowa greatest love of his University of Wrocław. was the greatest love of his life. Behind this joke life. Behind this joke was was admiration for his admiration for his dedication to scholarly work and his dedication to scholarly true passion for research. work and his true His 2013 doctoral thesis, passion for research. “Portrait of a Pre-War Jewish Ethnographer, Regina Lilientalowa,” is an excellent the first distinction in the biographical study on one Majer Bałaban Competition of the most important, and for the best doctoral thesis on at the same time, one of the Jewish subjects, organized most forgotten, figures in the by the Emanuel Ringelblum history of Jewish ethnography Jewish Historical Institute. In in Europe. As the reviewer, a slightly reworked version, Prof. Haya Bar-Itzhak, wrote, the research serves as an Grącikowski’s work perfectly introduction to Grącikowski’s shows the reasons for this opus magnum, Regina oblivion, and at the same Liliental’s Ethnographic time “corrects this injustice.” Writings, which he was This was for Grącikowski preparing for publication. His not only a cognitive, but also work sets a new gold standard an ethical endeavor, which for a critical scholarly edition. well describes his scholarly This monumental, long- attitude. Equally characteristic awaited work is almost ready. was his exemplary For many decades to come, it meticulousness in source will not only serve researchers queries, combing through of Jewish ethnography, but primary and secondary it will also remind us of literature, and, finally, his Piotr Grącikowski’s life and unmatched precision in scholarly passions. Above analysis and interpretation. In all, we will remember his wit, 2016, his dissertation received warmth, and smile. n

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 59 Krzysztof Śliwin´ski (1940–2021) Jewish Heritage Europe Poland’s First Official “Roving Ambassador” to the Jewish Diaspora

e mourn the death of that caused this great Krzysztof Śliwiński, cemetery, where the dead were Wa Polish diplomat and buried for a century and a intellectual who was an early half, to become an abandoned Catholic activist in Jewish and forgotten place, happened heritage preservation and not so long ago. We wanted in fostering Polish-Jewish to contribute to saving the relations. In 1995 he was memory of this cemetery. We named post-Communist wanted the fate of people who Poland’s first official roving buried their relatives in this ambassador to the Jewish cemetery not to be forgotten diaspora. He died in Warsaw too easily … For ten years, on January 7, a week before Krzysztof Śliwiński. since 1973, we would come his eighty-first birthday. Photograph by Szymon Rogiński. there every afternoon in the Used with permission last week of June. Of those As a young man, Śliwiński Okopowa Street Jewish who pulled weeds from was a member of the Catholic cemetery, beginning in 1973 abandoned graves, or cut trees Intelligentsia Clubs (KIK), and which continued for years. that burst stones, or found which formed part of a paths between the stones, network of Catholic groups “Part of the cemetery was only a very few could look for and publications opposed covered with a forest; a dense traces of their distant relatives to the strictures of the forest of trees of equal height, there. For the vast majority Communist regime. which began to grow out of the [of us], mostly young, often stones, from seedlings no one From the late 1960s to early students, members of the had torn out,” Śliwiński recalled 1970s he organized Jewish Catholic Intelligentsia Club in an article called “Our Jewish Culture Days and other pro- in Warsaw or their friends, it Cemetery” published in 1983 Jewish initiatives at a time was not a matter that could be in the independent Catholic when the regime sought to explained by the ties of blood journal, Więź. suppress Jewish practice that usually motivate care for and culture. These included “These trees could not be the dead ... regular clean-up sessions of even thirty years old. They “There were never very many Warsaw’s vast, neglected indicated that the cataclysm people who came to work in

60 n GAZETA VOLUME 28, NO. 1 the cemetery—sometimes From the late 1960s to a dozen, sometimes several early 1970s he organized dozen. However, there was no need to persuade anyone, Jewish Culture Days or to announce anything more and other pro-Jewish widely—it was enough that initiatives at a time when people found out about it and came.” the regime sought to

Śliwiński became an activist suppress Jewish practice in the Solidarność movement and culture. in 1980, and JHE director Ruth Ellen Gruber got to who was also honored by know him well when she was Yad Vashem as a Righteous a correspondent in Poland Among Nations.) at the time and he was a During his diplomatic career, Warsaw spokesperson for the Śliwiński also served as Polish movement. ambassador to Morocco from Following the fall of 1990–94, and from 2000 Communism in 1989–90, the to 2004 he was the Polish new Polish government opened ambassador to . an unprecedented policy of He also served as a press outreach to Jews worldwide, spokesman for the Ministry as an attempt to improve of Foreign Affairs and was the often-troubled relations deputy editor of the Gazeta between Poland and the Wyborcza newspaper. world’s Jewish community. Reprinted with permission It was as part of this policy from Jewish Heritage Europe, that then-Foreign Minister January 8, 2021. To read the Władysław Bartoszewski original article visit https:// appointed Śliwiński as the jewish-heritage-europe. country’s first official roving eu/2021/01/08/poland-rip- ambassador to the Jewish krzysztof-sliwinski/. n Diaspora. (Bartoszewski, who died in 2015, was an Auschwitz survivor himself

GAZETA WINTER 2021 n 61 JCC Kraków’s Hanukkah poster shows support for the Women’s Strike and LGBTQ rights. Courtesy of JCC Kraków

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