Janusz Makuch, Director, Jewish Culture Festival, Kraków, Summer 2017. Photo: Bartosz Dittmar

Volume 24, No. 3 Gazeta Summer 2017

A quarterly publication of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture Editorial & Design: Fay Bussgang, Julian Bussgang, Dr. Antony Polonsky, Shana Penn, Vera Hannush, Alice Lawrence, Maayan Stanton, LaserCom Design. Front Cover: 27th Jewish Culture Festival, Kraków. Photo: Bartosz Dittmar. Back Cover: Students in the Jewish cemetery, Beshenkovichi, Belarus. Photo: Sefer Center.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Message from Irene Pipes ...... 2 Message from Tad Taube and Shana Penn ...... 3

FEATURE STORY The Memory Keepers: The Literary Legacy of the Karmel Sisters Part 1: The Poetry of Survival Taube Philanthropies ...... 4 Part 2: A Daughter Remembers Joy Wolfe Ensor ...... 7

NEWS All Saints Church on Grzybowska Street declared “House of Life” Julian and Fay Bussgang ...... 12 Celebrating the Battles of the Polish Second Corps Julian and Fay Bussgang ...... 13 Belarus: Comprehensive Survey of Jewish Cemeteries Announced Jewish Heritage Europe ...... 15 Poland: Archaeologists Probe Foundations of Destroyed New Synagogue in Wrocław Jewish Heritage Europe ...... 17 Roman Vishniac’s Portraits of Arthur Szyk Donated to The Magnes, UC Berkeley Zoe Lewin and Francesco Spagnolo ...... 18 Poland and South Africa: A Quarter Century after the Transition to Democracy Dr. Antony Polonsky ...... 19 July 4, 2017 Commemoration of the Kielce Pogrom Jan Karski Society ...... …… 22

EXHIBITIONS “Rywka’s Diary” premieres at Galicia Jewish Museum Jakub Nowakowski ...... 24

CONFERENCES Chone Shmeruk Conference at POLIN Museum Dr. Hanna Węgrzynek ...... 27 Conference for Jewish Genealogy Offers a Chance to Come Home – To Poland Matan Shefi ...... 28 GEOP Doctoral Seminar Dr. Hanna Węgrzynek ...... 30

BOOKS Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis: Essays in Honor of the 75th Birthday of Professor Antony Polonsky Edited by Glenn Dynner and François Guesnet / Reviewed by Michael Meng ...... 31 Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices By Jeffrey Shandler ...... 33 Field Guide to Jewish Łódź By Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation ...... 34 Na Krawedzi. Przetrwac Lodzkie Getto i nie tylko Out on a Ledge: Enduring the Łódź Ghetto, Auschwitz and Beyond By Eva Libitzky / Translated by Sergiusz Kowalski ...... 35

AWARDS 2017 Irena Sendler Memorial Awards presented to Stefan Wilkanowicz and Bogdan Białek ...... 36

ANNOUNCEMENTS POLIN Museum and Jewish Historical Institute Announce Recipients of 2017/18 GEOP Research Fellowships Agnieszka Dulęba ...... 39 Arthur Szyk Exhibition at the New York Historical Society Museum & Library ...... 40 “Jewish Heritage Tourism in the Digital Age,” October 23-25, 2017, Venice, Italy ...... 41 Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) Fellows to Visit Poland Melissa Martens Yaverbaum ...... 42 Auschwitz Jewish Center Fall 2017 Programs Dara Bramson ...... 42 Ringelblum Archive Exhibition to Open at the Jewish Historical Institute in November ...... 43 Seventh International Conference for Jewish Studies Researchers, Warsaw, November 14-16, 2017 ...... 43

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 1 President of the American Association Message from for Polish-Jewish Studies

Irene Pipes Founder of Gazeta

Dear Members and Friends,

I am happy to report that vol. 30 of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry will have its launch in early January 2018 at the Polish Embassy in London. Its subject is “Jewish Education in Eastern Europe.” You are cordially invited to attend the launch.

The board of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies is being reorganized, as we attempt to reach the younger generation. Please contact me if you have any thoughts on that subject. Emails sent to [email protected] will be forwarded to me. Irene Pipes

I would strongly recommend that everyone see the movie “The Zookeeper’s Wife.” It is a most moving, true story of a heroic couple who saved over 150 Jews in German-occupied Warsaw in a zoo building (now a museum). I shall add here that the man in question, Dr. Jan Żabiński, was my husband’s science teacher in high school before the war; he taught science to supplement his income.

With best wishes for a pleasant summer,

Irene Pipes President

2 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Message from Chairman and Executive Director Tad Taube and of the Taube Foundation for Shana Penn Jewish Life & Culture

any recent issues of Gazeta have focused on the present state and future prospects of Poland’s Jewish community, Jewish Mstudies programs, and the democratic nation in which they now thrive. That’s hardly surprising, given the widespread interest among younger generations in Jewish studies, and the launch of so many public outreach, cultural, and research programs associated with it.

In this issue, we are taking a more retrospective and commemorative approach. Our first story sets the theme. “The Memory Keepers” is a personal chronicle of discovery by an American whose family called Tad Taube Krakόw home before World War II and the two sisters who each established a respected literary legacy in the United States, where both settled after the war. There were actually several discoveries, both familial and literary, as you will see when you read Joy Wolfe Ensor’s account. Other memory keepers follow, including Julian Bussgang’s reporting of his trip to Italy to observe the anniversaries of battles in which he fought in World War II as a soldier in the Anders Army. In another essay, Antony Polonsky reminds us of the remarkable parallels between Poland and South Africa in their journeys to democratic government, both facilitated, it turns out, by Mikhail Gorbachev and the USSR. And this is only a sampling of our stories.

Not all the reflections are comfortable in our memory, however, even many Shana Penn decades after the events. A story about the recent commemoration of the Kielce pogrom in July 1946 is one such example. And yet even this has a more positive side, when we turn to the story about the Taube Philanthropies’ 2018 Irena Sendler Awards, one of which went to Bogdan Białek for his remarkable work in Kielce, which has enabled the city’s residents and the tragedy’s witnesses and victims to come to grips with their shared history.

The memory keepers remind us to be steadfast in maintaining our values and our determination, as we reflect on the past to envision the future with confidence and a sense of accomplishment.

Tad Taube and Shana Penn Chairman and Executive Director

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 3 FEATURE STORY The Memory Keepers: The Literary Legacy of Taube Philanthropies the Karmel Sisters PART 1: THE POETRY OF SURVIVAL

Note from the Editors: Ester Netzer) and a few of her Biographical information compatriots, the sisters wrote is adapted from Fanny Polish verses, each writing Howe’s “Introduction” and separately from the other “Notes on the Translations” and hiding the poems in their in A Wall of Two: Poems of clothing. Literary critic Fanny Resistance and Suffering from Howe wrote, “I can imagine Kraków to Buchenwald and Ilona’s and Henia’s fierce Beyond (Henia Karmel and postures, bent over paper in a Ilona Karmel, translated by hard darkness at night, and I Arie A. Galles and Warren can at least sense what it meant Niesłuchowski, 2007). to them. The search for music, beat, clarity . . . meaning.” This story begins like any other. and arrested, a cousin, well Every night is a torment. A childhood tale as ordinary placed in the Judenrat, Stab after stab of dread successfully intervened and as milk and flowers. Gores each heart and they returned to Kraków, finally cracks That day—my God—was without their father whom The stone-cold sleep of short. the Nazis sent to Treblinka where he died. some and they awake —From “Autobiography” Together to the horror: In 1942 the Nazis sent the by Ilona Karmel “Look there! The door!” well-educated sisters and their Born in the 1920s when the mother to the Płaszów labor —From “The Barracks” future seemed to hold the camp. A year later they were by Ilona Karmel promise of a new world for moved to the forced labor Polish Jews, Ilona and Henia In the summer of 1944, the camp of Skarżysko-Kamienna. Germans began to retreat, Karmel were still in their teens Poetry became their salvation. when they fled the Kraków and the Nazis sent thousands ghetto with their parents in Using old worksheets of prisoners, including the 1941. The Nazis found them surreptitiously slipped to Karmels, to a labor camp in Brzesko and they fled into them by younger fellow attached to Buchenwald. The the forest. Finally cornered prisoner Ester Nesser (now sisters sewed the poems into

4 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 the hems of their dresses to Kraków and delivered to keep them secure. Only the poems to Wolfe who months later, in April of 1945, sent them to relatives in the SS evacuated Buchenwald the U.S. during the sisters’ and 28,000 prisoners began convalescence in Sweden. A forced death marches, Polish Jewish organization during which German tanks managed to publish a small deliberately crushed the number of copies in 1947, prisoners who were left piled as Śpiew za drutami (Songs in nearby fields. Behind Barbed Wire). When the publisher asked the still Henia, Ilona, and their mother hospitalized sisters to write a were among those abandoned preface, they wrote, in part: for dead by the side of the road. However, although knowing if anyone was still “To an Unknown Reader, badly injured, they were alive alive to look for them. It is difficult today, from and as prisoners marched by, the perspective of two Henia recognized a cousin. In September 1945, through years, to contemplate the They ripped open the hems a series of remarkable events, of their dresses and passed Leon Wolfe learned that genesis of these poems. . . . her the poems, begging that the sisters were alive in the Words spat out in a fever, she take them to Kraków hospital. Through a Swedish screamed poems, now to Leszek Wolf (later Leon official in the International sound like weak whispers, Wolfe), Henia’s husband. Red Cross, he secured them almost inaudible.” The next day, a passing Polish visas to Stockholm, where However, the sisters had woman managed to find a Ilona was fitted with a not lost their voices. After cart and take the sisters and prosthesis at the Karolinska arriving in the U.S. in 1948- their mother to a nearby Institute. Henia soon 1949, they learned English hospital where their mother recovered, but Ilona’s injuries and continued writing. Each died, and each sister had a kept her at the Institute two wrote short stories and two leg amputated. Eventually the more years. novels, all highly regarded. sisters ended up hospitalized The poems also survived. The best known are Henia’s for six months in Leipzig, not The cousin had made it

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 5 Marek and Lisa (1984) and Ilona’s An Estate of Memory Our Blood Encounter (1969). Henia often said that Ilona Karmel Henia Karmel Ilona was a better novelist, and Ilona said Henia was a Listen! That’s our blood When I stand before you on better poet. They were critical pulsing — that long-awaited day, of each other’s work over purple, wild, red — you won’t even know me. foaming like the power of fire the years, but Leon Wolfe “Truly you don’t know me?” maintained: “They were that can’t be contained. as one.” Never! You will stop and stare.

For five long years it lay in When you remember how I will look at you through my close we came wait for me. tears until I hear you ask: to fainting in the sun, “My God, is that you?” Its claws were cunning in spellbound by a strange face, their reach. how suddenly our blood “Have I changed so much?” But I slipped away... surged up “No, not really. It’s just that and we struggled, madly? I live and look at the world! I kept you alive in my dreams and you had different eyes —From “Meditation in Only twenty years old— then. Transparent green like an Air Raid Shelter” remember! the sea. by Henia Karmel It was then our blood began to sing Now they gaze on me so sadly, Now their works are being behind bars, wires, everywhere. and are troubled by grief. published in Poland, and Before you had a lovely red Kraków is honoring their mouth, childlike, joyful, literary legacy. n but it’s all changed.” “Well then, look forever in wonder at the sad and troubled eyes of your wife, now another.”

6 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Joy Wolfe Ensor PART 2: A DAUGHTER REMEMBERS Daughter of Henia Karmel Wolfe

t was my great good fortune as a child that my mother, IHenia Karmel Wolfe, z”l, was a storyteller. “Eat your soup all the way to the bottom and I will tell you the story of how my Aunt Dora became a pediatrician.” “Finish your vegetables and I will tell you the story of how I played with my mother in the Planty.”

This was how my mother With Dr. Aleksander Skotnicki (L) and Marianne Karmel (R) at Klezmer-Hois passed along her memories of Kraków, where her family Simultaneously, published in 1947 as Śpiew za had lived since 1492. At the Fundacja Przestrzeń drutami, were spoken of less same time, she was grateful often, but they were translated for my straight hair and blue Kobiet (Foundation into Hebrew in 1999, and in eyes, which she said could Space for Women) had 2007 they were published in help me “pass” should the nominated Ilona for a English translation as A Wall need arise. She spoke only literary bench as part of of Two: Poems of Resistance English to my brother and me, and Suffering from Kraków calling Polish the language Kraków’s designation to Buchenwald and Beyond, of her oppression, and she as a UNESCO City of with an introduction and never wanted to return to Literature. adaptations by poet and author her homeland because, she alive in their English-language Fanny Howe (University of said, while she always loved short stories and novels: California Press, 2007).1 Poland, Poland didn’t love Ilona’s Stephania and An her back. After our mother and aunt Estate of Memory; Henia’s died (the former in 1984, the As the years passed, our The Baders of Jacob Street latter in 2000), the task of mother and our aunt, Ilona and Marek and Lisa: A Love Karmel, z”l, kept memory Story. Their wartime poems, 1 https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/ article/karmel-ilona

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 7 memory-keeping passed to us, reviving) the story of the Jews House in Kazimierz. Dr. Ornat the generations after. Often of Kraków. read the volume in one sitting when we had more questions and declared that he wanted As some of this readership about our family story, we to re-publish it (http://www. already knows, Aleksander stopped short, thinking that austeria.eu/sklep,szukaj,pol, Skotnicki is a Kraków he- there was nobody left to ask. glowna,1860,0,,plus.html). matologist for whom this And then, in June 2015, I endeavor is a long-standing Simultaneously, Fundacja received two random messages passion. His interest is root- Przestrzeń Kobiet (Foundation from Kraków that marked ed in part by his own family Space for Women) had the beginning of a most story: his grandmother, a nominated Ila for a literary unexpected journey. The first Righteous Gentile named bench as part of Kraków’s was from Dr. Aleksander Anna Sokolowska, was mur- designation as a UNESCO Skotnicki, seeking permission dered at Ravensbrück for City of Literature. Originally, to publish a new edition of hiding the Jewish children her bench was in Planty Śpiew za drutami. The second whom she taught in her school Dietlowskie, amid a cluster of was from the office of the in Nowy Sącz. Aleksander Jewish author benches situated Kraków City of Literature, had previously published a along ul. Dietla and throughout seeking permission to book about Juliusz Feldhorn, the Kazimierz district. reproduce one of Ila’s poems the renowned literature pro- During the next few months, on a “City Codes” website fessor at Kraków’s Hebrew I corresponded regularly with associated with a literary Gymnazium, and another both Aleksander and the City bench that was being installed about the Schindler Jews, Codes office as these parallel in her honor. many of whom became his projects moved forward. I close friends. One of those I was stunned, excited, and was moved by their genuine friends, Lutek Fagen, z”l, told more than a bit skeptical. What interest and by their openness him about Henia and Ila and was motivating these projects? to the complexities of our gave him a copy of Śpiew za Were they to be trusted? Thus shared history. After Śpiew drutami. Aleksander passed began my relationship with za drutami was republished, the book on to Dr. Wojciech a group of Krakówians who, Aleksander engaged two Ornat, who with his wife it turns out, are committed young drama students, Emma Małgorzata owns and oper- to keeping alive (and even Herdzik and Paulina Sobiś, ates the Austeria Publishing

8 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 to portray Henia and Ila in poetry readings – the first in a With Emma Herdzik, Paulina Sobiś, and Marcin Kalisz at the JCC Krakow performance space in the High Synagogue on ul. Józefa, and the second in the Juliusz Słowacki Opera House in the Rynek. He also arranged for a new bench – honoring Ila and Henia together – to be dedicated to them in the main Planty, off ul. Sienna (http:// kody.miastoliteratury.pl/b/47). Joy Wolfe Ensor at the literary bench in the Planty

Still holding on to a measure grandson, also named Hirsch Our shared fascination with the of skepticism, I realized that Karmel (my great-great- family history led Marianne I had to visit Kraków and grandfather), married Beila and me to travel together to see these unfolding events Freylich, and the success Kraków in September 2016. for myself. Meanwhile, of the Freylich & Karmel From our first morning in through the genealogy business partnerships Warsaw, the people we met website “MyHeritage” I deepened the Kraków roots were exceptional. Emma was contacted by Marianne of my branch of the family. Herdzik (the young actress Karmel of Boston, who had from the poetry readings) determined that we were Marianne had previously not met us at our hotel, spent the fourth cousins, directly known that there were any day with us at the magnificent descended from Hirsch Elias Karmels left in Poland, and POLIN Museum, and then Karmel (1766-1836) of I had no idea that there were escorted us to the train station Kraków. Hirsch’s grandson Karmels who had come to to see us off to Kraków, Hirsch Karmel immigrated America before the war. All where her counterpart, Paulina to the United States in the of a sudden I had a large new Sobiś, greeted us with flowers 1860s and later brought family in this country, and and candies. over his younger brother a wealth of new knowledge Elias (Marianne’s great- about our lineage. The next day we met grandfather). Another Aleksander Skotnicki, who

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 9 took time out of his busy One address, ul. Dietla 66, schedule at the hospital to was the home of my great- tour Kazimierz with us and uncle Menasche Karmel, and to introduce us to various it was the only building that project benefactors, including still had a perfect indentation Dr. Wojciech and Mrs. in the doorpost where the Małgorzata Ornat of Austeria mezuzah used to be. Uncle Publishing House (whose Menasche was a devout Jew upcoming catalogue will who, in the wartime ghetto, include The Baders of Jacob was generous and helpful to Street in a Polish translation others, including my parents. by Anna Popiel). At one I have since purchased a new point Marianne, listening to mezuzah, made from the trace Aleksander’s stories, said, at Dietla 66 by two young “Oh…you’re not Jewish!” To The Karmel home at ul. Józefa 1 artists who have a project which he replied with a smile, called “Mezuzah from This By the end of the “Nobody’s perfect!” The day Home” (http://mipolin.pl/ ended at the JCC Krakow, visit we felt like the mezuzah-from-this-home/). where Emma and Paulina, family was keeping us The revival of the Karmel under the guidance of their company as we walked sisters’ literary estate has acting coach Marcin Kalisz, through the streets. sparked a host of project rehearsed a play that they are proposals. Emma Herdzik and writing based on the lives of under the weight of knowing Paulina Sobiś’s project is a mix the Karmel sisters. how these houses had been of theater, dance, documentary, Seeing the literary bench in hollowed out of their Jewish and biography. In their words, person was deeply moving, residents. Over time, though, “Our thoughts are closely as was visiting my parents’ we were able to sense how connected with freedom, homes. Thanks to Marianne’s those buildings had been human dignity, and the search extensive research, we were inhabited, and how closely for meaning. We want to armed with dozens of family intertwined the various show (like Victor Frankl addresses, and we tried to families were in their in his book, Man’s Search find them all. We struggled daily lives. for Meaning) that evil and

10 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 suffering cannot destroy us.” Kraków’s memory- or call Emma at In addition, Prof. Michael keepers are doing the +48-506-877-666. Udow (http://michaeludow. work of t’shuvah (Heb: For more information about com/) is developing an opera future translations of the based on the sisters’ poetry. atonement). They are Karmel sisters’ novels, Finally, Austeria Publishing confronting the past please e-mail Anna Popiel at House, working with translator honestly, they are [email protected]. Anna Popiel, hopes to publish engaging in truth and the sisters’ three remaining For more information about reconciliation, and they English language novels for the opera project being the Polish reading public. are working to ensure developed by Michael Udow, please e-mail him at In the face of extremist that our tragic history [email protected]. counter-pressure from does not repeat itself. Poland’s national government and offered our family a place (whose cabinet, at the time of belonging in the Kraków of my visit, had recently community. Above all, after approved a bill making it a all these years, they brought crime to “insult the Polish Henia and Ila back to Kraków nation” by saying that Poles … with love. n were complicit in war crimes, or by uttering the phrase A previous version of this “Polish death camps”), article appeared in the Kraków’s memory-keepers newsletter of the New Cracow are doing the work of t’shuvah Friendship Society (www. (Heb: atonement). They are newcracowfriendshipsoc.org). confronting the past honestly, they are engaging in truth and For more information reconciliation, and they are about the theater project working to ensure that our being developed by Emma tragic history does not repeat Herdzik and Paulina Sobiś, itself. They reached out to me please e-mail them at with friendship and respect, [email protected],

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 11 NEWS Julian and All Saints Church on Grzybowska Fay Bussgang Street declared “House of Life” Co-editors, Gazeta

he International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation Tof New York held a ceremony on June 7 at the Catholic All Saints Church (Kościół Wszystkich Świętych) on Grzybowska Street in Warsaw, naming it a “House of Life.” During the German occupation of Warsaw, Father Marceli Godlewski, the pastor, gave shelter in the church and in an orphanage in his home to hundreds of Jews, supplying many with false papers. For his wartime deeds, Father Godlewski was later named a The foundation was Righteous Among the Nations represented by Samuel by Yad Vashem. Tenenbaum, son of Baruch The House of Life Tenenbaum, founder of the project is an initiative by organization. The president of the International Raoul Poland, Andrzej Duda, sent Wallenberg Foundation of a special letter, read at the New York, named after a ceremony, calling the Poles Swedish diplomat who saved who saved Jews “the nation’s the lives of thousands of heroes.” Hungarian Jews in Budapest The event was reported by by offering them Swedish Radio Poland and by Gazeta visas. Since 2014, the title Wyborcza of June 7. n has been awarded to churches in Budapest, Copenhagen, Florence, Paris, and Rome. All Saints Church is the first one in Poland to be so named.

12 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Julian and Celebrating the Battles of Julian and Fay Bussgang Fay Bussgang Co-editors, Gazeta the Polish 2nd Corps Co-editors, Gazeta

n May 18, 2017, a ceremony was held Oat Monte Cassino, Italy, to commemorate the 73rd anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino, a decisive engagement courageously fought by the Polish 2nd Corps in May 1944. The Polish 2nd Corps was Government officials and veterans at the Polish Military Cemetery at Monte Cassino. formed in the Soviet Union in Anna Maria Anders, in a white jacket, is in the front row, fifth from the right. 1941 after Hitler unexpectedly turned on his former ally. soldiers left the army, most Our army, the Polish 2nd The Soviets had previously of them to fight in the Israeli Corps, became a part of the occupied the eastern part of underground or to join the British 8th Army in early 1944 Poland and deported about Jewish Brigade. About 1,000 and was moved from Palestine 325,000 Poles to Siberia and stayed and went on to fight in to Italy. We fought along Kazakhstan for forced labor, the Anders Army. the Adriatic coast and then about one third of whom were moved west to make Jewish refugees from Poland were Jews. After the Germans the fourth consecutive Allied who had survived in Palestine attacked, Stalin released most assault on Monte Cassino. joined the 2nd Corps. My of the Polish prisoners and After a very difficult battle, family had escaped from allowed them to form an army the Polish flag was raised on Poland in mid-September under the command of Polish top of the monastery on May 1939. After time in Romania, General Władysław Anders 18, 1944. The Polish victory we ended up in Tel Aviv, – who himself had been allowed the American troops where I attended a Polish imprisoned by the Soviets. at Anzio to break through and refugee high school. In 1943, enter Rome in June 1944. In March 1942, the Anders when I turned 18, along with Army was allowed to leave most of my male classmates, The Polish 2nd Corps suffered the USSR and was shipped Jewish and non-Jewish, I many casualties at Monte to the Middle East. About joined the Anders Army. I Cassino, and the Polish 4,000 of the soldiers were trained in a tank unit and cemetery at the bottom of Jewish. Upon their arrival in then was sent to the Officers’ the mountain has over 1,000 Palestine, 3,000 of the Jewish Artillery School. graves. A section of 18 graves,

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 13 each marked by a Star of David, The cemetery in Bologna is is witness to the sacrifice of the largest Polish military Polish Jewish soldiers. cemetery in Italy and has about 1,400 graves. We were able to My wife and I were invited find seven Jewish graves with by the Polish Office of Stars of David, but Benjamin Veteran Affairs to participate Meirtchak, in Jewish Military in memorial celebrations at Julian Bussgang in uniform with his Casualties in the Polish Armies Monte Cassino, Bologna, and wife, daughter, and granddaughter in World War II, Vol. 2 (Tel Reggio Emilia. Attending Aviv, 1995), identifies ten more. the 50th in 1994), but now the various ceremonies was According to Meirtchak, the that there are fewer and a large delegation from the late president of the Association fewer surviving veterans, Polish government (including of Jewish War Veterans of the a ceremony is held every Anna Maria Anders, daughter Polish Armies in Israel, a total year. Religious services are of General Anders), a Polish of nearly 200,000 Polish Jews conducted by high-ranking military band and choir, took an active part in fighting military chaplains. Poland’s and Polish units of the Boy the Germans in Poland and on chief rabbi has usually been Scouts and Girl Scouts. Also foreign soil. attending was a small group present to give the Jewish of surviving veterans from memorial prayer but was After the commemorations at Canada, Europe, and the unable to attend this year. Monte Cassino and Bologna, United States accompanied we traveled to Reggio After the ceremony at Monte by family members. We were Emilia, a small town north Cassino, we traveled by fortunate that our daughter of Bologna, where the Polish chartered bus to Bologna. from Wellesley, Mass., and national anthem, Marsz, Marsz This was the first year that her daughter, spending a year Dąbrowski, was composed in a ceremony was held at the in Morocco, were able to join 1797 by Józef Wybicki, when Polish cemetery in Bologna, us. At 92, I was one of the the Polish Legion was serving to commemorate the 72nd youngest of the veterans and, with Napoleon’s French anniversary of the final battle to our knowledge, the only Revolutionary Army in the fought by Polish troops in Italy. one who was Jewish. Italian Campaign. Those of us who took part in In the past, anniversary the battle were presented with All three ceremonies were celebrations at Monte Cassino a special medal, “Obrońcy very meaningful and moving. were held only every five Ojczyzny 1939-1945” It was a memorable trip. n years (my wife and I attended (Defenders of the Fatherland).

14 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Belarus: Comprehensive Survey of Jewish Cemeteries Jewish Heritage Europe Announced

he European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative T(ESJF) has launched a three-month project to “comprehensively survey the Jewish cemeteries of Belarus.” According to the ESJF, its survey teams will spread out across Belarus, “providing a full mapping of all the Jewish cemeteries in the country and their current state.” The initiative expects to survey as many as 500 sites and to publish a full report this autumn. (The Jewish Heritage Research Group in Belarus has Abandoned Jewish cemetery in Ivenets, Belarus. Photo: ESJF a list of more than 150 Jewish cemeteries on its website.) “We are very grateful to our local partners in the Jewish community in Belarus and particularly to Chief Rabbi Mordechai Raichinstein for his technical support for this project,” ESJF said in a statement on its Facebook page. The project is funded by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. It follows Students in the Jewish cemetery, Beshenkovichi, Belarus. Photo: Sefer Center

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 15 Some work on documenting Jewish cemeteries in Belarus has already been carried out, but seemingly not in the comprehensive manner of the ESJF/U.S. Commission survey. In August 2016, for example, some 29 people took part in field work in Beshenkovichi aimed at documenting the Jewish cemetery as part of a Belarus Foreign Minister Vladimir Makai and Lesley Weiss, chair of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, signing accord broader catalogue of Jewish cemeteries in the country from a bilateral agreement Romania, Slovenia, and and a general Jewish heritage signed in September 2016 Ukraine. All the surveys preservation project in the town. between the United States are downloadable from the The project was organized by and Belarus regarding the U.S. Commission’s website the Sefer Center together with protection and preservation (http://heritageabroad.gov/ the Institute of Slavonic Studies of cultural property, focusing Reports). (Russian Academy of Sciences) on that of groups “that were and supported by the Genesis victims of genocide during Belarus was renowned for Fund, the UJA Federation of World War II and are no synagogues, sages, and New York, and the Russian longer able to protect and yeshivas but its Jewish Science Foundation. preserve properties without heritage was devastated by During the field work assistance.” World War II and Soviet rule. Many of the hundreds the Jewish cemetery was The bilateral agreement is one of Jewish cemeteries were completely catalogued, with of 25 such accords currently destroyed, their gravestones 1,200 gravestones described, in effect. Since the mid- removed for use as paving and a detailed map of the 1990s, the agreements have and construction material. cemetery was drawn. n resulted in surveys of Jewish The sites of Jewish cemeteries cemeteries and other heritage and mass graves were built http://jewish-heritage-europe. sites in Bosnia-Herzegovina, over, ignored, or marked with eu/2017/06/26/belarus- Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech monuments that failed to note survey-of-jewish-cemeteries- Republic, Moldova, Poland, that the victims were Jews. announced/%E2%80%9D

16 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Poland: Archaeologists Probe Foundations of Destroyed Jewish Heritage Europe New Synagogue in Wrocl/ aw

n a plot of land between a kindergarten and a car park, Iarchaeologists in Wrocław, in southwestern Poland, have revealed parts of the foundations of the monumental New Synagogue that was destroyed on Kristallnacht in 1938. “The overgrown plot of land concealed the temple’s foundations, several wall sections and the foundations of a column standing in the center of the building,” according to Postcard of the New Synagogue, Wrocław the Wrocław city website.

Designed by Edwin Oppler, a Excavations took place, this of terracotta floor tiles. The Jewish architect from Hanover, spring, as a project of the tiles are green-and-blue the synagogue was built in Bente Kahan Foundation with black corners.” Anna 1865-72, when Wrocław was and the Jewish community Kościuk, an architect and a the German city of Breslau. of Wrocław, which for Wrocław Jewish community Its Jewish population of more years have staged memorial collaborator, says that than 23,000 made it the third commemorations on the site, part of the massive hewn largest Jewish city in Germany where there is a monument. granite foundations was also in 1920. It was a center of unearthed. Reform Judaism, and the According to archaeologist New Synagogue, the second Radosław Gliński, the The work was financed largest in Germany, served the archives in Wrocław and through the Bente Kahan Reform community. Located elsewhere contain detailed Foundation by Frank-Walter on today’s ul. Łąkowa, the accounts, and trial excavations Steinmeier, president of synagogue had four towers, a have revealed the location Germany, who has family 70-meter dome, and a big rose of the main entrance. “We roots in Wrocław. Steinmeier window on its facade. have unearthed the remains was recently awarded the

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 17 Ignatz Bubis Prize, named in honor of the influential head Roman Vishniac’s Portraits of Arthur Szyk of the Central Council of Jews Donated to The Magnes, UC Berkeley in Germany in the 1990s, who Roman Vishniac (1897- was born in Wrocław and died 1990) was a Russian-born in 1999. Steinmeier allocated photographer most notable part of the prize money for for documenting Eastern- the archaeological work and European Jewish life in the another part to support the years immediately preceding the Holocaust. Vishniac Jewish studies program at launched his career as an Heidelberg University. amateur street photographer Wrocław’s Rabbi David who shot daily life in 1920s Berlin. After arriving to New Francesco Spagnolo (Curator, L) and Zoe Basok was quoted by the city Lewin (Curatorial Assistant, R) examine photos York City on New Year’s Day from the portrait series taken by Vishniac, website as saying, “The place 1941, he established a portrait donated to the Magnes Collection of Jewish is like a monument. In my studio on the Upper West Side. Art and Life, UC Berkeley. view, the area should not only Leveraging his connections commemorate the atrocities among the milieu of recent Jewish emigres, he was thus able to of the Kristallnacht but should photograph famous subjects, including Marc Chagall, Albert Einstein, be a living place, too … [it] Molly Picon, and Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), the Polish-born artist who had arrived to should serve and promote the New York in December of 1940, just a month before Vishniac. community of Wrocław.” n Thanks to a gift from Mara Vishniac Kohn, The Magnes recently http://jewish-heritage-europe. acquired from the Vishniac Archive (International Center for Photography) a portrait series taken by Vishniac in 1942, featuring eu/2017/07/11/poland-ar- Arthur Szyk, with his wife Julia, and their daughter, Alexandra. These chaeologists-probe-founda- images show the recently settled family in their New York apartment, tions/%E2%80%9D?utm_ as well as Arthur Szyk at work. In one of the photographs, Szyk holds source=feedburner&utm_me- up a political cartoon ironically titled, Douglas MacArthur Unfair to dium=email&utm_campaign=- Japanese, directly showcasing the artist’s role in the war effort. On Feed%3A+jewish-heritage-eu- Szyk’s desk, viewers can see the artist’s pencil box, which is now part rope%2FyHgV+%28Jew- of the Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection at The Magnes. ish+Heritage+Europe%29 Zoe Lewin & Francesco Spagnolo The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, UC Berkeley

18 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Poland and South Africa: Dr. Antony Polonsky Chief Historian A Quarter Century after the POLIN Museum of the Transition to Democracy History of Polish Jews

n the face of it, Poland What made the foreign backer. This led the Oand South Africa, transitions possible was ANC leadership, above all separated by more than a similar combination Nelson Mandela, to support a 10,000 kilometers and with negotiated solution and also very different histories, of forces in both convinced the government would seem to have little in countries. On the of Frederik Willem de common. Yet both made the one hand was the Klerk that he could reach an transition to democratic rule development of social agreement with the ANC that at approximately the same would preserve white rule. In time, in the late 1980s and movements...On the February 1990, he announced early 1990s. What made the other hand was the the lifting of the ban on the transitions possible was a emergence of the ANC, the Pan Africanist similar combination of forces reformist first secretary Congress (PAC), and the in both countries. South African Communist of the Communist Party Party (SACP) and the On the one hand was the of the Soviet Union, freeing of political prisoners, development of social including Mandela, who was movements with widespread Mikhail Gorbachev. released unconditionally after backing that demanded 27 years in jail. fundamental change: Solidarity Solidarity and the elections of in Poland and the African June 1989, which effectively The transition, unlike that National Congress (ANC) and undermined the legitimacy of in Poland, did not prove its allies in South Africa. the Communist government. peaceful. Near civil-war The transition was completed conditions led to the death of On the other was the with the election of Lech over 16,000 people, and it was emergence of the reformist Wałęsa as president in only after the ANC victory in first secretary of the December 1990. the general elections of April Communist Party of the Soviet 1994 that majority rule was Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. In the case of South Africa, established. Gorbachev was willing Gorbachev’s desire to limit to permit the roundtable support for revolutionary During the period between negotiations in Poland that movements abroad deprived February 1990 and the led to the legalization of the ANC of its principal peaceful outcome of the

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 19 elections of 1990, the ANC Although in both Poland This proved to be the leadership was divided and South Africa there turning point on the path to between those, like Mandela a peaceful solution. Both has been a certain and Joe Slovo, the former Waluś and Derby-Lewis, who general secretary of the South disillusionment in recent were arrested, as Mandela African Communist Party, years with the way the mentioned, as a result of who believed that armed move to democratic rule the actions of one of Hani’s struggle should be suspended, neighbors, were sentenced was accomplished, there and those like Chris Hani, to death for the murder, Slovo’s successor as general is still a great deal of sentences commuted to life secretary of the party, who respect for those who imprisonment. Derby-Lewis argued that it should be used made it possible. was released in 2015. Waluś, to strengthen the ANC’s hand who has become something in the negotiations. On April of a cult figure on the Polish committed a deed so foul 10, 1993, Hani was shot right, was paroled in 2016 but that our whole nation now and killed by Janusz Waluś, has not yet been released. teeters on the brink of a Polish immigrant who disaster. A white woman, Fortunately, this is not the had been given a pistol by of Afrikaner origin, risked only connection between the Clive Derby-Lewis, a senior her life so that we may two transitions. Although member of the Conservative know, and bring to justice, in both Poland and South Party, which opposed the this assassin. The cold- Africa there has been a negotiations. In one of his blooded murder of Chris certain disillusionment in finest speeches on radio, Hani has sent shock waves recent years with the way the Mandela calmed the situation. throughout the country move to democratic rule was He said: and the world ... Now accomplished, there is still a Tonight I am reaching is the time for all South great deal of respect for those out to every single South Africans to stand together who made it possible. African, black and white, against those who, from Two of the key figures in from the very depths of any quarter, wish to destroy this process were brought my being. A white man, what Chris Hani gave his together in May of this year full of prejudice and hate, life for – the freedom of when the South African came to our country and all of us.

20 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 poet Breyten Breytenbach I am proud to be among was awarded the Zbigniew those who believe that there Herbert International Literary is, in each of us, a part of Award. Breytenbach was a humanity and a striving for key figure in the modernist values worth fighting for – in Afrikaans literary movement the example of and inspired “die Sestigers” (People of the by Herbert. n 60s), producing volumes with provocative titles such as Die ysterkoei moet sweet (The Iron Cow Must Sweat, 1964) and Breyten Breytenbach. Photo: Luigi Novi/Wikimedia Commons Kouevuur (Gangrene, 1969). Forced to leave the country commitment to representing because of his marriage to a the oppressed, is a perfect Vietnamese woman (illegal in incarnation of the attitudes South Africa at the time), he of Zbigniew Herbert’s famous became a fervent opponent words, ‘Let the anger of of apartheid. the powerless be like the sea / whenever you hear After entering the country the voice of the humiliated clandestinely to organize and beaten.’” black trade unions, Breytenbach was arrested When Breytenbach accepted and spent seven years in the award, he declared: prison. He described his I am profoundly humbled experiences in The True by this recognition and Confessions of an Albino accept it with the knowledge Terrorist (1985). According that it carries the name of to the award jury, the way a brave and wise poet and Breytenbach “combines essayist. I hope I can live up outstanding artistic values to the example he gave us, with an uncompromising particularly in this very dark moral stance, along with his season of anger and disarray.

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 21 July 4, 2017 Commemoration of the Kielce Pogrom Jan Karski Society

everal groups were at Planty 7 at midday on Białek. “We are painfully involved in the 4 July. The ceremony also looking at the present and Sorganization of this year’s included the laying of wreaths painfully seeking hope for a commemoration of the on behalf of the president of future without ‘us’ and ‘them,’ Kielce pogrom of July 1946. Poland, the Świętokrzyskie without contempt and hatred.” The official anniversary Voivode, and local on July 4 was preceded by government institutions. The ceremony at the two events. The first was a “Menora” statue was hosted festival of films about the The main ceremony at the by Artur Hofman, president Kielce massacre entitled cemetery in the Kielce district of the Jewish Social-Cultural “O-pamiętanie.” of Pakosz was co-organized Association in Poland. by Michael Schudrich, the Standing next to the statue At the second, held chief rabbi of Poland. Before dedicated to the Jews who on July 3, the Witold leading the prayers, he said suffered in the pogrom, he Gombrowicz Voivodeship that when pain is so strong reminded everyone that Library in Kielce hosted a and intense, when words both the Holocaust and the promotional campaign for cannot describe it, the only Kielce massacre had the same the book Pamięć – Dialog thing left is prayer. Rabbi source – hatred. Following – Pojednanie (Memory – Schudrich was joined in his speech, the space that had Dialogue – Reconciliation), prayer by the secretary of witnessed the execution of which documents the events the Supreme Council of the the Kielce ghetto population associated with last year’s Muslim League in Poland, echoed with Jewish melodies 70th anniversary of the Imam Abdul Jabbar Koubaisy; played on violins. massacre. Radio Kielce monk Michał Czernuszczyk, interviewed Bogdan Białek, representing the Zen Kannon The exceptionally moving the president of the Jan Community of Warsaw; Father ceremony at the scene of Karski Association, who said: Michał Jabłoński, head of the the crime, Planty 7, was “Reconciliation is not an act Evangelical and Reformed organized by youth from of righteousness. What does parish in Warsaw; and several Kielce’s schools and hosted by that mean? It means that Catholic priests. a student from St. Jadwiga’s there are no initial conditions. middle school. They read the Reconciliation is coming “We Christians, Jews, words on the graves of the together.” Buddhists, Muslims, and victims in four languages and atheists remember that then said a prayer. One of Following tradition, the bloody time when blood lost the witnesses to the events of mayor of Kielce laid flowers its value,” declared Bogdan 1946 gave a heartfelt speech.

22 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 This year’s event placed special focus on the youngest victims of the massacre – the children of the Ihud kibbutz, who were getting ready to travel to Palestine. The biographies of three of them were read from the records of kibbutz teacher Rafael Blumenfeld. Then the Kielce youth sang a well-known Jewish lullaby in Yiddish. A performance by American cantor and music educator Cindy Paley and Piotr Mirski of the Klezmaholics band concluded the ceremony. The concert was held in front of the former Grand Synagogue of Kielce and was preceded by the presentation of the Vir Bonus title to Dr Robert Kotowski, director of the National Museum in Kielce. Bogdan Białek noted the wonderful deed performed by Dr Kotowski – the founding of the Museum of Dialogue, which Kotowski has described as a modern and interactive place for the free sharing of opinions and experiences, as well. n At the 17th Annual Ceremony of Acknowledgment and Commemoration at Kielce, July 4, 2017. Bogdan Białek is in the bottom photo. Photos: Maria Tajchman

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 23 EXHIBITIONS Jakub Nowakowski “Rywka’s Diary” premieres at Director, Galicia Jewish Museum Galicia Jewish Museum

Oh, to write!... To be able to write, to make pen move on paper! I need to write. ―Rywka Lipszyc, December 24, 1943

n 1945 a Soviet doctor found a school notebook Iin the liberated Auschwitz- Birkenau camp. Written by the teenaged Rywka Lipszyc in the Łódź ghetto between October 1943 and April 1944, the diary was the testament Interactive representation of pages of the diary of Rywka Lipszyc. of an Orthodox Jewish girl Photo: Galicia Jewish Museum who lost her siblings and parents, but never lost hope from historians, doctors, The exhibition narrative despite moments of doubt. psychologists, and rabbis. is mainly, although not More than 60 years after its exclusively, the story of The commentaries help us to discovery, the diary traveled women – those who fought understand the context of the to the United States, where it for survival in the Łódź ghetto times and events Rywka refers was translated from Polish and and then in the concentration to in her diary. The exhibition published in book form. camps, and those who began includes unique historical reconstructing their lives Rywka Lipszyc’s diary has artifacts and documents after the war. Most of the become the starting point for from museums in Belgium, narratives and memories an exhibition, “Girl in the Germany, Israel, Poland, and from the German occupation Diary. Searching for Rywka the United States. Beads, concentrate on men – soldiers, from the Łódź Ghetto,” thimbles, and toys movingly politicians, leaders. In Rywka’s created by the Galicia Jewish document the personal world, the men appear in Museum in Kraków. Excerpts dimensions of the Holocaust, memories and stand in the of the diary are supplemented so easily overlooked when shadows in the background. by expert commentary teaching the Holocaust.

24 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 In Rywka’s world, the men appear in memories and stand in the shadows in the background. They are present, but not dominant. The world we discover from Rywka’s diary is organized by the relationships among women.

They are present, but not Visitors explore the exhibition. Photo: Galicia Jewish Museum dominant. texts. In this way we also ghetto on colored slides. The world we discover from bind ourselves to Rywka’s Despite intensive searches, Rywka’s diary is organized devotion to the tradition in however, no photo of Rywka by the relationships among which she grew up, to her has been found. We know her women. When the museum unwavering faith in God and only through the words in her team started to work on this God’s protection. diary. But these words also do exhibition, we were struck not give us the full picture. To illustrate Rywka’s by this feminist perspective. She describes only the span story, we used photographs We decided to show our of her life between October taken by three of the most respects and bring visitors 3, 1943, and April 12, 1944. famous photographers of closer to this reality. That is The first surviving entries the Łódź ghetto: Henryk why all of the commentaries refer to her time in the ghetto. Ross and Mendel Grossman, on the diary’s text were also The last sentence on the last employees of the Statistics prepared by women. The surviving page is unfinished. idea of commentary itself is Department of the Jewish strongly tied to the Jewish ghetto administration, and What happened to Rywka? tradition of explaining Walter Genewein, who She did not die in Łódź and interpreting sacred preserved the reality of the ghetto nor in Auschwitz-

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 25 Birkenau, Christianstadt, or Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated by the British army. She was evacuated to a military hospital, where her trace disappears. Thanks to the work of Dr. Anita Friedman, director of Jewish Family and Children’s Services, information about Rywka has been disseminated in the media and on the internet. Jewish Family and Children’s Services has published her diary in several Newspapers from the period. Photo: Galicia Jewish Museum languages, accompanied by contextual materials, as dreams, deep family The exhibition has been a teaching tool in schools tensions and her feeling made possible thanks to a worldwide. of being entirely alone in generous grant by the Koret n Friedman writes in the a murderous world – all Foundation. introduction to the exhibition: feelings that remind me that Rywka was just one http://www.galiciajewishmuse- How could such a beautiful of hundreds of thousands um.org/en/the-girl-in-the-diary- manuscript be produced of young Jews who felt searching-for-rywka-from-the- by a child whose formal similarly, but left behind lodz-ghetto education ended when she neither names nor a record was about 11 years old, of their lives. Rywka after the Nazis invaded speaks for all of them. Poland? The secret is in its complete, intimate honesty. The exhibition will be Rywka speaks unguardedly on view at the Galicia about the pleasures and Jewish Museum until pains of adolescence, her March 2018, when it will yearnings and vanishing start an international tour.

26 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Dr. Hanna Węgrzynek CONFERENCES Global Education Outreach Chone Shmeruk Conference at Program (GEOP) POLIN Museum of the History POLIN Museum of Polish Jews

conference devoted Center for Research on the Małgorzata Leyko, Eugenia to the life and work History and Culture of Polish Prokop-Janiec, Michał Galas, Aof Chone Shmeruk took Jews at Hebrew University. and Alina Cała. Shmeruk’s place at POLIN Museum Thanks to his work, the legacy was discussed as well on May 24. The conference Międzywydziałowy Zakład as the development of Yiddish aimed at showing the role of Historii i Kultury Żydów literature and theater, especially Shmeruk as a researcher and w Polsce at Jagiellonian in the early modern period. organizer, as well as to present University was opened in the latest achievements in 1986. He died on July 5, The next session was devoted Yiddish studies. Organized by 1997, and was buried at the to the latest work on Yiddish Jagiellonian University, the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw at literature and culture. Every Heritage Foundation, Marie Okopowa Street. presentation related to a Curie-Skłodowska University, different research field: folk the Polish Association of Shmeruk’s academic awards belief, pulp fiction and its Jewish Studies, and the Polish include the Itsik Manger Prize influence on reading, and Association of Yiddish Studies, (1983), the Sholem Aleichem the correspondence between the gathering was made Prize (1984), an honoris causa Yoysef Opatoshu and Maria possible thanks to the support doctorate at Hebrew Union Konopnicka’s daughter Laura. College in Cincinnati, and the of the Global Education The last session was a memorial Outreach Program (GEOP). Israel Prize (1996). He was also presented with the Order for Shmeruk. Family and close An academic and former of Polonia Restituta. friends, like Józef Hen and student of Isaac Bashevis Jacob Weizner, took part. The Singer, Chone Shmeruk (1921- The conference brought most interesting thread of the 97) contributed greatly to the together several generations session was a discussion about renewal of studies on East- of researchers, both those Shmeruk’s role in establishing European Jewry in Poland and who had a chance to learn diplomatic relations between Israel. He was born and raised from Shmeruk and younger Poland and Israel. scholars who are carrying on in Warsaw but left Poland after The conference enabled us the war and the Kielce pogrom. his work. The proceedings were divided into three parts. look with optimism at the He completed his education future of Jewish Studies, at Hebrew University in In the first, historiography, the presentations were delivered by especially in Warsaw, Krakόw, Jerusalem, where he became Wrocław, and Lublin. n professor of Yiddish in 1965 scholars who were taught by or and then chair of the Yiddish worked with Shmeruk. From http://www.polin.pl/en/geop- Department. His efforts led Israel we hosted Nathan Cohen, conferences in 1983 to the creation of the and from Poland Ewa Geller,

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 27 Matan Shefi Conference for Jewish Genealogy Offers Genealogy Researcher a Chance to Come Home – To Poland Jewish Genealogy & Family Heritage Center

ust before Tisha B’Av, this roots and call home. year’s Annual Conference The conference will Jfor Jewish Genealogy held its meet on August final session in Orlando, Fla. 6-10, 2018, in On the main stage, in front of POLIN Museum, hundreds of attendees, after an and in the nearby inspirational talk by guest of Jewish Historical honor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Institute and of Harvard University, host of adjacent campus, PBS’s “Search Your Roots,” to accommodate seven women and men from an estimated one Warsaw came forward to thousand attendees. address the audience. The conference program will include For 37 years, the International hundreds of lectures, Association of Jewish panels, computer Genealogical Societies workshops, and (IAJGS) has held a conference meetings. that draws professionals and enthusiasts in the field of The venue will Jewish genealogy. Most of allow people to The conference organizers are the conferences are held in tour POLIN Museum, visit emphasizing the opportunity the United States, except for the JHI exhibition of the to meet local experts. Many a couple in Israel, a London underground Warsaw Ghetto people in Poland, Ukraine, conference in the 1990s, and archive created by Emanuel and Lithuania are dedicated one in Paris six years ago. Ringelblum and the Oneg to researching and preserving Shabbat group, and be local Jewish life and history. For 2018 the IAJGS has exposed to archival materials Some of them, however, are decided to partner with from Polish national archives hard to locate and contact POLIN Museum of the and the JHI archives. They outside of Poland and Central History of Polish Jews and the will be able to enjoy guided and Eastern Europe. The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish tours of Warsaw’s history, genealogy team of the JHI, for Historical Institute (JHI) to make trips to Holocaust- example, has been operating hold the 38th conference in related sites, and visit for some twenty-five years in Warsaw – a place from which neighboring attractions. many Jews can trace their helping Jewish families learn

28 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 more about their history Matan Shefi is a genealogy and origins. researcher at the Jewish Genealogy & Family Heritage Another emphasis of the Center, housed in the Emanuel conference is local tourism Ringelblum Jewish Historical options. The IAJGS has Institute. He was born in partnered with Taube Jewish Israel, served as a Navy Heritage Tours to provide officer, and later decided to conference attendees with study history and explore his many options, such as tailor- Polish Jewish family history, made family tours, group tours culminating in moving to to specific areas or cities, day Poland, where he now helps trips in and around Warsaw, others explore their Polish and tours to Auschwitz- Jewish roots. Birkenau, Treblinka, and other Holocaust remembrance sites. This is an unusual opportunity for visitors to hear and meet experts, gain access to unique archival material, and visit the places their families came from. n

For more information on the conference: www.iajgs2018.org For more information on tour offerings: taubejewishheritagetours.com

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 29 Dr. Hanna Węgrzynek Global Education Outreach GEOP Doctoral Seminar Program (GEOP) POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

n 2015, the POLIN Museum decision. The museum’s role ethnographers. They came of the History of Polish among institutions dealing from all across Poland, which IJews established the Global with the history and culture suggests that the interest in the Education Outreach Program of Polish Jews is growing. history and culture of Polish (GEOP) and invited leading Not only does the museum Jews is by no means regionally centers of Jewish studies in mount exhibitions and provide determined. Poland to partner in a GEOP education, but it serves as doctoral seminar. Now a space for debates on vital An anonymous survey entering its third year, the issues pertaining to the past conducted following this year’s GEOP doctoral seminar is and the present. The seminar seminars indicated that the dedicated to the history and fits nicely within this space and participants were very satisfied culture of Polish Jews. The it complements the museum’s with the format. They praised seminar has become a forum mission of preserving the the opportunity to view their for presenting new research memory of Polish Jews. own research from various and interdisciplinary debates perspectives and to obtain among scholars from Poland GEOP funds nine-month helpful critiques, and they and abroad. Its Academic grants to five doctoral students. appreciated the possibility of Council consists of experts GEOP also covers travel costs getting to know the academic from the Jewish Historical to and from Warsaw for both milieu, hearing comments from Institute, University of Warsaw, the seminar participants and experts from various fields, Jagiellonian University, the scholars. The seminar and meeting peers from other University of Wrocław, Maria offers students an opportunity academic centers. Curie-Skłodowska University to present their research and discuss it in the company of All of this points to the in Lublin, Rzeszów University, fact that POLIN Museum and POLIN Museum. The experts. The seminar also hosts distinguished scholars who has begun to establish a seminar is supported by a grant scholarly community open to from the Taube Foundation visit POLIN Museum as part of the GEOP program. The interdisciplinary cooperation. within the GEOP program It also improves the status of framework. meetings are also attended by doctoral students who the museum and promotes the institution both in Poland and Initially, the initiative seemed are visiting POLIN Museum n somewhat baffling. Why as fellows within the GEOP internationally. should a museum be the place Fellowship program. http://www.polin.pl/en/nauka- to hold meetings of doctoral In the current academic year, i-zbiory-dzialalnosc-naukowa- candidates involved in research pobyty-badawcze-i-warsztaty/ on Jewish history and culture? fourteen doctoral candidates participated, including geop-doctoral-seminars Today, two years later, we may historians, students of literature safely say that it was the right and Hebrew, sociologists, and

30 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 BOOKS

Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis: Reviewed by Essays in Honor of the th Michael Meng 75 Birthday of Professor Associate Professor Antony Polonsky Department of History Clemson University Edited by Glenn Dynner and François Guesnet Leiden: IJS Studies in Judaica, Vol. 15, 2015, 640 pp.

his excellent collection Holocaust, when the Nazis of essays pays a fitting transformed the heart of Ttribute to Antony Polonsky, the Jewish metropolis – the who has been instrumental neighborhood of Muranów – to the field of Polish Jewish into a ghetto for some 400,000 history for almost four Jews. After the Holocaust, decades as a teacher, scholar, Warsaw ceased to be a Jewish and founding editor of metropolis as the rebuilding of POLIN: Studies in Polish Jewish life shifted west to the Jewry. Moving from the former German territories. earliest history of Jewish settlement in Warsaw in This complex and dynamic the fifteenth century to the history is analyzed in twenty-four chapters that “anti-Zionist” campaign of Antony Polonsky 1968, the volume covers a range from the economic history of the early modern vast range of material and all but ensured the tremendous Jewish mercantile elite interpretational problems, diversity that characterized to the religious history of much as Polonsky does in his Warsaw’s history as a Jewish Warsaw’s rabbis to the scholarly work and as editor metropolis, a city of Jews intellectual history of the of POLIN. from many different parts city’s Jewish historians during of Poland and Europe, and a The volume takes as its the interwar era. The strength city of Jews who identified topic Warsaw as a Jewish of the volume lies in the with a wide range of different metropolis. Throughout historiographical interventions forms of being Jewish (or not much of the 19th century, it makes into the fields of being Jewish) in the modern Warsaw had the largest Jewish Jewish history in particular era: acculturation, Zionism, settlement in the world, and and modern East Central Jewish socialism, Diaspora in the decades before the European history in general. nationalism, Hasidism, and Holocaust it ranked among so on. the largest two or three Scott Ury’s chapter, for example, on a fin de siècle communities in the world. The Diversity came to a Jewish coffeehouse owned sheer size of the community catastrophic end during the by Yehezkel Kotik, addresses

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 31 the complex issue of modern Moving from the nationalism, not only in terms emancipation. The belief earliest history of of organizations and numbers in emancipation, as Jürgen but also “in the classical Habermas has emphasized, Jewish settlement in terms of intellectual history: hinges on the creation of a Warsaw in the fifteenth as a set of ideas and claims public sphere in which all century to the “anti- about the world and one’s participants in a community own future in it about which accept the normative practice Zionist” campaign of growing numbers of Polish of rational deliberation to 1968, the volume covers Jews had good reason to settle individual differences a vast range of material think seriously.” in the interests of all. Yet dialogue ceases to be open and interpretational The intense political diversity and equal when an individual problems, much as that Moss captures came to a tragic end in the Holocaust. seeks to impose views on Polonsky does in his another, as Ury shows in his Perhaps a recovery of Warsaw discussion of the reforms scholarly work and as as the center of Polish Jewry that Kotik advanced to shape editor of POLIN. could have happened. But, Jews according to his own as David Engel argues, view of the modern world. nationalism. Warsaw was the documentary evidence Ury explores one of the most a major center of Jewish suggests that the Polish substantial contradictions in nationalism, particularly but Communist regime “wished modernity itself, namely, the not exclusively Zionism, from the outset to hold contradiction between the and yet a substantial number the Jewish population of egalitarian promise of the of Jews in the city did not Warsaw to a minimum” by public sphere and its fragility appear to embrace Jewish encouraging Jews to settle in amid attempts by “reformers” nationalism, especially after the western territories. Why? such as Kotik to mold society the mid-1920s when Zionism Engel speculates compellingly according to their own contracted into subcultures. that the regime desired to ideological views. In an extensively documented portray itself as “authentically chapter, Moss shows both Polish,” and thus a significant If Ury examines the the strengths and weaknesses presence of Jews in the capital contradictions of modern of Jewish nationalism in would have complicated that emancipation, Kenneth B. Warsaw, before concluding aim. A growing amount of Moss turns his attention to that historians may wish to research shows that the regime the contradictions of Jewish rethink the meaning of Jewish embraced an ethnocultural

32 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 interpretation of the nation Shore suggests that the search that marginalized Jews, among continued a “rich tradition other minorities. This embrace of Jewish learning in the of ethnocultural nationalism Polish lands” that thrived in underpinned the regime’s and outside Poland, despite anti-Zionist campaign of 1968 and because of the regime’s that led some 13,000 Jews to antisemitic campaign. Like leave Poland. Moss, Shore suggests the richness of intellectual history Among those who left, Jan available for studying East Gross, Irena Grudzińska, European history, while also Aleksander Smolar, and others uncovering the complex founded the London-based aftermath of the regime’s Aneks journal . This journal, 1968 campaign. as Marci Shore remarks in an essay on the intellectual The volume ends in 1968. ramifications of March 1968, Since those years, Poland has became a central forum for experienced searing debates publication coming to terms with the about Polish Jewish history announcement failure of Marxism, a failure and, after 1989, the revival evident in the ethnocultural of Jewish communal life in Holocaust Memory in the nationalism of the regime, the cities such as Warsaw. Perhaps Digital Age: bureaucratization of the party- this history will be told by a Survivors’ Stories and state, and the antisemitism of future volume also inspired by New Media Practices 1967/68. Some of Poland’s Polonsky’s enduring work on By Jeffrey Shandler leading intellectuals, Polish Jewish history. n Series: Stanford Studies in influenced by Leszek Jewish History and Culture Kołakowski, developed leftist http://www.brill.com/products/ August 2017 commitments to individualism book/warsawthe-jewish- 232 pp. and pluralism as they metropolis critiqued the totalitarian http://www.sup.org/books/ movements of the twentieth title/?id=27950 century. They represented “a generation of critique and a search for alternative values.”

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 33 Publication Announcement Field Guide to Jewish L/ ódz´ Warsaw: Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland, 2017, 78 pp.

n June 26, 2017, the Taube Center for the ORenewal of Jewish Life in Poland celebrated the launch of a new Jewish heritage tour guide, Field Guide to Jewish Łódź, following upon the success of the Field Guide to Jewish Warsaw and Kraków. Moses Libitzky, the publication’s sponsor and son of Łódźer Eva Libitzky, was present at the book launch at the Poznański Palace in Łódź. The Field Guide to Jewish Łódź offers a comprehensive description of important and the modern-day search http://taubejewishheritagetours. landmarks of Jewish Łódź for mezuzah traces. To set the com/wp-content/uploads/ and the context in which to larger context, the field guide is 2016/06/FieldGuide-Lodz- view and understand them. bookended with an introduction FINAL.pdf Four detailed walking tours of to the thousand-year history the city, with street maps and of Jewish life in Poland and descriptions, are interlaced a comprehensive listing of with provocative Discussion Jewish partner organizations Questions that add another and cooperating institutions in dimension to a visitor’s 16 Polish cities. explorations. Numerous sidebars illuminate specific The contributing authors to this topics such as the Baigelman work are: Konstanty Gebert, family musical dynasty, the Magdalena Matuszewska, rich and diverse history of Joanna Podolska-Plocka, Łódź film, theater, and art, the Dr. Adam Sitarek, Dr. Karen Underhill, Ewa Wiatr, and strikingly difficult conditions n of the WWII Łódź ghetto, Milena Wicepolska.

34 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Publication Announcement Na Krawedzi. Przetrwac

Lodzkie Getto i nie tylko By Eva Libitzky

Kraków: Austeria Publishing House, 2017, 320 pp. Polish translation: Out on a Ledge: Enduring the /Lódz´ Ghetto, Sergiusz Kowalski Auschwitz and Beyond Wicker Park Press Ltd, 2010, 276 pp. Berkeley: Lehrhaus Judaica, 2nd Edition, 2014, 265 pp.

va Libitzky’s Holocaust memoir, Out on a Ledge: EEnduring the Łódź Ghetto, Auschwitz and Beyond, was recently published in Polish. This beautifully written narrative, co-authored with historian Fred Rosenbaum, received positive reviews when originally published in English. The memoir was updated after Eva Libitzky traveled with three generations of her family to Poland in 2013, her first journey back in decades. She was heartened by the Jewish Out on a Ledge’s Polish publication’s release was one of the events of the 27th cultural revival she witnessed. Jewish Culture Festival in Krakόw. The event was led by Dr. Jolanta Ambrosewicz- Jacobs, Jagiellonian University (L), Moses Libitzky, Eva Libitzky’s son (C), The Polish translation was and Helise Lieberman, Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation (R). published within the Sefarim Jewish Studies Publishing Project, directed by the Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation, with support from the Libitzky Family Fund for the Polish publication of the book. n

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 35 AWARDS 2017 Irena Sendler Memorial Awards Presented to Stefan Wilkanowicz and Bogdan Bial/ek

he 2017 Irena Sendler Memorial Awards were Tpresented on June 30 to Stefan Wilkanowicz and Bogdan Białek at a ceremony in the Tempel Synagogue at the Kraków Jewish Culture Festival. Named for a Polish social worker who saved hundreds of Jewish children Wacław Wierzbieniec from the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation, the Irena Sendler Memorial Awards honor Polish citizens committed to strengthening Polish-Jewish relations and preserving Polish Co-recipient Stefan Wilkanowicz reads his letter to Irena Sendler, surrounded Jewish heritage and Holocaust by his family and, at right, Shana Penn memory. The awards were On receiving the award, Stefan feel undeserving of the prize presented by Shana Penn, Wilkanowicz read from his awarded to me, while also executive director of Taube letter to Irena Sendler. “Dear seeing the tasks that appear Philanthropies. Penn stated: Irena,” he began, “news of before me, here on earth and “The historian Tony Judt having won this prize brought in heaven. I will think about once wrote: ‘The thrall in me great happiness, while, at them. May this prize bring which an ideology holds a the same time, I see that I am on a new set of tasks and people is best measured by not worthy of it. I believe the raise awareness of the need their collective inability to prize is very important given for a spiritual revolution in imagine alternatives.’ The the current state of world our world.” lifetime accomplishments affairs, which require greater of Stefan Wilkanowicz and Bodgan Białek, on receiving dialogue and cooperation in Bogdan Białek demonstrate his award, said it provided various fields. Our world is how the power of imagination, an opportunity to emphasize threatened with disaster, but human dignity, and decency Sendler’s most important the example of your life brings can overcome authoritarian message, that “people should hope that, gradually at least, ideology and suppression of not be divided into good and conflicts can be overcome. I historical memory.” bad, race, origin, religion,

36 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 education, wealth. The only thing that matters is what kind of human being you are,” and that we must “lend a helping hand to anyone drowning!” “Anyone who wants to pay homage to Irena Sendler should take her words as a personal commitment,” he continued. “The Irena Sendler Award obliges me to remember these supreme ideals.” The ceremony preceded the annual Jan Kulczyk Memorial

Concert honoring Dr. Jan Shana Penn, executive director of Taube Philanthropies, presents the 2017 Irena Kulczyk (1950-2015), who Sendler Memorial Awards to co-recipients Bogdan Białek was recognized with the Irena Sendler Memorial journal since the end of Wilkanowicz has consistently Award posthumously in 2015. World War II, and served as played a pivotal role in Dominika Kulczyk spoke editor-in-chief of the monthly nurturing Polish-Jewish about the importance of Znak. During the Communist dialogue and Holocaust Polish-Jewish relations to her government’s antisemitic and memory. He helped establish father. The concert featured anti-intelligentsia political the Catholic Intelligentsia Moroccan-Israeli singer-artist campaign in 1968, Znak was Club (KIK) in the 1950s, Neta Elkayam. the only political organization served as vice chairman of in the Polish Parliament the International Auschwitz About the Award Recipients (Sejm) to protest against Council, and was chairman of Stefan Wilkanowicz, author, human rights violations. the International Center for editor, educator, and Catholic Under Wilkanowicz’s Education about Auschwitz leader, was a journalist leadership in the 1980s, and the Holocaust. He also was for the Catholic liberal Znak was the first monthly editor of the online magazine weekly magazine Tygodnik to publish an entire issue Forum of Jews, Christians Powszechny, Poland’s dedicated to Polish-Jewish and Muslims. In 2005, Pope longest-running independent relations. Benedict XVI honored him

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 37 with the John Paul II Award for and a Catholic Pole – explain, human rights. “For Bogdan Białek, a Catholic Pole, antisemitism is a sin. This Bogdan When psychologist conviction is the animating Białek first came to Kielce in force of his life. Conflict over 1978, the story of the 1946 the pogrom was still a festering pogrom had been suppressed wound when Białek moved and denied for years, both to Kielce in the late 70s. He by residents and by Poland’s was shocked by the poisoned Communist government. After atmosphere of his new town. the opening to democracy in Trained as a psychologist, he 1989, Białek began to envision has made it his life’s work both a public event that could serve to persuade people to embrace as an educational platform their past and to reconnect for healing and acceptance the city with the international of the violence, in which Dominika Kulczyk Jewish community.” n 42 Jews were murdered and president of the Jan Karski another were 40 wounded. For more information Today, after 17 ceremonies Association, which engages the about the award and past of acknowledgment and residents of Kielce in Polish- recipients see http:// remembrance, true change has Jewish dialogue. In 1994, nagrodairenysendlerowej.pl/ taken place in Kielce. he founded the first museum commemorating the victims of To sustain these changes, totalitarianism, the Museum Białek established the Jan of National Remembrance Karski Society and Institute in Kielce. for Culture, Meetings and Dialogue (Instytut Kultury, Białek’s efforts have not Spotkania i Dialogu) at Planty gone unnoticed. In May, a 7, where anti-Jewish violence documentary about his work, took place in 1946. Białek Bogdan’s Journey, premiered and his brother raised private in Warsaw and has been funds to erect sculptures and shown to wide acclaim at film memorial plaques in Kielce festivals in the United States to commemorate the Jewish and Europe. As the film’s co- past. Białek also serves as directors – a Jewish American

38 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 ANNOUNCEMENTS Agnieszka Dulęba Global Education Outreach POLIN Museum and Jewish Historical Program (GEOP) Institute Announce Recipients of POLIN Museum of the 2017/18 GEOP Research Fellowships History of Polish Jews

fter a successful launch • Anna Novikov, Hebrew in 2016/17 with seven University of Jerusalem, Ahigh-caliber international “The Dynamics of Jewish scholars, the Global Education Clothing within the Outreach Program (GEOP) is Partitioned Poland (1846- about to begin the second year 1918)” of its doctoral and postdoctoral • Darius Sakalauskas, research fellowships. GEOP Vilnius University, fellowships are the product “Jews as Financial of a joint initiative of POLIN Intermediaries in the City Museum of the History of and Nearby Surroundings: Polish Jews and the Emanuel The View of the 18th Ringelblum Jewish Historical Century Main Urban Institute in Warsaw. GEOP Center in the Grand Research Fellows have Duchy of Lithuania” the opportunity to conduct • Eleanor Shapiro, Graduate archival research at POLIN Theological Union, Museum, the Jewish Historical Berkeley, “The Sound Institute in Warsaw, and other of Change: Performing archives throughout Poland, Jewishness in Polish and to present their research Small Towns” at academic seminars at the museum, where they exchange GEOP is sponsored by ideas with Polish scholars and the William K. Bowes Jr. co-fellows. Foundation, the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & The Global Education Culture, and the Association Outreach Program Research of the Jewish Historical Fellows for 2017/18 are: Institute of Poland. n • Madeleine Atkins Cohen, For more information please University of California, visit www.polin.pl/en/geop Berkeley, “The Modernist Poetics of Do’ikayt”

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 39 Arthur Szyk Exhibition at the New York Historical Society Museum & Library September 15, 2017-January 21, 2018

minous threats filled the years around World War OII. Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), the great Polish-born “activist in art,” confronted that turbulent, hate-filled period with forceful caricatures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito as the evil architects of destructive and inhumane policies.

“Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art,” curated by Debra Schmidt Bach with Irvin Ungar as project adviser, presents more than 40 politically incisive works that underscore Szyk’s role as a “one-man army” fighting odious policies and protagonists and advocating for civil and human rights.

Support for the exhibition Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) My People. Samson in the Ghetto (The Battle is provided by Nancy and of the Warsaw Ghetto) New York, 1945 watercolor and gouache on Morris W. Offit, Steven and board Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley, Accession Shelley Einhorn, the David No. 2017.5.1.129 Berg Foundation, and Sandy and Ed Meyer. Exhibitions History, and the New York http://www.nyhistory.org/ at New York Historical are State Council on the Arts, exhibitions/arthur-szyk- made possible by Dr. Agnes with the support of Governor soldier-art Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang, the Andrew Cuomo and the New Saunders Trust for American York State legislature. n

40 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Jewish Heritage Tourism in the Digital Age October 23-25, 2017 in Venice, Italy

eit Venezia, Jewish Heritage Europe, and Bthe Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe are co- organizing a conference on “Jewish Heritage Tourism in the Digital Age.” The challenges and opportunities posed by Jewish heritage tourism and travel in Europe are the focus of this three- day conference and raise many important issues both in places where there is an active local Jewish population and in places where there are Interactive app that displays the historical view of a Warsaw street, POLIN Museum sites of Jewish heritage but no of the History of Polish Jews organized Jewish community. This conference follows The conference will focus on from a number of major issues that reflect the growing international conferences diversity and energy of Jewish on Jewish built heritage and Jewish-themed tourism in issues that have taken place n Europe, both for Jews and for since 1990. others. But it will also address Registration is required for both the specifics of Jewish attendance. Find registration heritage tourism and how it fits and program details on the within heritage tourism/travel conference website. in general. Special emphasis https://www.jewishtourism- will be given to the ways in venice2017.eu/the-conference/ which technology influences and possibly changes Jewish heritage tourism.

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 41 Melissa Martens Yaverbaum Council of American Jewish Museums Executive Director (CAJM) Fellows to Visit Poland Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM)

he Council of American The fellowships will enable • Auschwitz-Birkenau Jewish Museums (CAJM) five outstanding Jewish Memorial and Museum Tis offering a limited number museum professionals to visit • Krakow, including the of competitive fellowships Poland in late October 2017 Galicia Jewish Museum for its program to Poland in for approximately one week and the Kazimierz fall 2017. The trip is part of of learning at sites such as: CAJM’s effort to immerse The program is being • POLIN Museum of the members in essential learning designed with Taube Jewish History of Polish Jews and experiences abroad, with Heritage Tours and with other venues in Warsaw private access to leading counsel from CAJM Advisor colleagues, institutions, • Chmielnik, Dabrowka Barbara Kirshenblatt- and sites, as well as Tarnowska, and Tarnow Gimblett. The program is opportunities to talk with made possible with support • Auschwitz Jewish Center colleagues about the work from the Koret Foundation of Jewish museums globally. and an anonymous fund. n

Auschwitz Jewish Center Dara Bramson Manager of Programs Abroad Fall 2017 Programs Auschwitz Jewish Center

he Auschwitz Jewish Program for Students introduce participants to the TCenter, affiliated with the Abroad experience and pedagogy Museum of Jewish Heritage October 19 - 22, 2017 of the AJC’s educational offerings. in New York City, offers Long-weekend subsidized Deadline: September 26, 2017. immersive academic programs programs in Kraków since on topics related to the 2010 with a scholarly visit The Auschwitz Jewish Center Holocaust and Polish-Jewish to Auschwitz (Oświęcim) also offers Customized history year-round. Programs for students studying in Programs for groups of all sizes are led by trained staff with Europe, Israel, and the region. and backgrounds throughout advanced degrees in the field Deadline: September 19, 2017. the year. For more information and open to participants of all Familiarization Tour for on these and other funded backgrounds. Two weekend- Program Directors and subsidized opportunities, please visit ajcf.pl/en/ long programs offered this fall: October 26 - 29, 2017 education-center or contact Open to Program Directors [email protected]. and staff, designed to

42 n GAZETA VOLUME 24, NO. 3 Ringelblum Archive Exhibition to Open at Jewish Historical Institute in November

n November 14, 2017, the full publication of the Center, along with experts the Emanuel Ringelblum documents and other historical from the Emanuel Ringelblum OJewish Historical Institute in materials that it contains. Archive. The exhibition will Warsaw will unveil a major also profile Oneg Shabbat’s The curators of the exhibition new exhibition about the Jews members, including its leader, include Dr. Paweł Śpiewak, of Poland during the Shoah. Emanuel Ringelblum, who director of the Ringelblum Based on the Ringelblum was denounced and died in Jewish Historical Institute, Archive of the Warsaw ghetto, March 1944. n and Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, the exhibition will celebrate founder and director of the http://www.jhi.pl/en/ the miraculous survival of this Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre exhibitions precious collection and mark

Seventh International Conference for Jewish Studies Researchers, Warsaw November 14-16, 2017

he Jewish Studies Student current condition of research For any additional information, Association at University on broadly understood Jewish please contact us at judaistyka. Tof Warsaw, in cooperation Studies. The conference will [email protected]. n with the Institute of History, focus on the global history of Mordechai Anielewicz Center, Jews and the history of the and POLIN Museum of State of Israel from ancient Academic Committee: dr hab. the History of Polish Jews, times until today. The topics Anna Michałowska-Mycielska, is pleased to invite you to cover: history, history of dr Artur Markowski, dr the Seventh International art, philosophy, sociology, Monika Polit; Organizing Conference for Jewish cultural, literature and religion Committee: Joanna Studies Researchers, Warsaw, studies as well as linguistics Filipska, Matylda Jonas- November 14-16, 2017. (focusing on Hebrew, Yiddish Kowalik, Zuzanna Łapa, and Ladino). Natasza Majewska, Agata The conference is planned for Maliszewska, Pola Namysł, undergraduate, postgraduate, The conference will be Jowita Pańczyk, Natalia and doctoral students under accompanied by a program of Różańska, Anna Sasińska, the age of 30. It aims at scientific and cultural events. Bogumiła Siebyła, Mateusz showing the full scope of We are planning to publish a Szczepaniak, Zofia Zięba, current interests of young bilingual volume (in Polish Jakub Zygmunt. researchers, as well as the and English) in 2018.

GAZETA SUMMER 2017 n 43 Students in the Jewish cemetery, Beshenkovichi, Belarus. Photo: Sefer Center

If you would like to suggest an article and/or author for the next issue of Gazeta, or submit one yourself, please email: [email protected]. The submission deadline for the next issue is October 31, 2017.

[email protected] www.taubephilanthropies.org