Volume 27, No. 1 Gazeta Spring 2020 Main Market Square in Kraków during the pandemic. Photograph by Edyta Gawron. 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, Fay Bussgang, Julian Bussgang, Shana Penn, Antony Polonsky, Aleksandra Sajdak, Adam Schorin, William Zeisel, LaserCom Design, and Taube Center for the Renewal of Jewish Life in Poland Foundation.

CONTENTS Message from Irene Pipes ...... 1 Message from Tad Taube and Shana Penn ...... 2

SPECIAL REPORTS Academia during the Pandemic Edyta Gawron ...... 3 Zygmunt Stępiński Is New Director of POLIN Museum Antony Polonsky ...... 5 Statement of New Director of POLIN Museum ...... 9

SPECIAL FEATURES IN RESPONSE TO SHELTERING-AT-HOME Sunday Potatoes! Monday Potatoes! ...... 10

COOKING IN CONTAINMENT

Jewish Food Is Grounding, Especially Now Jeffrey Yoskowitz ...... 12 Quarantine Cooking Tips from Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett ...... 17 Celia Ores on Pierogi and Horseradish ...... 19 From Kasia Leonardi’s Kitchen ...... 20 Essential Kneads from the Kitchen of Sharon Bernstein ...... 22 Historians Cooking the Past ...... 24 Things to Do While Sheltering-at-Home: Online Cultural Resources ...... 25

EXHIBITIONS AND MUSEUMS In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Art and Human Rights at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life Francesco Spagnolo ...... 27 Cities of Peace Illuminated at the Galicia Jewish Museum ...... 31 #GaliciaOnline Jakub Nowakowski ...... 32 POLIN Museum at a Distance Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett ...... 36

II n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 REPORTS Commemorating Thirty Years of the Jewish Culture Festival Letter from the Director, Janusz Makuch ...... 40 The Jewish Culture Festival through Photographs ...... 41 One Thousand Stories About Yiddish Language and Culture: Wexler Oral History Project at the Yiddish Book Center Christa P. Whitney ...... 43 The Great Synagogue of Oświęcim Maciek Zabierowski ...... 45 FestivALT Moves Online Adam Schorin ...... 47

ANNOUNCEMENTS BOOKS Anti-Jewish Pogroms on Polish Lands in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku) Antony Polonsky ...... 49 Chasydyzm. Źródła, Metody, Perspektywy, the Polish-Language Version of Studying Hasidism. Sources, Methods, Perspectives. Edited by Marcin Wodziński ...... 50 Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture. By Mariusz Kałczewiak ...... 51 Voices from the Białystok Ghetto. By Michael Nevins ...... 52 Autobiography. Literature. Culture. Media: A Journal of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Szczecin by By Inga Iwasiόw and Jerzy Madejski ...... 53 Theodore Bikel’s The City of Light. By Aimee Ginsburg Bikel with Illustrations by Noah Phillips ...... 54 Strażnicy Fatum (Guardians of Fate). By Bożena Keff ...... 55 From Left to Right. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The New York Intellectuals and the Politics of Jewish History. By Nancy Sinkoff ...... 56 The King of Warsaw. By Szczepan Twardoch ...... 57

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n III HONORS AND AWARDS National Jewish Book Council 2019 Awards ...... 58 2019 National Translation Award in Poetry for Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania. By Adam Mickiewicz, translated by Bill Johnston ...... 59 Museum Worlds Honors Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Editors: Sandra Dudley and Conal McCarthy ...... 60 Devilspel Wins Literary Prize ...... 61 POLIN Award 2019 to Natalia Bartczak ...... 62

CONFERENCES AND SEMINARS Conference at the Polish Embassy in London to Launch POLIN: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 32 Antony Polonsky ...... 63 Biographies and Politics: Involvement of Jews and People of Jewish Origin in Leftist Movements in 19th and 20th Century Poland Antony Polonsky ...... 65

IN BRIEF Newly Released on Amazon: Raise the Roof by Filmmakers Yari and Cary Wolinsky ...... 68 Midrasz Closes Its Doors Editorial Board of Midrasz ...... 69 Contemporary Jewish Art and Artists in Poland Fay Bussgang ...... 71

OBITUARIES Krzysztof Penderecki Antony Polonsky ...... 73 Mikhl Baran Samuel Norich ...... 77 Walentyna Janta-Połczyńska Antony Polonsky ...... 78 Jerzy E. Główczewski Julian Bussgang ...... 80 Dr. Łucja Pawlicka-Nowak Jewish Heritage Europe ...... 81

IV n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 President, American Association Message from for Polish-Jewish Studies

Irene Pipes Founder of Gazeta

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Cambridge, where I am waiting out the pandemic. I hope you are comfortable and safe in this unprecedented situation.

As this issue of Gazeta shows, we are determined to carry on our important work in spite of the difficulties created by the COVID-19 virus. We congratulate Zygmunt Stępiński on his appointment as director of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. We are glad that the long-running dispute over the directorship has been brought to an end and look forward to its future flourishing. We are very impressed that the Irene Pipes museum has used the resources of the Internet to continue its activities while it is forced to close to the public.

We welcome the publication of volume 32 of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, which has as its theme “Jews and Music-Making on the Polish Lands.” It deals with an important theme and is divided into five sections, Cantorial and Religious Music, Jews in Polish Popular Culture, Jews in the Polish Classical Musical Scene, The Holocaust Reflected in Jewish Music, and Klezmer in Poland Today. Preparations for volume 33 are well underway and we look forward to its publication.

We hope you will find some comfort in the resources our editors and contributors have collected for this special issue, and that the crisis will soon be over so that we can resume normal activity.

With best wishes,

Irene Pipes President

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 1 Message from Chairman and Executive Director, Tad Taube and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life Shana Penn & Culture

This issue of Gazeta differs considerably from the one we planned. When we began working on it in early February, COVID-19 was rampaging in faraway China, on the periphery of our awareness in the United States. We focused instead on collecting articles about matters of concern to our readers, like the leadership transition at POLIN Museum, new books and awards, recent conferences, and plans for the Jewish Culture Festival’s thirtieth anniversary celebration in Krakόw.

In mid-February, as the virus began ripping through Europe, we welcomed POLIN Museum’s Chief Curator Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett to the Tad Taube San Francisco Bay Area, where she gave the keynote at the opening of an Arthur Szyk exhibition organized by the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley (reported in this issue).

By March, the faraway virus had reached our shores and was causing alarm, from Washington state down the coast to the Bay Area and beyond. Meanwhile, our Polish colleagues and Gazeta contributors began telling us about the advent of the virus in their communities and the health measures being taken in universities and other public institutions and places in Warsaw, Krakόw, and elsewhere. Clearly, the pandemic’s momentous events were demanding our attention.

Shana Penn This revised spring edition of Gazeta presents, as always, topics and events of primary concern to you, our readers, while also recognizing the global health and economic crises confronting us today. Like many previous generations, we live in times that can be difficult, even deadly. We are grateful to be in conversation with you as we move together into an uncertain future.

Tad Taube and Shana Penn Chairman and Executive Director

2 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 SPECIAL REPORTS Edyta Gawron Academia during the Pandemic

agiellonian University in Kraków started its spring Jsemester on February 24, 2020. The first week of classes, usually busy and exciting, was already marked by some uncertainty. We received recommendations regarding travel abroad (destinations to avoid) and international visitors (visits from COVID-19 affected countries had to be cancelled or postponed). At the Institute of Jewish Studies, following the new restrictions, the visit from a Japanese delegation was cancelled at the last minute. Soon after, questions arose about upcoming important public events underway. For example, what would happen to the Polish-Israeli ambassadors’ Kraków, March 2020 debate, marking thirty years Photograph by Edyta Gawron. Used with permission. of reestablishing diplomatic relations between the two situation there, we asked her e-learning in response to the countries? to self-isolate and refrain from coronavirus. The quarantined attending classes for the next Italian student was offered A few days later, one of two weeks. Our colleagues Skype access to Hebrew the students enrolled in the in the institute were asked to classes, and a few days later, international educational assist her with materials and with events moving so quickly program Erasmus+ returned provide individual mentoring. and dramatically, this would be from Italy. Knowing the This was when we introduced required for all of our classes.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 3 Within the first month The Institute of Jewish University classes remain of the new semester, we Studies is located in suspended as of this writing. found ourselves displaced the heart of the Jewish New security measures have and working from home as been implemented in all of all classes transitioned to quarter, where we had Poland, such as directives to online teaching. Fortunately, just attended Purim walk around neighborhoods Jagiellonian University celebrations. We were or take public transportation already had programs and only for reasons essential for online platforms to facilitate expecting dozens of health or work. remote teaching. student groups to arrive The streets of Kraków are We miss Kazimierz, though. in March, mainly from almost completely empty. The Institute of Jewish Israel, the United States, From time to time, the Studies is located in the and Europe, but all visits voice from the loudspeakers heart of the Jewish quarter, installed on police cars where we had just attended were cancelled at the reminds inhabitants to stay at Purim celebrations. We were last minute. home—Zostań w domu! n expecting dozens of student groups to arrive in March, lift the spirits of our students. Edyta Gawron, PhD, is mainly from Israel, the United Working on a regular schedule Assistant Professor at the States, and Europe, but all and seeing each other online Institute of Jewish Studies, visits were cancelled at the helps us all to focus on Jagiellonian University last minute. Within a few days, teaching and learning. in Kraków. From 2009 to Kazimierz, together with other 2017, she was director of Most of my classes this parts of Kraków, resembled the Centre for the Study of semester are on the Holocaust a ghost town. Suddenly, all the History and Culture of or Holocaust-related topics. of the tourists were gone and Kraków Jews. She is president Some of my students had the locals had to comply with of the Management Board experienced stressful travel strict lockdown protocols. of Galicia Jewish Heritage back to their respective All public activities were Institute Foundation (Galicia countries. Unfortunately, we cancelled, including the Jewish Museum in Kraków) did not have time to say good- March of Remembrance, held and served on the team bye. Luckily, we will continue annually on the anniversary that designed the historical working together online, and of the liquidation of the museum in Oskar Schindler’s one of the first topics to be Kraków Ghetto. Factory in Kraków. discussed is survival strategies Confronted with all the in a time of catastrophe. How depressing news, we want to ironic, yet also fitting!

4 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Zygmunt Stępin´ski is New Director of POLIN Museum of the History Antony Polonsky of Polish Jews

n a statement issued to In response, the mayor of Professor Dariusz Stola that the press on February 14, Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, he renounced his rights as I2020, the Polish Ministry expressed his satisfaction winner of the competition for of Culture and National at the agreement while also the post of director of POLIN Heritage announced that it expressing regret that it had Museum of the History of had “reached agreement with not been reached earlier. Polish Jews, on condition the co-organizers of POLIN Its conclusion was the that the parties running the Museum—the mayor of result of the “responsible museum reached agreement Warsaw and the executive of and exceptional gesture of on another candidate.” They the Association of the Jewish Professor Stola, who for the nominated Zygmunt Stępiński Historical Institute—on good of POLIN Museum has as the “common candidate the position of director and renounced his legal right to of the Association of the intends to appoint Zygmunt the position of director … We Jewish Historical Institute Stępiński, who has held the are happy that the deadlock and the City of Warsaw.” post of acting director since has been broken and such They reached this decision February 2019, for a three- an important institution after consulting with “Jewish year term.” It further stated will now finally have an circles, friends of the Museum that “in accordance with the administration which will and donors.” regulations laid down in the ensure the realization of its The dispute over the position law of October 25, 1991, programs and secure its future of director began in February on the organization and development.” 2019, when the Minister of management of cultural affairs, This followed an earlier Culture, Piotr Gliński, refused the minister will seek to obtain statement by the mayor and to renew Stola’s five-year from trade unions active in the executive of the Jewish appointment, which held the museum and professional Historical Institute. Acting “in the option of extension. The and cultural associations their accordance with the interests minister never made clear the opinion of the candidate for the of the institution and of grounds for his action, but post of director to the Museum Polish-Jewish relations,” they he seems to have objected to of the History of Polish Jews. said, “as well as the image the fact that Stola protested The new director of POLIN of Poland in the world, after against the amendment of Museum should be appointed the difficult but exceptionally the 2018 law on the Institute by the end of February 2020.” responsible statement by of National Remembrance

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 5 (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej- Recent years have seen Żydowskiego-FODŻ). In IPN), which made May, the selection committee, an attack on history as claiming that the Polish chaired by Deputy Minister state or the Polish nation a scholarly discipline of Culture Jarosław Sellin bore responsibility for the that has threatened the and made up of two Holocaust a criminal offense. representatives each of the (The law was subsequently great progress made ministry, the municipality of amended to remove these in understanding the Warsaw, and the Association criminal penalties.) complex problems of of the Jewish Historical Institute, and nine members Further conflict arose over the history of Jews in representing independent Obcy w domu (“Estranged,” Poland and of Polish- bodies, among them Jewish the museum’s translation), one organizations and institutions of the museum’s temporary Jewish relations. engaged in education, exhibitions, marking the contribution to Polish-Israeli including several senior fiftieth anniversary of the relations of Lech Kaczyński, professors, voted in May, anti-Zionist campaign of former president of Poland, 11 to 3, with one abstention, 1968, which the Ministry of who died in the Smoleńsk to reappoint Stola. Culture and National Heritage plane crash of April 2010. had refused to fund. A huge Stola had certainly been a very success, the exhibition drew Minister Gliński was successful director. According 116,000 people. It included unwilling to reappoint Stola, to Tad Taube, chairman of a final section comparing but under pressure from the Taube Foundation for the hate speech which had the representatives of the Jewish Life and Culture and marked the events of 1968 two other bodies involved one of the main supporters with that which had become in running the museum, he of the museum, Stola is “the increasingly prevalent since agreed to an open competition most outstanding scholar the amendment of the law for the post of director in and director we could ever on the IPN. Minister Gliński which Stola could participate. get for that museum. He also seems to have been Only one other candidate has been responsible for angered by the failure of the applied, Monika Krawczyk, all the positive things.” His museum administration to then Chair of the Union of views are shared by Barbara turn over any part of a large, Jewish Religious Communities Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the multiyear education grant in Poland and former Chair chief curator of POLIN’s core that it received from the of the Foundation for the exhibition, Professor Emerita Norwegian government and Preservation of Jewish of Performance Studies at its alleged failure to sponsor Heritage in Poland (Fundacja New York University, and a conference devoted to the Ochrony Driedzictwa a 2020 recipient of a Dan

6 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 David prize for her work at Stępiński “has a very the creators of the publishing the museum. She observed house MURATOR (now deep connection to the that “all the success of the ZPR media S.A.) in 1982, as last five years is his [Stola’s] history of Polish Jews. well as the social programs doing. All the awards, all of He is loyal, capable, and “Available Housing” and the visitor numbers—all of it “Housing Without Barriers.” is his doing.” dedicated, and he has He was also active in Polish- been with the museum Jewish life and has worked They were right to talk of in service to POLIN Museum numbers. Since it opened in since it opened.” since 2012, and as one of its 2013, the museum has been – Barbara Kirshenblatt- three deputy directors was visited by 3.75 million people, Gimblett responsible for education, while nearly 2 million have communication, sales, and visited the core exhibition, The minister again failed marketing. which opened in October to appoint Stola, and by 2014. Around 44 percent February 2020 the situation His appointment has been of these visitors come from had become critical, since welcomed by many of the abroad, the largest group Zygmunt Stępiński could only museum’s key supporters, coming from Israel, followed hold the post of acting director who are concerned to by the United States. Under until the end of the month. It safeguard its institutional Stola’s leadership, the was then that the compromise autonomy. According to museum was awarded the solution of appointing him Warsaw Mayor Trzaskowski title of European Museum director for a three-year period and Piotr Wiślicki, the head of the Year in 2016 and the was adopted. of the Association of the EMA (European Museum Jewish Historical Institute, Academy Award), and in Stępiński graduated in history Stępiński “has many years 2017, it received the Europa from the University of of experience in the field of Nostra Award, the most Warsaw and became active in management, including in the important award in Europe for politics after the introduction field of cultural institutions, outstanding achievement in of martial law in December [and] he enjoys the trust of the the protection, research, and 1981, when he became team and the museum’s donors promotion of cultural heritage. secretary of the editorial board and Jewish communities in According to the award, the of the underground publishing Poland and abroad.” Barbara museum “created a safe haven house CDN (Ciąg Dalszy Kirshenblatt-Gimblett to engage in an intercultural Nastąpi, “To Be Continued”). agreed: “He has a very deep dialogue, thus offering a vital The son of a celebrated connection to the history lesson to today’s world.” architect, he has worked as of Polish Jews. He is loyal, a journalist and was one of capable, and dedicated, and

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 7 Stola is “the most perhaps the next best-known outstanding scholar and Jewish landmark in Poland. Built on the site of the former director we could ever get Warsaw [G]hetto it celebrates for that museum. He has the thousand-year history of been responsible for all Poland’s Jewish community and is a place where you can the positive things.” learn about past and present – Tad Taube Jewish culture, confront continue to contribute to the stereotypes, and consider preservation and informed perils from today’s world— appreciation of the history such as xenophobia and Professor Dariusz Stola, former nationalistic prejudices.” Director of the POLIN Museum of the and accomplishments of the History of Polish Jews. Jews of this region and of Photograph by Omar Marqes. Getty Images. To see the public statement their descendants all over issued by Dariusz Stola, he has been with the museum the world. former director of POLIN since it opened.” Recent years have seen an Museum, on February 10, 2020, go to: http://szih.org. The general consensus attack on history as a scholarly pl/en/dariusz-stola-statement- was well expressed by Tad discipline that has threatened regarding-polin-museum/. n Taube. Calling the solution the great progress made in “a bittersweet pill,” he said understanding the complex Antony Polonsky, PhD, is it was “much better than problems of the history of Chief Historian at the POLIN having Minister Gliński Jews in Poland and of Polish- Museum of the History of appoint the director without Jewish relations. In these Polish Jews. the agreement of his partners.” conditions, the importance Praising Stępiński as an “able of the museum in fostering a administrator,” he concluded nuanced and balanced attitude that the most important thing to the past is all the more is that “we now have a leader important. One can only echo for a great museum that was the sentiments of Arkady heretofore in a state of flux Rzegocki, Polish ambassador for almost a year.” to the United Kingdom in the Jewish Chronicle of February The museum has gone 19, 2020: “The POLIN through a difficult period. Museum of the History of It is to be hoped that under Polish Jews in Warsaw is Director Stępiński it will

8 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Statement of New Director of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

ver the past year POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews has been going through the worst crisis since its inception. The crisis was caused by Othe conflict between the museum’s co-founders regarding nomination for the post of director. As you all know, a competition for the post was held in May 2019. It was won convincingly by Professor Dariusz Stola—my mentor, my Zygmunt Stępiński, the new superior, and a dear colleague. Director of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. It would be inappropriate to comment here on the process of nominating, Photograph by M. Starowieyska. Courtesy of POLIN Museum of or rather on the failure to nominate, Professor Dariusz Stola for a new term the History of Polish Jews. as POLIN Museum director. I myself was put in a rather difficult position, serving as acting director. I was striving to fulfill my role to the best of my abilities, yet with full awareness of its interim nature. POLIN Museum was molded by Professor Stola, who was about to return and occupy again his empty office in the museum building. Alas, that never happened. According to the common intention of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute and the City of Warsaw, and with the approval of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, I received the nomination for a three-year term as POLIN Museum director. I have decided to accept it. I am sure you are all aware how awkward the position I was put in has been, notwithstanding the fact that my candidature was supported by all three museum co-founders, many different milieus and authority figures, including those that the museum holds in the highest regard— first and foremost the donors, but also the Nationwide Workers’ Initiative Trade Union in operation at the museum, as well as POLIN Museum staff council. Above all else, my nomination was supported by Professor Dariusz Stola. Darek, I would like to address these words to you directly. They say no one is irreplaceable. Perhaps it is true. What is also true, however, is that there are people among us who are truly unique and extraordinarily clever; people who change the course of events and thus shape our history. We have had a great honor and privilege to work with such a person. POLIN Museum is one of the most important institutions of culture in Poland and it will follow the course that you have mapped out for us. I am sure that our paths will cross along this course, and more than once at that. Today I have entered the building as the Museum Director, overwhelmed by most ambivalent feelings. Nonetheless, I wish to pass on this message to you all: I will make every effort to further develop the potential of POLIN museum—the institution which Professor Stola held dear and where he left a piece of his heart. The museum will continue to fulfil its mission of preserving the memory of Polish Jews, of retelling their history in an engaging, captivating, and authentic way. It will continue to teach about the tradition, culture, religion, and patriotism of the Jews who have always been and will always remain an inseparable part of the multinational and multiethnic Republic of Poland—the home of people of various denominations, viewpoints, traditions, and customs. Zygmunt Stępiński Director of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 9 SPECIAL FEATURES IN RESPONSE TO SHELTERING-AT-HOME

Sunday Potatoes! Monday Potatoes! Editor’s Note: You can sing this while washing your hands for 22 seconds!

Zuntik – bulbes Sunday, potatoes Montik – bulbes Monday, potatoes בולבעס Tuesday and Wednesday, potatoes Dinstik un mitvokh – bulbes Donershtik un fraytik – bulbes Thursday and Friday, potatoes זונטיק – בולבעס מאָנטיק – בולבעס But on Shabbes something special Ober shabes in a novine דינסטיק און מיטוואָך – בולבעס ! A potato kugel A bulbe kigele! דאָנערשטיק און פרייַטיק – בולבעס אָבער שבתּ אין אַ נאָווענע – אַ בולבע קוגעלע! And Sunday—and so on—potatoes Un zuntik vayter – bulbes און זונטיק ווייטער – בולבעס . און זונטיק ווייטער – בולבעס. Broyt mit bulbes Bread with potatoes ברויט מיט בולבעס Meat with potatoes Fleysh mit bulbes פלייש מיט בולבעס וואַרעמעס און וועטשערע – בולבעס Noon meal and evening meal potatoes Varemes un vetshere – bulbes אָבער און ווידער – בולבעס Here and there potatoes Ober un vider – bulbes איינמאָל אין אַ נאָווענע אַ בולבע קוגעלע! But now and then, a novelty Ober eynmol in a novine און זונטיק ווייטער – בולבעס ! A potato kugel A bulbe kigele! און זונטיק ווייטער – בולבעס. Un zuntik vayter – bulbes And Sunday—the usual—potatoes אָבער – בולבעס . ווידער – בולבעס נאָך אַ מאָל און אָבער אַ מאָל – בולבעס Here potatoes Ober – bulbes הײַנט און מאָרגן – בולבעס There potatoes Vider – bulbes אָבער שבתּ נאָכן טשאָלנט Here and there potatoes Ober un vider – bulbes אַ בולבע קוגעלע! און זונטיק ווייטער – בולבעס There and here potatoes Vider un ober – bulbes און זונטיק ווייטער – בולבעס. But on Shabbes after the chulent Ober shabes nokhn tsholnt A bulbe kigele! A potato kugel! Un zuntik vayter – bulbes A Sunday, here we go again, potatoes https://musicalexplorers.savannahmusicfestival.org/2019-19-curriculum/unit- 5-klezmer-music/lesson-1-learning-bulbes/

10 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 SPECIAL FEATURES IN RESPONSE TO SHELTERING-AT-HOME Cooking in Containment

Editor’s Note: nce many of us realized we Owould be sheltering at home for a month if not longer, we made our shopping lists for durable groceries and household supplies, applied research zeal to culinary creation, and transferred commute hours to cooking hours. Gazeta readers reported to us that after teaching their classes on Zoom and reading students’ exams, after researching and sharing online reputable sources about the pandemic, they were passionately reading cookbooks, exchanging recipes, and creating feasts for their mostly modest-sized households. It seems many of us are now thoroughly occupied with cooking—and wherever there is cooking, eating is sure to follow. Here are some personal culinary stories, helpful tips and recipes for cooking in containment.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 11 Jewish Food Is Grounding, Especially Now Jeffrey Yoskowitz

Pickles and gefilte don’t always was building a value-added place to start since it’s get the same level of attention products business and pickles often the butt of jokes— by scholars and cultural were at the heart of it (the and yet, when it’s made activists as, say, literary works farm’s slogan: “Young Jewish right, with fresh ingredients, of Sholem Aleichem or the farmers changing the world one an eye to freshness and revival of the Yiddish language. pickle at a time”). I learned to with deference to tradition, In recent years, however, that’s make the old-fashioned method it can be transcendent. been changing. Food is “in”––at of saltwater pickles, which, I launched a venture called least as an entry point into the it turns out, are actually good The Gefilteria to spread folk history of Jews in Eastern for you. The Jewish/Slavic gefilte fish appreciation. Europe. As a matter of fact, pickling method is a live- We manufacture an artisanal in the age of coronavirus, as cultured process of fermentation (read: gourmet) gefilte fish restaurants remain shuttered and that doesn’t just preserve a and produce culinary events much of the world is sheltering- cucumber but improves it: it and workshops that explore in-place, cooking has become sours it and makes it pro-biotic the breadth and history of a survival skill as well as a such that it aids in digestion and Eastern European Jewish deserved object of study. More strengthens immune systems. cooking. Gefilte fish, for than ever, we can learn from better or worse, became the I see much of Jewish history Jewish cooks who navigated venture’s symbol. To this day, and culture like a sour pickle. scarcity and short growing we travel the world, cooking Rather than just preserving seasons with artistry and skill. and teaching, and continue it, I think culture needs to to manufacture our signature For over a decade I’ve ferment––to transform itself gefilte fish for major holidays. straddled both the culinary and from within. scholarly worlds, as a writer, a My work in the world of I left the farm and moved researcher, culinary revivalist, Ashkenazi cooking converged to New York City where I gefilte fish manufacturer, and with my work as a writer and began working in the food an entrepreneur. researcher. Soon, my focus world. I turned my attention turned to the lost and distorted I began my journey into to the negative perceptions histories of Jewish cooking Jewish food when I moved of Ashkenazi cuisine among and eating. When writing onto an organic Jewish farm my peers in the food world. my cookbook, The Gefilte called Adamah in northwest Gefilte fish was the natural Manifesto: New Recipes for Connecticut. That year, the farm

12 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Old World Jewish Foods, innovative digital food I became obsessed with programming, opened May the dishes that I didn’t 19 and ran through May know about. What was 28. (Participation is free for lost in the Old World? most events, except for a Through reading those few that are by donation for Sholem Aleichem stories, COVID-19 relief efforts). it became clear to me that As so much of our world very little of Ashkenazi remains in question, as foodways is represented countries grapple with by the Jewish delicatessen the reality of the in New York. I’ve been coronavirus and the need writing and researching to stay indoors, Jewish and investigating a The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods by Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern, culinary narratives and deeper, richer food published by Flatiron Books in 2016. traditions have the power to tradition ever since. tie it all into the thousand ground and comfort us. Food I’m proud to have worked years of Jewish history in is much more than sustenance; with the Taube Jewish the region. now, more than ever, the wisdom Heritage Tour team to and recipes from generations develop “History, Heritage, As the food world is struggling past are especially relevant. and Herring,” Taube’s first- now with restaurants unable to Herbed Gefilte Fish ever Jewish culinary heritage serve customers in-house, and tour. Our focus has been much of the world sheltering- At its most basic, gefilte is understanding Ashkenazi in-place, I realize we can use a cold fish appetizer served material food culture and digital tools to eat and cook before Ashkenazi holiday connecting to the mindset and together. We also can find and Shabbat meals, and is the wisdom of Jewish cooks new ways to support those made by mixing freshwater of the past. We eat together especially hard hit by the fish with eggs, onions, and and meet chefs and relevant pandemic. With that in mind, spices. One of the things that food producers in the region. I’ve been producing “The drew us to gefilte fish was We also examine the climate, Great Big Jewish Food Fest: that it stood as a symbol of the seasons, and the land as Online & In The Kitchen,” resourcefulness—how far a we taste the fresh currants, along with a team of culinary single fish could be stretched gooseberries, and bilberries professionals and food thinkers. to feed an entire family. It had in the summertime, or the The festival—a collection of a practical aspect, too. On the foraged mushrooms in the book talks, films, workshops, Shabbat, Jews are prohibited autumn. And, of course, we culinary talks, panels, and from separating bones from

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 13 flesh, so by finely grinding the fish, the proscription was circumvented. We love thinking of ways to restore gefilte to its rightful place on the table, especially for the Passover seder, when gefilte is often front and center. This recipe has a classic base, but we’ve added herbs to give it a taste of spring and a touch of color. There is also no matzo meal or bread crumbs in this recipe, giving it a lighter texture and removing any Herbed gefilte fish terrine, as per the recipe below. Photograph by Lauren Volo. Courtesy of Jeffrey Yoskowitz. gluten. You have two options for how to cook and serve Note: The whitefish we use 2 tablespoons coarsely your gefilte fish. Poaching here refers to the species chopped fresh watercress quenelles in a fish broth is Coregonus clupeaformis from (or spinach) a classic method used by the Great Lakes. If you can’t generations of Jewish cooks, 2 tablespoons coarsely find whitefish, substitute any and baking the fish in a chopped fresh dill one of the following: hake, terrine is a quick and 1 teaspoon kosher salt sole, flounder, whiting, tilapia, contemporary approach that or halibut. ¹/8 teaspoon freshly ground will slice and plate beautifully. white pepper Liz and I both prefer the baked Baked Terrine 1 tablespoon sugar terrine, but enough friends Makes 1 small terrine; serves Horseradish relish, store- and family members request 8 to 10 the poached option that we bought or homemade, 1 small onion, coarsely couldn’t ignore the pull of for serving chopped tradition. The first stage of the If there are any bones left in process for this gefilte fish is 12 ounces whitefish fillet, your fillets, remove the larger nearly identical to the Smoked skin removed, flesh coarsely ones by hand, but don’t fret Whitefish Gefilte Terrine and chopped about the smaller ones since the Old World Stuffed Gefilte 1¼ tablespoons vegetable or they’ll be pulverized in the Fish until it gets stuffed into grapeseed oil food processor. You can buy the skin. 1 large egg your fish pre-ground from a

14 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 fishmonger (usually a Jewish with parchment paper and fill 4 medium carrots fishmonger) to ensure all the the pan with the fish mixture. 3 tablespoons sugar bones are removed, but try to Smooth out with a spatula. Gefilte terrine mixture from cook your fish that day Baked Terrine recipe (see since ground fish loses its Place the loaf pan on a baking steps 1 and 2) freshness faster. sheet on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 40 to Horseradish relish, store-bought Place the onion in the bowl 45 minutes. The terrine is or homemade, for serving of a large food processor and finished when the corners process until finely ground Place the fish parts, salt, and ends begin to brown. The and mostly liquefied. Add onions, carrots, sugar, and loaf will give off some liquid. the fish fillets to the food water in a large stockpot and Cool to room temperature processor along with the rest bring to a boil. Reduce the before removing from the of the ingredients, except heat to maintain a simmer, pan and slicing. Serve with for the horseradish. Pulse in cover, and simmer for at least horseradish relish. the food processor until the 45 minutes before poaching mixture is light-colored and Poached Gefilte Quenelles the quenelles. Skim off any evenly textured throughout. foam that rises to the surface. Makes 10 2-ounce quenelles Scoop into a bowl and give Wet your hands and form the it an additional stir to ensure Heads, bones, and tails from gefilte fish mixture into about that all the ingredients are a fish (see Note) 10 quenelles the size of an evenly distributed throughout. 4 quarts water egg, with a similarly oblong Preheat the oven to 350 F. 1 tablespoon kosher salt shape. They will expand as Line an 8 x 3-inch loaf pan 2 onions, coarsely chopped they cook.

s a culmination of much of my Ashkenazi food research, I’ve spent the past year co-producing A with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research an online course of Ashkenazi culinary history called “A Seat at the Table: A Journey into Jewish Food,” which launched May 1. The course features a trove of archival objects that illuminate Yiddish-Jewish history in the kitchen, a collection of cookbooks that trace the Jewish recipe’s evolution over time, lectures by leading scholars (including Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett on bagels, and more), and plenty of cooking demos by Joan Nathan and other cookbook writers and chefs. I serve as the guide for the course, so you can find me cooking and kibitzing throughout. The course is free for a limited time. Register before August 31 for free tuition; take the class at any time, at your own pace.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 15 Place them one by one into the poaching liquid. When all the servings are in the pot, make sure the heat is on low and cover the pot. Poach for 30 minutes. Remove the quenelles with a slotted spoon and place them in a bowl or deep serving dish. Spoon enough poaching liquid over to cover the quenelles and let cool slightly before refrigerating. The poaching liquid will gel slightly as it chills.

To serve, remove the carrots and cut them into 3-inch-thick rounds. Serve the quenelles chilled, with the carrot pieces and fresh horseradish relish. If you’re old-school or adventurous, serve with spoonfuls of the poaching gel alongside.

Note: If poaching, a fishmonger can save the head, bones, and tail for you if he/she sells A photograph of classic sour dill pickles from The Gefilte Manifesto by Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern. you the fillet—just ask. The Photograph by Lauren Volo. Courtesy of Jeffrey Yoskowitz. poaching liquid can be made without these fish parts, but the shares his special recipes for The Gefilte Manifesto, which gefilte quenelles will be slightly gefilte fish, one of his specialties he co-authored with Liz Alpern. less flavorful. at The Gefilteria, which he co- Reprinted with permission founded as a hub for innovation from Flatiron Books. Jeffrey Yoskowitz, a Brooklyn- in Jewish food. The recipes based writer, food entrepreneur, below are excerpted, with pickler, and public speaker, permission, from the book

16 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Cooking in Containment: More Tips and Recipes

Quarantine Cooking Tips from Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett, the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in Warsaw, and professor emerita at New York University, shares her special tips for shopping, stocking, and cooking while “sheltered- in-place” during COVID-19. The following “principles” and recipes were originally posted on her Facebook page and are reprinted here Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s mushroom barley soup. Courtesy of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. with permission.

If you are not going out to the pleasure. No need to stock beans, chickpeas, and more), shop or cannot find what you the fridge, freezer, and pantry pasta (white, whole wheat, want locally, you can order with prepared food. gluten free), oatmeal (rolled most everything online and and steel cut), and grains of Principle #2: Water expands have it delivered. all kinds: millet, buckwheat, everything. Dried goods are quinoa, barley, cornmeal, Principle #1: Cook from much better than tins, more polenta. And, flour, about scratch. Healthier, tastier, compact for storage, cheaper, which more below. In addition more economical. Great and healthier (less fat and to all the ways you already activity to share with salt). This is the time for rice cook these grains, you can homebound family. Chance (brown, jasmine, basmati, also sprout them for highly to up your game, experiment, black, and more), beans (split nutritious fresh greens. and share the experience and peas, brown lentils, black

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 17 Beans are an adventure: Principle #5: For the pantry, for a simple classic spaghetti order the freshest and most nuts of all kinds, nut butters, dish, with bread crumbs and interesting from Rancho seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, grated Romano), tinned tuna, Gordo https://www.rancho flax), raisins, prunes, figs, and sardines, and salmon. Wasa gordo.com/. Speaking of crystalized ginger for those whole-grain crackers. water, add powdered milk to yearning for something sweet. Principle #6: For the the list, a good solution in a You will have what you need, refrigerator: tofu. Infinite pinch. And how could I have with rolled oats, to make ways to prepare soft, firm, forgotten dried mushrooms! gorgeous granola. Let me extra firm. This recipe cannot know and I will post a great be beat, https://tinyurl.com/ Principle #3: Always wanted recipe. And olive oil, vegetable qthnm72. I already have to bake? Now is the time. You oil with a high smoke point for pickles and sauerkraut that I are home working, caring for frying (sunflower, safflower, made in the fall. You can still family, so why not bake? Time peanut), unpasteurized apple make your own sauerkraut for sourdough. You don’t need cider vinegar, honey, maple with nothing more than yeast, just flour and water. syrup, all-fruit conserves (no cabbage and salt (Diamond An alchemical adventure, added sugar), and, if you cook kosher salt, no additives). and I bet kids would love it. Chinese dishes, soy sauce and Hard cheese in a block, not Delicious fresh bread on hand sesame oil. Tinned tomatoes: sliced, and if you are so all the time. Out of butter? I always have lots of them inclined, miso, butter, eggs, There is always olive oil. on hand—crushed, chopped, herring, smoked fish. and whole. And, nutritional Principle #4: Vegetables yeast, a good substitute for and fruit that keep, which are Principle #7: Cook for a few cheese. And, TVP (textured the ones in season, so roots days at a time (soup, beans, vegetable protein), a terrible grains, stews, bread). Freeze (potatoes, turnips, beets, name for a byproduct of soy some for a day when there is carrots, rutabaga, daikon, oil extraction. Bob’s Red no time to cook. onions, parsnip, parsley Mill is a good source. TVP is root, sweet potatoes, garlic, versatile and nutritious, great Principle #8: Sign up for your among others), cabbage, substitute for ground beef favorite food blog. One of kohlrabi, kale, winter squash in a red bean or kidney bean mine is Woks of Life, https:// of all kinds, ginger root. And, chili. My favorite black bean thewoksoflife.com/. If you love apples, Bosc pears, lemons, chili: http://bit.ly/2IOY765. Chinese food, this is the go- oranges, grapefruit, avocado. It’s flexible, so don’t worry if to place. You can order pretty You can stock up for weeks at you don’t have all the different much everything you need a time. Consider signing up chilies. No chipotle? Substitute online and much of what you with Misfit for home delivery smoked paprika. You can order need is not perishable—dried of imperfect organic produce all the chilies and paprika mushrooms, bean threads, at reduced price: http://bit. online. And, if you are so rice noodles, dried tofu sticks, ly/2vo5qPb. inclined: anchovies (perfect cloud ears, tiger lily buds, jujubes, kombu, and much

18 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 more. Don’t feel like cooking? Social distancing at home and avoiding restaurants? Order food from your local Chinese restaurants. They are hurting and need our business.

Mushroom Barley Soup 2 cups of barley, rinsed Long white part of one leek, thinly sliced Celia Ores and her grandson Marc Schorin prepare potato-and-onion pierogi. 2 medium carrots, diced Photograph by Michelle Ores. Used with permission. 3 stalks of celery, diced Celia Ores on Pierogi recipes for potato and onion Start with 2 quarts of water and and Horseradish pierogi and horseradish. add more as soup thickens. Celia Ores, age 92, is a Potato & Onion Pierogi After 45 minutes, add sliced Holocaust survivor from Prepare the potato onion mix fresh mushrooms. I used Dubienka, Poland, and first as it has to cool off. shiitake, but any will do. I also now resides on the Upper used Polish dried mushrooms Potato Onion Mix: West Side of Manhattan. (porcini / boletus), which are Sauté 1 large onion separately She spent the war years in nothing short of divine. until brown. Add some salt. Siberia in a labor camp, Cook 6 peeled russet (large Salt and pepper. then in Kazakhstan; after white) potatoes until soft. Simmer till thick and barley the war, a DP camp outside is soft. of Frankfurt, Germany, and Mash the potatoes and mix with the sautéed onions. In normal times, I would have completed medical school Let cool. added a small piece of celery at the University of Berne, root, a small parsley root, and Switzerland. She published To Make the Dough: I would have served it with her memoir, Reading Pushkin For the dough, combine chopped fresh dill (or parsley). in Siberia, and Other Tales of 8 cups flour, 2 eggs, and Survival, in 2015. 2 cups of water. Perfectly vegan, whole grain (organic barley), no fat. In addition to being a full- Mix until you have the https://www.jewishfoodsociety. time pediatrician and full-time right consistency. Let sit org/posts/2018/1/15/bkg-soup, mother, Celia also found time for 20 minutes. “A Soup From Poland Travels to be a full-time chef, bringing Cut the dough into 4 pieces. Thousands of Miles— her family recipes from Poland Roll out the dough a piece at a Only to Return Home” with love, care, and a lax time (cover the other pieces). Shared by Barbara understanding of “I can’t have Make 3-inch circles. Put in a Kirshenblatt-Gimblett another bite!” Here are her dollop of potato onion mix.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 19 Fold over and pinch and crimp the edges. Make sure they are sealed well. Boil the pierogi in water for a few minutes. Let pierogi cool. Then cook the pierogi in vegetable oil until browned on each side. Serve with sour cream.

Horseradish: Kasia Leonardi teaches a cooking workshop. One horseradish root (finely Photograph by Sebastian Rudol. Courtesy of JCC Kraków. grated by hand or in a food processor) JCC Krakόw’s annual summer and I like to write out the Cook 1 beet until soft and Erev Shabbat dinner, which recipes by hand and illustrate and then finely grate it. is held on the last Friday them. My students appreciate evening of Krakόw’s Jewish 2 tablespoons apple cider the personal touch and a few Culture Festival, following vinegar even collect them! Cymes, the day’s revelatory Ride for a classic Ashkenazi Jewish 1 tablespoon sugar the Living bicycle trek from food from old Galicia, is a the gates of Auschwitz to Add the sugar and vinegar to diced-carrot stew that includes Kazimierz, where the JCC the grated horseradish root. dried fruits, is flavored with is located. Each year this Mix well. Then add the grated honey and cinnamon, and has Shabbat dinner hosts up beet. Add a little kosher salt. a beautiful orange-gold color, to 700 guests from around Let it sit for a day or two always sweet and aromatic. the world in a beautiful, before using. The flavors need Cymes is from the Yiddish, spacious hall, walking and when it became part of to blend together. distance from the JCC. After the Polish language, it became bicycling the 55km Ride for a word for something good, From Kasia Leonardi’s the Living, Kasia welcomes special, a delicacy, a miracle, Kitchen all to the dining hall, in her a treasure. In this difficult Kasia Leonardi is director characteristically warm time of COVID-19, we need of catering and events at the and relaxed manner, as if something optimistic, a JCC Krakόw. Many of us supervising a 700-person miracle, a tasty golden dish are familiar with her Erev glatt-kosher buffet is everyday that will remind us of a better Shabbat dinners served in fare. Thank you, Kasia! the JCC with the help of tomorrow! I hope everyone Cymes—A Vegetarian the JCC volunteers, known enjoyed a peaceful and healthy Tzimmes as the Meshugoyim. Others Passover and a lot of optimism of us have marveled at her I often give cooking for a better tomorrow! impressive supervision of the workshops at JCC Krakόw

20 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Ingredients: 1 large onion, cut into small pieces 1 apple, cut into half-inch pieces 4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch rounds 4 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into half-inch pieces 1 cup dried prunes 1 cup dried apricots ½ cup raisins 3 large spoons honey Orange and lemon zest 2 cups orange juice 1 cup lemon juice 1 cup water 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1 teaspoon ginger 1 teaspoon salt Kasia Leonardi’s hand-written and illustrated recipe for vegetarian tzimmes. 1 teaspoon pepper Courtesy of Kasia Leonardi. Extra-virgin olive oil the kitchen and mixing the Kale Instructions flavors from childhood with Polish apples new ones. I like preparing Fry onions in olive oil in a Dried cranberries large heavy pot. traditional Polish dishes Apple cider vinegar Add the rest of the ingredients like makowiec (poppyseed Canola oil and stir gently. cake), sernik (cheesecake) and barszcz (borsch), but in a You can also add some Reduce heat to a gentle but lighter way. walnuts if you like. constant simmer. Cover. Toss ingredients together. Cook on low heat for Kale Salad It’s perfect! 45 minutes. I like all food that is fresh Serve warm as a side dish to and easy to make, like this Coconut Macaroons a festive holiday meal. kale salad. A Passover-perfect dessert and I like doing experiments in All you need is: delicious year-round

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 21 Ingredients: I like to bake. With baking, So it would have been bleach 4 egg whites there are instructions, and poured on the bread, and I’m things tend to turn out pretty sure that’s not what is 3 cups of sweetened coconut predictably (unlike the rest meant by bleached white flour. shreds of my life). Besides, we had flour to use up ½ cup of granulated sugar before Pesach. So I decided to To be clear, I like baking try making a challah. Method: pretty much everything but Preheat the oven to 350 F. bread. Bread has always This time, however, I had a eluded me. It’s the yeast secret weapon in my oven In a bowl, whisk the egg thing—I could never get the mitt. My son and I are whites until frothy. hang of it. Rise too little? ardent fans of The Great Add sugar and mix. Too much? Is the yeast still British Baking Show, and Add the coconut shreds and active? The couple of times my husband and I had given mix everything with a spoon. I tried to bake challah—out him Paul Hollywood’s How of some sense that it was To Bake last Hanukah, out of With a rounded spoon drop something I “ought” to do, it a completely selfless desire dough onto the cookie sheet. felt like a Herculean effort for on our part to further his Bake for 15-20 minutes or something that was dry and baking skills. I looked to see until brown on the top. yeasty-tasting. if, by any chance, there was After they are baked, you a recipe for challah, which Enter coronavirus. It was can dip the macaroons in there was. It was called the first week of Zoom chocolate. “Cholla Loaf,” which was a broadcasting my shul’s Friday bit concerning, but I decided Melt the chocolate in a night service from my living to give it a try. I followed the double boiler over simmering room, and I didn’t have a guidelines, allowing the dough water. Dip the bottom of the challah. We sometimes don’t to be a lot stickier than feels macaroons in the chocolate. have challah at home, reciting comfortable, and kneading Place the macaroons in the b’rachah instead over a through stretching the dough the refrigerator for about local baguette or olive bread repeatedly between my hands. 10 minutes. that God has made spring As I worked, something forth from the earth. But this Smacznego! (Bon appétit!) magical happened. The dough week, we didn’t have even became silky and supple, the Essential Kneads that, as I was tentative about rhythm a happily tactile stretch the succulent crusts peeking From the Kitchen of and pull. I put it in an oiled forth from the crisp white Sharon Bernstein bowl to rise, and, remarkably, paper bags. I wondered, how Sharon Bernstein, Cantor at it rose as it should, punched many skulking molecules Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, down as it should, and then, might be lying in wait? And I San Francisco, shares her though I let it rise again too wasn’t sure about the nutritive love of baking, mixed with her much, until the braids were qualities of disinfecting wipes. whimsical humor, and voila! hardly visible, it tasted as That’s if I even had wipes! the joy of challah. it should.

22 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Now I’m eager to bake challah every week. If I could only find flour in the wake of the pandemic! Recipe, Annotated, Abbreviated, and Slightly Modified: List of ingredients, modified for my own dietary predilections, and to have more fat and salt, per Joan Nathan’s recipes: 500g flour, plus extra for Challah with sesame seeds. dusting Courtesy of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. 10.5g salt 25g sugar fine. Main thing is not to put Lightly flour the work surface the salt directly on top of the (I use a silicone mat), then tip 10g instant yeast yeast, which can kill it. Add the dough onto it and begin to 45g fat—olive oil or the fat, 2 beaten eggs, the milk knead. Hold the dough in place margarine—the original recipe or milk substitute, then half the with one hand and stretch it calls for butter. water. Turn the mixture with away from you with the other, 2 eggs plus 1 for glazing the your fingers. It will be super then fold over, turn 1/8 circle, bread. The original recipe sticky. Go with it. Continue and repeat. Keep kneading for calls for medium eggs, but I to add water, a little at a time, 5-10 minutes, at least. Work only buy large eggs, so just until you’ve picked up all the through the initial wet stage keep an eye on the liquids. flour from the sides of the until the dough starts to form a bowl. You may not need to soft, smooth skin. Add a little 50 ml warm milk or milk add all the water, or you may flour if you really, really need substitute. I use almond milk; need to add a little more—you to, but don’t overdo it. something richer is possibly want dough that is soft but not better, but I like the neutral- When your dough feels soggy. This is the hard part, ish flavor of almond milk. smooth and silky, put it into getting the dough to an “ideal” a lightly oiled large bowl. 180 ml cool water wetness. It needs to be a lot Cover with a tea towel or any wetter than you think it should Put flour, salt, sugar, and yeast cloth available and leave to be. Basically, go for as wet in a large mixing bowl. The rise until at least doubled in as is still semi-manageable. original says to put the salt and size, at least 1 hour, but it’s Use the mixture to clean the sugar on one side of the bowl, fine to leave it for 2 or even 3 inside of the bowl and keep and the yeast on the other, but hours. I put it in my oven on going until the mixture forms a the first time I neglected to the “proof” setting for 1 hour. do that and it turned out just rough dough.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 23 Line a baking tray with baking baking try. Beat the remaining Meanwhile, heat your oven parchment or silicone paper. egg and brush over the top to 200 C. of the loaf. I do this slowly, Tip the dough onto a lightly Per Joan Nathan’s challah brushing along the lines of the floured surface. Fold it instructions, for a glossy crust, braid, and trying to make sure inwards repeatedly until all brush again with egg before the egg doesn’t pool anywhere. the air is knocked out and the putting in the oven. Bake the dough is smooth. You can start Put the tray inside a clean loaf for 20-25 minute or until with punching the dough in, plastic bag, making sure the bag it sounds hollow when tapped which is deeply satisfying. doesn’t touch the dough. I have on the base. The loaf will Divide it into 3 equal pieces. no idea how this works, having color quickly due to the sugar Many challot use a 4, 5, 6, or neither a big enough plastic bag and egg, so keep an eye on it. even more braid; instructions nor a way of keeping it from Leave to cool on a wire rack. abound online. Roll each piece touching the dough, so I put a Once the challah is out of out to a sausage (a kosher one, baking rack over the loaf and a the oven, you will have to of course), about 22 cm long. cloth over that. resist—for the sake of familial The dough should be stretchy Leave to proof for about 1 relationships and waistline— enough as to be slightly hour, or until the dough is sneaking off with it and eating comically resistant, trying to at least doubled in size and it by yourself in entirety. This shrink back on itself. Join the 3 springs back quickly if you is not easy. The aroma will pieces together at one end, and prod it lightly with your invade and inflame all your braid. The book gives detailed finger. (I accidentally left it to senses, and any carefully instructions, but I’ll save the proof 1.5 hours the first time, cultivated self-discipline will space here. Tuck the ends and it poofed up so much the want to fly out the window. underneath to neaten. Lift braids were barely visible.) Bake at your own peril. n the dough onto the prepared

HISTORIANS COOKING THE PAST In the spirit of these creative historians featured below, we offer all of the recipes and tidbits for your enticement and enjoyment, so you may look back on this historical time as one that we came through with well-being, nourishment, and connection to our traditions and history. Dawson history teachers Stacey Zembrzycki and Cassandra Marsillo and their colleagues Margo Shea, Salem State University, and Kate Preissler, public historian for the City of Holyoke, launched a blog last week called Historians Cooking the Past. “Facing the daily challenges that come with living through this pandemic has led us to rethink how we engage with the past,” Stacey writes. “In this vein, we have asked storytellers throughout the world to share food memories and a recipe that speaks to these COVID-19 times. “If we can’t gather and share space, we might as well ground ourselves in well-told stories that provide perspective as well as comfort in good food. We view this temporary project as an old-school, wire-bound community cookbook that’s now gone digital, and invite you to follow along.” n

24 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Things To Do While Sheltering-at-Home: Online Cultural Resources

elow, we invite you to explore online resources Bsuggested by Gazeta’s assistant editors Aleksandra Sajdak and Adam Schorin, Gazeta friends on Facebook, and the Congress for Jewish Culture website.

Aleksandra’s Recommendations Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art https://artmuseum.pl/en/ wydarzenia/kontemplacja-w- A still from Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Amator (Camera Buff ), available with English subtitles on Studio Filmowe TOR’s YouTube channel. czasach-pandemii Take a Tour of Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw Classic Polish Movies Warsaw (ŻIH). https://cbj.jhi.pl (with English subtitles) http://warsze.polin.pl/en/ https://www.youtube.com/ Adam’s Recommendations user/StudioFilmoweTOR CBJ (CJL) Ninateka.pl has films, theatre, A large collection of classic Centralna Biblioteka and concerts online for free. Polish movies on YouTube. For Judaistyczna (Central Jewish I think their collection of example, in 2013, the renowned Library) is one of the major theatre might be most exciting: Polish film studio TOR—which world repositories of digitized https://ninateka.pl/filmy/teatr. produced more than a hundred Judaica, available for free via Many of them are available feature films between the years the Internet. The CJL presents with English subs, but you books, works of art, old prints, 1967 and 2019—decided to might have to click on them to manuscripts, archival share some of its pictures on the check. We’d recommend materials, ephemera, and website. The uploaded films can Tadeusz Kantor’s Dead Class newspapers housed by the be streamed free of charge and (https://ninateka.pl/film/ Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish have English subtitles. umarla-klasa-tadeusz-kantor—

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 25 A scene in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s (A)pollonia. A recording of the play is available, for free and with English subtitles, at ninateka.pl. Photograph by Magda Hueckel. Press materials. only available if you’re in Nowy Teatr has shared some War, there’s something here Poland), Krzysztof work online, usually adding for everyone. If you’re Warlikowski’s (A)Pollonia shows to the website on Sunday looking for films specifically (https://ninateka.pl/film/ and making them available for about Polish Jewry, we apollonia-krzysztof- thirty-six hours. They also have recommend starting with warlikowski), and Anna shows for children in Polish: Austeria, The Hourglass Smolar’s Jewish Actors https://nowyteatr.org/en. Sanitorium, and Ida. For a fee (https://ninateka.pl/film/ of $30, you get access to the Eastern European movies— aktorzy-zydowscy-anna- entire site for one month, and Poland. Unlike the other smolar—only in Polish). in that time you can download options on this list, this one is as many films as you like. You Teatr Powszechny has made not free. But it is such an can also browse and download several of their plays available impressive collection of Polish a vast collection of films from online: https://www. films with English subtitles Russia, Bulgaria, Czechia, and powszechny.com/aktualnosci/ that we felt we had to include the rest of Eastern Europe. powszechny-online-teatr- it. From classics like Ashes Check it out here: https:// minimum.html. They’re and Diamonds, The Saragossa easterneuropeanmovies.com/ available to watch on specific Manuscript, and Blind country/poland. n days, and they’re regularly Chance, to contemporary adding more. gems like The Lure and Cold

26 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 EXHIBITIONS AND MUSEUMS

In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Art & Francesco Spagnolo Human Rights at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (UC Berkeley)

fter three years devoted A to cataloging and researching the Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection, the University of California, Berkeley, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life presented a new exhibition, In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Art & Human Rights, showcasing over fifty original works of art and two interactive workstations. The exhibition opened with a private event on February 19, featuring talks by Tad Taube, Magnes Museum’s Interim Director Prof. Benjamin Brinner, Curator Dr. Francesco Spagnolo, and a dynamic The miniature painter, Arthur Szyk, New York, 1942. presentation by Prof. Barbara Photograph by Roman Vishniac (1897-1990). Courtesy of The Magnes Collection. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the installation, An Archive of Born into a middle-class Ronald S. Lauder Chief Archives: Roman Vishniac’s Polish Jewish family, Arthur Curator of the Core Exhibition Exhibition History, featuring Szyk (Łódź, Russian Empire, at POLIN Museum of the the recent gift of the Roman 1894 – New Canaan, History of Polish Jews, Vishniac Archive to The Connecticut, 1951) lived a life in Warsaw, followed by Magnes. With the Szyk and framed by two world wars, the exhibition tours guided by Vishniac collections, The collapse of European UC Berkeley students. Magnes has now received two democracies, and the rise of On Monday, April 13, the of the four largest gifts of art totalitarianism. A refugee, he exhibition on Arthur Szyk in the history of the University ultimately settled in the was presented alongside a new of California, Berkeley. United States in 1940.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 27 resistance, exalted the establishment of the United Nations, and ridiculed dictators of all stripes. His unwavering denunciations of fascist crimes in Europe, the suppression of national rights worldwide, and the endless violations of civil rights in America, are rooted in the experience of marginalization that characterized Jewish life in Eastern Europe in modern times. These concerns still resound strongly today.

The exhibition is organized Untitled [Portrait of Julia Szyk] (1926) by Arthur Szyk. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper. into six sections focused Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, UC Berkeley. on various aspects of human rights: Throughout his work as a literary quotations, witty n Human Rights and their miniature artist and political visual allegories, as well as Collapse is an introduction caricaturist, he used motifs modernist depictions of to Szyk’s world with a drawn from religion, history, technology recur in his works. timeline showing his life politics, and culture, pairing These themes are often paired in the context of the extraordinary craftsmanship with enticing decorative progressive failure of with searing commentary on a themes that have made his European democracies and diverse range of subjects body of work both popular the human rights and including Judaism, the and successful during, and national rights movements, American Revolution, World well after, the span of the beginning with the War II, the Holocaust, and the artist’s life. American Revolution. Here, founding of the State of Israel. Broad concerns for human a selection of Syzk’s works Szyk’s modular aesthetics are rights are woven into Szyk’s begins to show his lifelong deeply connected with the entire oeuvre. In paintings and focus on freedom and the political scope of his art. political cartoons, the artist dangers of tyranny and Medieval and Renaissance exposed the Nazi genocide, totalitarianism, culminating techniques, multilingual supported the Polish in the artist’s depictions of

28 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 the Holocaust as it was taking place in Europe. n The Rights of Global Refugees shows Szyk’s deep concern for refugees like himself, and their lack of the legal protections of citizenship. This section features depictions of refugees in many contexts, from cartoons of innocent children declared enemies of the Third Reich to biblical narratives and a self-portrait included in Szyk’s ode to Canada. n The Right to Resist highlights the role of resistance in preserving human rights, with Szyk’s paintings of the Warsaw Israel [Heritage of the Nations series] (1948) by Arthur Szyk. Ghetto uprising and his Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, UC Berkeley. internationally acclaimed illustration of “The Statute citizenship, featuring which depicted the crimes of Kalisz.” The statute, designs he created for of Axis leaders and Nazis which granted Jews legal countries and organizations. during the Holocaust. This rights and liberties in These detailed illustrations portion of the exhibition Poland in medieval times, became letterheads and also explores an interesting was displayed in London in stamps and often found parallel to Charlie Chaplin’s 1933 to denounce anti- their way into his political characters in his 1940 Semitism in Nazi Germany. cartoons. movie, The Great Dictator.

n n n The Rights of Nationhood The Right to Expose: The Right to America further explores Szyk’s Executioners at Work highlights Szyk’s belief that human rights are displays many of Szyk’s appreciation of his new inextricably tied to most powerful pieces, home country and the

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 29 multi-ethnic fabric of the Working with the https://www.taubephilan U.S. Army, positioning it in curatorial staff of The thropies.org/sites/default/files/ direct contrast to Nazi vid/200310-magnes.mp4. Aryan supremacy. The work Magnes, UC Berkeley More on the exhibition and in this section reflects undergraduate students Arthur Szyk can be found at Szyk’s objection to racial digitized the entire Taube http://bit.ly/inrealtimes. n discrimination and the Family Arthur Szyk organizations that Francesco Spagnolo, PhD, perpetuate it, such as the collection of more than is Curator at The Magnes Ku Klux Klan. 450 works of art. Collection of Jewish Art Working with the curatorial and Life, and Adjunct staff of The Magnes, UC of Szyk’s art for a broad Professor, Department of Berkeley undergraduate audience “in real time.” Music, University of students digitized the entire California, Berkeley. Addressing a crowded Taube Family Arthur Szyk audience at the opening, Collection of more than Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 450 works of art. The results highlighted how the exhibition of this work animate two encourages three pillars of workstations. While one of the “21st century literacy,” digital installations features namely: digital competence, the entire collection in a critical thinking, and high-resolution slideshow that emotional intelligence. Her visitors can stop and inspect in words echoed those of Prof. vivid details, the other Deborah Liptstadt, who visited encourages visitors to examine the exhibition days before the the characters and motifs opening, and who described digitally cropped from the Arthur Szyk’s political art as original artworks, and then the “Instagram of its day.” recombine them to make their own political cartoons. This Keynote address: Professor work is projected on large Barbara Kirshenblatt- wall surfaces within the Gimblett, NYU and POLIN gallery itself, and can be Museum, introduced by instantly published online, Dr. Francesco Spagnolo, giving the contemporary Curator, Magnes Collection exploration and reinterpretation of Jewish Art and Culture:

30 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Cities of Peace Illuminated at the Galicia Jewish Museum Eleven paintings, eleven cities, and thousands of little pieces of gold-leaf

ities of Peace Illuminated is an Cexhibition which presents a suite of monumental gold-leaf paintings that honor the history and culture of world cities that have experienced major conflict and trauma, including Baghdad, Beijing, Hiroshima, Kabul, New York, Sarajevo, and more. Transforming anguish into beauty, the work emphasizes understanding as a prerequisite to peace, and celebrates the best of the human spirit.

As part of the Cities of Peace Ellen Frank. international project created by Dr. Ellen Photograph by Piotr Banasik. Used with permission. Frank, the exhibition took place in Poland at the Galicia Jewish Museum from January 28 through March 31, 2020. Its opening featured the ceremonial unveiling of the eleventh painting of the collection, which was created in Krakόw, as part of the Auschwitz Liberation Initiative. The monumental work commemorates the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration and death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The work is thanks to the initiative of Dr. Frank and the involvement of Polish and foreign artists, as well as cooperation with the Galicia Jewish Museum, JCC Krakόw, Sparking Light, Ellen Frank, created for the 75th Anniversary of the and the Museum of Contemporary Art Liberation of Auschwitz. in Krakow (MOCAK). n 23k “H,” red, champagne gold, palladium leaf, aquarelle on Belgian linen, 175 x 225 cm. Courtesy of Galicia Jewish Museum. Used with permission..

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 31 #GaliciaOnline: Exhibitions and Programs at the Galicia Jewish Museum Jakub Nowakowski

From Home to Home. the war. A series of her pastel The Galicia Jewish Museum A Tale of the Wartime drawings and her memoirs, has, for many years, been Exile and Survival of the handwritten in Polish, gave cooperating with Witnesses to Pisek Family rise to this exhibition. History: Holocaust Survivors, Online exhibition tour with former camp prisoners, We would like to invite you to Curator Paulina Banasik and the Righteous Among an online exhibition tour with the Nations. Thanks to this oday, if we decided to its curator, Paulina Banasik. cooperation, visitors to the go on a 12,000-plus The tour will be in English. T museum have had the chance kilometer journey, we would A special invitation comes to meet Witnesses, listen to either take a 15-hour flight from Irena Pisek’s grandson, their stories and, we truly or drive a car for 153 hours. Mr. Amichai Pardo, believe, learn something new If we chose to cover this https://www.facebook.com/ that may shape their own distance by foot, it would take watch/?v=657476468361605, future in some small way. 2,300 hours, an approximately and Tomasz Strug, deputy These meetings have great 100-day march, non-stop. director and chief curator of educational value, allowing Such a journey was made by the Galicia Jewish Museum: us to focus on the history the Pisek family and took over https://www.facebook.com/ of individuals. As a result, three years, from August 1939 watch/?v=160366895158985. we can better understand to December 1942. They left the tragic events of the past home and they arrived home. Click here to view the first episode of the online tour: and how they influenced They were only supposed https://www.youtube.com/ the experiences of these to leave for a short time and watch?v=ukAmERQW8TY&- individuals. We do not want travel not too far away, but the feature=youtu.be this important voice to be turmoil of war drove them into silent, especially in such a the unknown, across Europe, Subsequent episodes will be difficult time for all of us. Asia, and the Middle East. published on the Facebook page and YouTube channel of For now we cannot meet at It was not an easy journey. the Galicia Jewish Museum. the museum in person, but And it wasn’t easy to talk we can continue learning about. Irena Pisek did so — in #StayHome and join us for the from the witnesses by reading pictures and in words — only online tour! their biographies, including a few decades after the end of

32 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 those published by the Galicia would usually be unable to see “What Were You Jewish Museum, and by if we visited the camp and saw Thinking?” – An participating in live events— it with the naked eye. Exhibition of Children’s including a recent lecture and Works at the Galicia Follow our Facebook page. Q&A with Professor Anita Jewish Museum Panek, a Holocaust survivor, Guide: Bartosz Wencel, in Let the small works of art, which will be broadcast Polish. which were created by your and archived on the Galicia children, be mounted among Jewish Museum Facebook Virtual Tour of Kazimierz, the works of a true master of page: www.facebook.com/ the Jewish District of imagination, Polish illustrator zydowskiemuzeumgalicja. Kraków Jan Marcin Szancer, to Click here to download During the virtual tour we whom a new exhibition at the biographies of Witnesses to will tell you more about Galicia Jewish Museum will History (free of charge): Kazimierz, a place that could be devoted. We would like to http://www.galiciajewish be spoken about for eternity invite you to participate in an museum.org/en/witnesses-to- and yet still hold secrets to exhibition of children’s works. polish-jewish-history. discover. What can be seen The expression “What from a bird’s-eye view? What Were You Thinking?” does Virtual Tour of the Area are the traces of the most not need to have negative of the Former Płaszów distant history, and where connotations—it is simply Concentration Camp can you see them, if you look a question about what is Between the streets of closely at a satellite map and going on inside someone’s Wielicka and Kamieńskiego digital models? How did head. What are your children in Krakόw there is an area Kazimierz change and how imagining, and how far do which, during the World War it is changing now? How is their dreams reach? Their II, was a tragic and horrible Kazimierz displayed in the small works of art will create space. Today not much is left photographs of the creators of a gallery which we will mount of the former concentration Traces of Memory, the Galicia together with the artworks of camp and the atrocities that Jewish Museum permanent Jan Marcin Szancer. took place there. We invite exhibition? We do not impose any special you to this virtual tour of the Follow our Facebook page. technique. The method of site, during which we will creating the work depends present the topography and Guide: Bartosz Wencel, in on you. But we do encourage history of the Płaszów camp Polish. you to get inspiration from by showing things that we

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 33 the works of Szancer. The of the Holocaust. More than by some politicians, but submitted works will be a quarter believed Jews also some of the media, framed and displayed at the have too much influence in which present a fragmentary exhibition of children’s works. business and finance. One in approach to Polish Jewish Let your children take their five believed anti-Semitism history and support a first steps on an artistic path! is a response to the everyday nationalist agenda. actions of Jews. This lack In the upcoming weeks we The intensification of such of knowledge is especially will show you a few ideas that attitudes and growing anti- visible among the young. might inspire you about how Semitism are related to a deep One in five people in France to create small works of art crisis of democratic values between the ages of 18 and from seemingly trivial objects. that we have been dealing with 34 said they had never heard “What Were You Thinking?” in recent years. Throughout about the Holocaust. This was accompanies the exhibition Europe, particularly in Szancer, Imagine!, a narrative also true for 12 percent of Central and Eastern Europe, on the life and works of the young Austrians. In Poland, we have observed a retreat prominent Polish illustrator. His 32 percent of young people from fundamental democratic books shaped the imagination claimed to know nothing, values and a growing of many generations of or just a little, about the popularity of nationalist, Poles, and that is why it is Holocaust. At the same time, populist, and Euroskeptic worth remembering them and over 30 percent of Europeans political parties. New discovering them again. believed that the Jewish media and various forms of people use the Holocaust More information: https:// propaganda, including fake to advance their position or www.facebook.com/ news, are becoming more and to achieve certain goals. In events/1073786286327578/ more influential in shaping Poland this was true for 50 public opinion. Anti-Semitism, percent of the respondents. The Second Edition of the racism, and xenophobia Project “(In)separable. What these polls therefore have become weapons in the Difficult Subjects in reveal is not only lack of basic struggle for power. Polish-Jewish Relations” knowledge, but also a large To discuss and address these number of misconceptions and Recent surveys conducted in issues, the Galicia Jewish anti-Semitic stereotypes that Europe and North America Museum presents the second shape the way Jews and the revealed an alarming edition of “(In)separable. Holocaust are perceived. trend. According to a 2018 Difficult Subjects in Polish- CNN poll, one in twenty In Poland, these stereotypes Jewish Relations.” Through Europeans had never heard are amplified and echoed a series of panel discussions

34 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 and educational materials, the n Polish-Jewish rivalry in http://www.galiciajewish museum challenges some of suffering, commemoration, museum.org/en/series-of- the most persistent fake news and mourning discussions-in-separable- and misconceptions that have n responsibility over Jewish difficult-subjects-in-polish- been repeated in the mass heritage in Poland jewish-relations. media during the recent crises n in Polish-Jewish relations, the identity of Polish Jews They are also on YouTube while educating the public n philosemitism in Poland (in Polish), https:// www.youtube.com/user/ on Polish-Jewish history n images of Jews and other by providing true and fair galiciajewishmuseum. minorities in the media knowledge. This project is carried out Jakub Nowakowski is Over 850 people participated in cooperation with the Director of the Galicia in the discussions of the first Jewish Museum in Kraków. Evens Foundation, the edition of the series, as well Koret Foundation, and our as more than 5,000 viewers partnering institution, the of the discussion broadcasts, Institute of Jewish Studies suggesting that there is great of Jagiellonian University public demand for such information. in Kraków. Media patrons include: Polityka, Gazeta The second edition of the Wyborcza, Chidusz, New project will deepen some of Eastern Europe, Radio the issues addressed in the first Kraków, and monthly series. We will also focus on magazine Kraków. problems that have not been discussed before. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=IO- The discussions will feature n3xx6shE&feature=youtu.be such subjects as: n (post-)Jewish property in Information on the dates of the Poland events will be provided soon. Meanwhile, we encourage n anti-Jewish pogroms on you to view the educational Polish soil materials from the first series n anti-Polish attitudes in of discussions, which are Israel available on our website:

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 35 POLIN Museum at a Distance Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

useums the world over events online—lectures, book Behind the scenes: Lectures Mare adapting to a new launches, interviews, cooking about the Core Exhibition. reality. Closed during the workshops, and more—during For those interested in the pandemic, they have found the period in which our doors making of POLIN Museum their way into your home— must remain closed. and its Core Exhibition, Bar- online. Some museums are bara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s Virtual tours: While nothing gradually opening up, but not illustrated lectures offer both compares with visiting our fully. Until there is a vaccine, a walkthrough of the Core exhibitions in person, we have COVID-19 remains a danger. Exhibition and an inside view curated a selection of virtual How then are museums of the principles guiding its tours of past exhibitions and making themselves safe to creation. https://www.youtube. created a new series, “Tour visit? What will the new com/watch?v=7ENRSIlfh the Museum without Leaving normal look like when this CQ&t=68s epidemic has passed? Home,” in Polish. Temporary exhibitions: Thematic tours of the Core n Frank Stella and Lockdown Exhibition: We developed Synagogues of Historic During the period that POLIN four thematic paths—“Jewish Poland can be viewed Museum was forced to Religious Life,” “Jewish in its entirety online close, the museum team has Women,” “Yiddish: Fourteen thanks to the support of been working from home. Highlights,” and “One George S. Blumenthal POLIN Museum began as a Hour, Eight Highlights”—in and Patricia Kenner. museum without walls and response to visitor interests. has always had a lively online We intended them to be used n Blood: Uniting and Dividing presence. As a result, it was in the exhibition as self- is a virtual walkthrough of well-positioned for “home guided thematic tours and an exhibition that explores delivery” of its rich content to provided them as printed the role of blood in Judaism all those sheltering-at-home. handouts at the entrance to the and Christianity and in There is much from which to Core Exhibition, and also as Polish-Jewish relations. select. Our task is to curate downloadable PDFs. http://krew.polin.pl/en/ from our archive of online http://virtualtour.polin.pl/ 186-2/ content, while continuing to create interesting new

36 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 n How to Make a Museum is n Dariusz Stola, POLIN Education: POLIN Museum’s is a temporary exhibition Museum of the History education programs, which documenting the entire of Polish Jews and the have garnered top awards, process of creating the Politics of History in are especially important with POLIN Museum, from the Today’s Poland https:// schools in Poland being closed initial idea in 1993 to the www.youtube.com/ and families relying on online Grand Opening in October watch?v=t6zSTO1Q2 learning. Our educators have 2014. This exhibition xo&list=PLWNftBqbZ developed resources available was itself part of the r5AtIis2kr7rhebgydH_ on social media for teachers, Grand Opening. https:// Ch7A&index=15&t=0s students, and families artsandculture.google.com/ sheltering-at-home. n Dariusz Stola, Exhibiting exhibit/how-to-make-a- Difficult Histories: March Explore the Collection: museum/wR7xiggx ‘68 https://www.youtube. POLIN Museum has been Lectures: POLIN Museum’s com/watch?v=GAxm0i building its collection, and we Global Education Outreach XaFkE&list=PLWNftBqb encourage visitors to explore Program (GEOP) offers Zr5BX4CtQruxt7t5Af3 the Central Judaica Database video-recordings of lectures VRPRay&index=9&t=0s http://judaika.polin.pl/ and Virtual Shtetl at the museum by outstanding n Marian Turski, keynote https://sztetl.org.pl/en/. scholars and colleagues, address, commemoration of whether at conferences or as the 75th Anniversary of the Conferences: A major part of our distinguished lecture Liberation of Auschwitz international conference, series: https://www.polin.pl/ Innovative Methods, New Music: POLIN Museum is en/geop-distinguished-lecture- Sources, and Paradigm Shifts now renowned as a music series?mc_cid= in Jewish Studies, organized venue and concerts are 7b310066da&mc_eid= by GEOP, was scheduled among the most popular 84722e0ad0. It also links to for October 2020. Given the events. This October, POLIN international lectures. Notices uncertainties, we decided to Museum will celebrate of lectures that are being reschedule the conference the fifth anniversary of the delivered live online during for October 2021. To build Grand Opening. The open-air the time the museum is closed interest and momentum during musical performance created are announced on POLIN the intervening months, we to mark the Grand Opening Museum’s Facebook page, are organizing a series of is online: https://www.polin. most recently the “Voices podcasts that will explore the pl/en/news/2014/10/15/great- from Warsaw” series that themes of the conference in musical-performance-to-mark- accompanies the new temporary relation to epidemics past and the-grand-opening-of-the-core exhibition Here Is Muranów. present from interdisciplinary

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 37 perspectives. https://www. Unfortunately, the Core Post COVID-19 polin.pl/en/whats-new-whats- Exhibition will remain closed Life will never be the same, next-2020 for now because of narrow nor will museums. What did spaces, where crowding would Radio POLIN: One of the we learn? With their doors occur, and interactive touch most exciting initiatives to closed, museums went online. screens will be off limits emerge during the lockdown, An online experience cannot for hygienic reasons. Going Radio POLIN offers a golden replace being in the museum, forward, we may see a shift opportunity to broadcast the and a “virtual tour” cannot to motion activation and many concerts, lectures, and stand in for the in-person to visitors using their own other programs organized by or face-to-face experience, mobile devices. POLIN Museum, as well as to which is at once embodied develop programs specifically POLIN Museum, like other and social. While online for radio, which is enjoying a museums, is facing an experiences do provide an revival. For now, the content immediate shortfall in earned alternative in times like this, museums are reporting is in Polish, but English- income. With thirty percent of that after an initial burst of language programming is its annual budget coming from interest in virtual exhibitions planned. https://www.polin.pl/ ticket sales and space rental, and tours, people have pl/radio the museum is struggling grown tired of them, turning to cover operating support instead to games, projects, Reopening and above all, salaries. Our especially downloadable talented and dedicated staff is Cultural institutions in Poland ones for children and are beginning to open on a our most precious resource. families, workshops like limited basis and will need to The museum has had to cancel POLIN Museum’s Jewish follow strict safety protocols. some events, postpone others, food workshops, “how-to” At POLIN Museum, which is and move many online. With videos, lectures, discussions, scheduled to reopen in June, a warm weather on its way, and concerts, both live- limited number of visitors will programming outdoors might streamed and archived, and be admitted at a time. They also become an option. With access to collections and the will be able to visit the new the downturn in travel and opportunity to curate your temporary exhibition, Here Is tourism, connecting with the own exhibition online. These Muranów, which explores the local community has become activities show that audiences history of the neighborhood even more important—and are looking for something where the museum is located. the timing of our Here Is more active, an experience This was the pre-war Jewish Muranów opportune. that is about connection. As neighborhood where the Ben Davis notes in “How Germans created the ghetto. We Should Reimagine Art’s

38 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Mission in the Time of ‘Social to understand who we are Emanuel Ringelblum in the Distancing,” “passive cultural reaching online and what it Warsaw Ghetto, collected on consumption is going to make would take to bring them into the spot, in the moment, in us feel disempowered and the museum once we reopen. real time. alienated just when we need to POLIN Museum records While historians have maintain social connection.” and also live-streams events https://news.artnet.com/ typically taken the position within its walls so that those opinion/social-distancing- that the line between history art-1810029 at a distance can experience and the present is an arbitrary concerts, lectures, debates, and number, perhaps fifty years, In a word, museums need to other programs in real time, as the realization that one is rethink the relationship of well as after the fact. During living in a moment that is the experience they offer in the pandemic, live Zoom already historical makes it person and what they offer became the norm. There is urgent to document it as it online—less a “virtual” potential for such platforms to unfolds. This is precisely one version and more something function as more than a lesser of the topics that the planned unique to the online medium replacement for in-person GEOP podcasts will address and its various platforms, presence. Social distancing in the run-up to the postponed as well as to old media and during the pandemic has conference: new sources, new the merging of them––Radio inspired experimentation, methods, and new ways of POLIN is a good example. to mention only ensemble thinking about Jewish studies, These media are not only musical performances across especially in a museum reaching those who would multiple locations, as well as setting. The challenge now otherwise come to POLIN Zoom Passover seders. is for museums, and POLIN Museum, but also potential Museum in particular, to Indeed, creative responses to new visitors. According to continue to respond creatively the pandemic have prompted a recent NEMO (Network to a new global reality. n of European Museum Jewish museums to collect Organizations) survey, “over “digital ephemera.” The Barbara Kirshenblatt- 82% of Europeans are online Rothschild Foundation has Gimblett, PhD, is Ronald S. [75% in social media], yet been supporting the collection Lauder Chief Curator of only 42% of Europeans visited of Jewish ephemera—and the Core Exhibition of the museums at least once last now, specifically, Jewish POLIN Museum of the year” (https://www.ne-mo. responses to COVID-19—at History of Polish Jews org/news/article/nemo/nemo- the National Library of Israel. and Professor Emerita at survey-on-museums-and- This effort reminded me of the New York University. covid-19-museums-adapt- Oyneg Shabes underground to-go-online.html). We need archive, organized by

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 39 REPORTS Commemorating Thirty Years of the

Jewish Culture Festival Janusz Makuch, Director, Jewish Culture Festival. Used with permission. Dear Friends of the Jewish Culture Festival,

Above: Official poster of the 8th Jewish Due to the pandemic we are all facing, I have decided that the Culture Festival. Below: Official poster Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków, scheduled for June 26 – of the 13th Jewish Culture Festval. Page 43, top to bottom, left to right: Songs of July 5, will not be held. We have been forced to postpone it until Love and Loss at the 29th Jewish Culture a time that will be safe for all of us. We will inform you of all Festival; Neta Elkayam performing at the 28th Jewish Culture Festival; Songs of Love decisions as soon as the situation in Poland and around the world and Loss at the 29th Jewish Culture Festival; has stabilized enough to act responsibly. Gili Yalo performing at the 27th Jewish Culture Festival; Cantors’ Concert at the Despite being physically apart, we are still with you and we are 29th Jewish Culture Festival. Photographs by Michał Ramus. Page 44, top to bottom, asking you to be with us. Let’s support one another in these difficult left to right: Shalom on Szeroka, the final days, show mutual respect and kindness, and meet in the only space concert of the 29th Jewish Culture Festival, photograph by Michał Ramus; Mała Orkiestra available—in the space of the spirit. Yes... and on the Internet! Dancingowa performing at the 29th Jewish Culture Festival, photograph by Michał We aren’t stopping our work, though. We will soon post Ramus; Kibbutz Contemporary Dance information about the festival’s presence in a new, updated formula Company performing at the 26th Jewish Culture Festival, photograph by Michał on our Facebook fan page and on our website. Ramus; a view from Cheder café during the 29th Jewish Culture Festival, photograph by Thanks to our donors and to your dedication, the festival will Bartosz Dittmar; Victoria Hanna performing at the 28th Jewish Culture Festival, photograph continue to exist and develop. Over the past thirty-two years, we’ve by Michał Ramus; Shalom on Szeroka, the created a space of spiritual and intellectual presence that will be final concert of the 28th Jewish Culture Festival, photograph by Bartosz Dittmar. threatened by neither the COVID-19 virus nor by an even worse All photographs courtesy of the Jewish Culture Festival. menace—the virus of hatred.

I hope that you emerge from the shadows stronger than ever before. I hope that all of us meet soon, face-to-face; and I persist in my unshakeable conviction that we are the ones who are capable of building our good, common, Polish-Jewish world.

Respectfully and peacefully yours, Shalom!

Janusz Makuch Director, Jewish Culture Festival

40 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 41 42 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 One Thousand Stories about Yiddish Language and Culture: The Yiddish Book Christa P. Whitney Center’s Wexler Oral History Project

e didn’t have a sewage system “W... but we had a very active cultural life.” Reflections such as this one from Holocaust survivor Jack Lewin represent the personal perspectives documented as part of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, now in its tenth year. The growing collection of interviews offers a rich and complex chronicle of Ashkenazi Jewish life Christa P. Whitney, Director of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History through examination of the Project, at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. legacy and changing nature of Photograph by Agnieszka Ilwicka. Used with permission. Yiddish language and culture. The growing collection translated into Polish, To date, interviews on five of interviews offers a rich accompanied him to continents have been video- Auschwitz. Many interviews recorded in English, Yiddish, and complex chronicle like this reach back into the Polish, and other languages. of Ashkenazi Jewish life inter-war memories of survivors now in their 90s. Of the more than 1,000 through examination of interviews now in the the legacy and changing Other interviews document collection, many document the the rebuilding of post-war lives of Jews born in the nature of Yiddish Jewish culture in Poland and region of the former Polish- language and culture. in displaced persons’ camps. Lithuanian Commonwealth For instance, Lea Szlanger and their descendants, Lewin explained how reading describes how she and including Jack Lewin, who books distracted him from others were recruited by was born in Łódź in 1927 and hunger during the ghetto Ida Kamińska, then artistic interviewed in Los Angeles in period, and how a beloved director of the Jewish State 2013. In his native Yiddish, copy of David Copperfield, Theater in Warsaw.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 43 The project not only looks back in time, it also documents the place of Yiddish in the world today. In 2013, as project director, I traveled to Poland with (then) Yiddish Book Center Fellow Agnieszka Ilwicka. We interviewed Marcin Wodziński, Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Kamil Kijek, and other luminaries in Yiddish studies. We also interviewed Barbara Henryk Robak, a Polish Holocaust survivor who passed away last year, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, chief pictured here being interviewed for the Wexler Oral History Project. curator of the Core Exhibition Photograph by Christa Whitney. Used with permission. and advisor to the director of POLIN Museum of the around the world and send Oral History Project, please History of Polish Jews, about them back to Amherst for contact us at tellyourstory@ her background and processing. One of the yiddishbookcenter.org. n experience living in Poland ongoing objectives of the during the development of the Yiddish Book Center is to Christa P. Whitney is exhibition. Other subsets of make the interviews accessible Director of the Yiddish Book the collection focus on to the public. Today, three- Center’s Wexler Oral Yiddish theater, klezmer quarters of the interviews can History Project. music, and Yiddish writers be watched in full on our and their descendants. website, along with thousands of excerpts. You can search The work of the project, about a topic that might be including processing and included within the collection archiving interviews, is by keyword or name at www. undertaken by a small staff yiddishbookcenter.org/tell- based at the Yiddish Book your-story. Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. In addition, If you have a story you think several oral history field would be of interest to the fellows record interviews Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler

44 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 The Great Synagogue of Os´więcim Maciek Zabierowski

efore Oświęcim became Auschwitz, it was home Bto a Jewish community for 400 years. Today, with no Jewish residents, the town recently paid tribute to its Jewish past and honored the Great Synagogue of Oświęcim, destroyed by the Nazis in November 1939.

Before the outbreak of World War II, Jews constituted 60 Lea Gletiman, a 95-year-old survivor from Oświęcim, speaks at the ceremony for percent of the local population. the opening of the Great Synagogue Memorial Park. Photograph by Andrzej Rudiak. Courtesy of Maciek Zabierowski. Called “Oshpitzin” by the local Jews, the town had over In the park you will burned the Great Synagogue twenty synagogues and prayer be able to rest on to the ground. Its last traces were removed on German houses. However, the social benches with symbolic and religious life of the Jews order by a specially created of Oświęcim focused above perforations depicting commando consisting of all on the largest temple—the the signs of the zodiac— Auschwitz prisoners, mainly Poles, who, as part of enslaved Great Synagogue. It was built a reflection of the in 1588 on a plot of the Jewish labor, were forced to complete community donated by Jan ornamentation from the demolition of the building Piotraszewski, a townsman the Great Synagogue. in the summer of 1941. and Oświęcim elder. Over the On November 28, 2019, centuries it was destroyed Kuncewicz, director of the exactly eighty years after its several times. Auschwitz Jewish Center, destruction, residents of which runs the local Jewish For decades the Great Oświęcim and guests from Museum and maintains the Synagogue was the place around the world, including only synagogue left in the town. around which the life of the Holocaust survivors and their Jewish community in Oświęcim In the middle of the night on descendants, gathered at was concentrated, said Tomasz November 30, 1939, the Nazis a special ceremony to

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 45 inaugurate the Great photos and a 3-D model of the The park, designed by Synagogue Memorial Park. building. The park contains Kraków architects from the This grassroots project forty stone slabs, arranged in a NArchitekTURA Design came to life thanks to the free composition, whose Studio and Imaginga Studio, involvement of many people irregular arrangement will contain over twenty and institutions, including symbolizes the ruins. In species of various shrubs and the town of Oświęcim and addition, the synagogue flowers, while incorporating the local residents. perimeter is marked and a the decades-old trees, to copy of the synagogue enhance visitor experience. n In the park you will be able to chandelier is hanging over rest on benches with symbolic the site. The goal, added Maciek Zabierowski is perforations depicting the Director Kuncewicz, is to Education and Special signs of the zodiac—a create a site that will be Projects Director of the reflection of the ornamentation meaningful for residents and Auschwitz Jewish Museum. from the Great Synagogue. the increasing number of The history of the temple will tourists coming to Oświęcim be presented through the in conjunction with visits to installation with its historical the Auschwitz Memorial.

The Great Synagogue Memorial Park in Oświęcim. Photograph by Piotr Strycharski. Courtesy of Maciek Zabierowski.

46 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 FestivALT Moves Online Adam Schorin

n response to the ongoing online, developing its long- Easter market, where this COVID-19 crisis, term projects, and promoting practice is especially popular, IFestivALT, like many arts its artists. would normally have been and culture organizations, held. Meeting on Zoom and On Monday, April 13, has moved most of its livestreaming to the FestivALT produced a six- programming online. FestivALT Facebook page, hour online version of its FestivALT, an independent two of FestivALT’s co- Lucky Jew performance, a live Jewish arts collective based directors, Michael Rubenfeld in Kraków, had scheduled its artwork created in response to and Adam Schorin, welcomed fourth annual festival for late the common Polish practice of virtual passersby to their June, to be themed around buying and selling images of stalls, selling parody “Lucky identities in flux. Instead, Jews with coins for good luck. Jew” objects and hosting a the collective is focusing its The performance took place complicated conversation energy on producing work on the day that the Emaus about stereotypes and

A screenshot from FestivALT’s online performance of Lucky Jew. Courtesy of FestivALT.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 47 tradition. They were joined by performances, and a series of co-directors. “We have a approximately 100 people on workshops and discussions on unique opportunity to engage Zoom and Facebook, Zoom and Facebook. The first a global audience in critical including Bogusław Sonik, a virtual tour will address points conversations about member of the European of tension in Jewish heritage contemporary Jewish Poland, Parliament who had recently sites in Kazimierz, adapted and to bring our particular petitioned the mayor of from a tour that FestivALT blend of arts and activism (and Kraków to monitor the sale produced for the Unsound chutzpah) to a new platform.” of Jewish figurines for Festival in October 2019, and To stay updated on expressions of anti-Semitism. will encourage audience FestivALT’s work, visit them (For more information about participation via Zoom. at festivalt.com or facebook. the Lucky Jew performance, “We’re learning to adapt, and com/festivaltkrakow. n see Adam Schorin’s essay in figure out how we can still our summer 2019 issue.) produce things we’re Adam Schorin is a passionate about in the current contributing editor Over the coming months, climate,” says Magda to Gazeta. FestivALT will be producing Rubenfeld Koralewska, virtual tours, interactive online another of FestivALT’s

Betty Q performs at FestivALT 2019. Photograph by Adam Schorin. Used with permission.

48 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 ANNOUNCEMENTS Books Antony Polonsky Major Work Published on Anti-Jewish Pogroms

major four-volume work entitled Anti-Jewish Pogroms Aon Polish Lands in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku) was recently released as the result of an international research project headed by Prof. Artur Markowski of the History Department of Warsaw University, within the framework of an NPRH Polish ministerial grant (“Pogroms. Collective Violence against Jews on Polish Lands in the 19th and 20th Centuries and its Influence on Polish-Jewish Relations. History, Memory, Identity”). Kamil Kijek, associate professor at the Taube Department of Jewish Studies, participated in the wide-ranging project as both coordinator of the research

team working on the inter-war period Volume I of Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w and as co-editor of the second and XIX i XX wieku (Anti-Jewish Pogroms on Polish Lands in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries), published third volumes. The series was co- by The Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish funded by the Taube Department Academy of Sciences, in 2019. of Jewish Studies.

The goal of the project was to describe and present the genesis of the most notorious pogroms, placing them within the widest possible perspective of political, social, and cultural changes taking place on Polish territory over a 200-year period. n

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 49 Third Volume of Hasidism Series Published in Polish Edited by Marcin Wodziński Austeria Press, Krakόw-Budapest, 2019

The Polish editions of Marcin Wodziński’s Hasidism trilogy, published by Austeria Press in 2019.

e are pleased to that first appeared in English resource. We trust that it will W announce the arrival of in 2018. introduce new students to the Chasydyzm. Źródła, Metody, secrets of using sources on the The Introduction opens with Perspektywy, the Polish- history of Hasidism, and that language version of Studying the Latin title Ad Fontes, it will illuminate for Hasidism. Sources, Methods, indicating that the contents experienced scholars new Perspectives, edited by Marcin will take readers to the origins Wodziński and published by of Hasidism: “We hope that ways of expanding their Austeria Press. It is the third … the book we are offering source base and of bringing in volume in a new three-volume the reader will be a valuable new sources, methods, and research series on Hasidism teaching and academic research perspectives.” n

50 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture By Mariusz Kałczewiak University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2019

rgentina was the third most popular destination for Eastern European Jews Aseeking safety and a better life during the first three decades of the 20th century. Between 1918 and 1939 alone, sixty thousand Polish Jews established new homes in Argentina, forming a strong ethnic community that embraced the local culture while maintaining a unique Jewish-Polish character. This mass migration was exceeded only by the flows to the United States and Palestine.

Mariusz Kałczewiak has constructed a complex narrative based on archival research, Yiddish travelogues, and the Yiddish and Spanish- language press to reveal how the migration transformed political and cultural environments not only in Argentina but in Poland too. He argues that the migrants and their children kept meaningful ties with Poland and thought of Argentina as part of a global Yiddishland, involving mutual interactions between the sending and receiving communities. Kałczewiak’s book Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture has been praised as a case study of “how ethnicity by Mariusz Kałczewiak, published by University of evolves among migrants and their children, and Alabama Press in 2019. the dynamics that emerge between putting down roots in a new country and maintaining commitments to the country of origin.”

Kałczewiak is senior research associate and lecturer in the Slavic Studies department at the University of Potsdam. He has published in American Jewish History, The New Ethnic Studies in Latin America, and Studia Judaica. n

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 51 Voices from the Bial/ystok Ghetto Edited by Michael Nevins iUniverse, Bloomington, Indiana, 2019

or more than seventy years, a diary written in Białystok during FWorld War II was virtually unnoticed and about to be discarded with trash when someone looked inside and discerned its historic value. It was written between 1939 and 1943 by young David Spiro (in Polish Dawid Szpiro), who probably died during the city’s ghetto uprising against the Nazis. The diary describes life in the city during Russian and then German governance from the perspective of an ordinary young man—certainly not a charismatic leader. As Spiro explained, “If someone reads my diary in the future, will they be able to believe soemthing like that? Surely not, they will say poppycock and lies, but this is the truth, disgusting and terrible; for me it’s a reality.” This diary is a critical Voices from the Białystok Ghetto by Michael Nevins, testimony to those dark times. n published by iUniverse in 2019.

Dr. Michael Nevins is a retired physician who has been studying his paternal grandparents’ roots in Dąbrowa Białostocka. He published a memoir about it in 1982.

52 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Autobiography. Literature. Culture. Media: A Journal of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Szczecin The editors-in-chief are Professors Inga Iwasiów and Jerzy Madejski

s described by its editors, Professors Inga Iwasiόw and Jerzy Madejski, “In Autobiography… Awe analyze the evolution of old autobiographical sources (letters, autobiographies, chronicles, diaries, memoirs, etc.), as well as their present-day variants (emails, blogs, internet autobiographical comic strips, profiles on social media, internet family chronicles, etc.). We ask the question of how new forms affect personal narratives and how they modify present-day ways of expression. In short, we describe a wide variety of multimedia biography, which has become more and more popular. The autobiographical need, in our opinion, triggers not only stories, but research methods and styles of critical narration. We present both analyses of actual autobiographical practices and scientific descriptions of concepts of Polish and foreign scholars concerning the title categories of our journal. One of the topics is regional identity as reconstructed in the form of reminiscences, such as: a diary, an essay, a scientific monograph, a novel,

a film, a blog, a press polemic, typical of the present day.” A 2018 edition of Autobiography. Literature. Culture. Media. The journal is published twice a year in accordance with an open access policy. Each issue is devoted to Read more at: https://wnus.edu.pl/au/en. one subject. For example, in 2017 an issue dedicated to Yiddish texts, was edited by Joanna Lisek from the University of Wrocław. The authors analyzed hand- written documents of Bronia Baum, intimate letters of Rachela Auerbach, Holocaust literature of Yitzhok Katzenelson, and post-war letters from the audience of the Jewish Department of Polish Radio in Poland. An important part of the issue consisted of translations of the autobiographical texts of Malka Lee, Bronia Baum, and I. J. Singer. n

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 53 The Theodore Bikel Legacy Project Announces Theodore (“Theo”) Bikel’s The City of Light By Aimee Ginsburg Bikel with illustrations by Noah Phillips Moment Books/Mandel Vilar Press, Washington, D.C., 2019

ased on a short story Theodore Bikel wrote before he died, BThe City of Light was expanded by TBLP director Aimee Ginsburg Bikel into a book. It tells the story of Theo’s happy childhood in Vienna in the years leading to the Anschluss, and of his escape at the age of thirteen. The book, for all ages of young adult and up, and for all occasions, highlights Theo’s commitment to tikkun olam and shows that the light and goodness in our hearts can prevail over hatred, bigotry, and injustice with a deep commitment—even if it takes time. Theodore Bikel’s The City of Light by Aimee Ginsburg Bikel with The book includes a glossary of illustrations by Noah Phillips, published by Moment Books/Mandel Vilar Press in 2019. Yiddish words (so the kids can learn their own secret language!), a honey cake recipe from Theo’s grandmother, and an old, new song by Theo. n

54 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 . Straznicy Fatum (Guardians of Fate) By Bożena Keff Krytyka Polityczna, Warsaw, 2020

uardians of Fate” is how Bożena Keff refers to the people who, sometimes “Geven before the summer of 1942, considered the destiny of Jews to be a foregone conclusion. This “Jewish fate” found its embodiment in the Nazis, but its wardens were Poles—those of them who made sure that no victim was to escape their doom. Often, the Nazis were imagined to be omnipresent, making the death penalty for helping Jews a realistic fear. But in reality, the punishment had to be brokered first by complicit fellow Poles. The idea of ever-present Nazis was used to cloak the basic lack of empathy toward Jews and the commonplace denunciation, plunder, pogroms, and murders committed against them.

Polish literature of the 1940s and 50s provides important insight into the behavior of Poles during the Holocaust. It is expressed by, among others, Zofia Nałkowska, Adolf Rudnicki, Strażnicy Fatum (Guardians of Fate) by Bożena Keff, Kazimierz Brandys, Ludwik Hering, and a published by Krytyka Polityczna, Warsaw, 2020. forgotten writer, Lwów-born Kazimierz R. Frenkel. From the examples of Julian Tuwim and Tadeusz Różewicz, Keff analyzes the discourse in which the circumstances of the Shoah and characteristics of Jewish identity were presented. The conclusions drawn from this re-reading of literary works are not comforting. Depressing as they are, they may guide us toward collective self-awareness. They should also urge us to face current pressing concerns about the role of minority groups—stigmatized and humiliated— within the Polish community. n

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 55 From Left to Right. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The New York Intellectuals and the Politics of Jewish History By Nancy Sinkoff. Wayne State University Press, 2020

rom Left to Right: Lucy S. American while Polish Jewish Dawidowicz, the New York civilization was still inscribed Intellectuals,F and the Politics in her heart, and also explores of Jewish History is the first when and how Dawidowicz comprehensive biography became the voice of East of Dawidowicz (1915-90), a European Jewry for the pioneer historian in the field American Jewish public. that is now called Holocaust Part four exposes the fissure studies. Dawidowicz was a between Dawidowicz’s household name in the post- European-inflected, diaspora- war years, not only because nationalist, modern Jewish of her scholarship but also identity and the shifting due to her political views. definition of American Dawidowicz, like many other liberalism from the late New York intellectuals, was a 1960s forward, which also youthful communist, became saw the emergence of neo- an FDR Democrat mid-century, From Left to Right: Lucy S. conservatism. The book Dawidowicz, the New York and later championed neo- Intellectuals, and the Politics of includes an interpretation conservatism. Nancy Sinkoff Jewish History by Nancy Sinkoff, of her memoir From That argues that Dawidowicz’s published by Wayne State University Place and Time, as well as Press, 2020. rightward shift emerged out an appendix of thirty-one of living in pre-war Poland, previously unpublished letters story of Dawidowicz’s watching the Holocaust unfold that illustrate her broad reach. childhood, adolescence, and from New York City, and college years when she was an Dawidowicz’s right-wing working with displaced persons immigrant daughter living in politics, sex, and unabashed in post-war Germany. Based New York City. Part two commitment to Jewish on over forty-five archival narrates Dawidowicz’s particularism in an East collections, From Left to Right formative European years in European Jewish key have chronicles Dawidowicz’s life Poland, New York City (when resulted in scholarly neglect. as a window into the major she was enclosed in the Therefore, this book is strongly events and issues of 20th- European-like world of the recommended for scholars and century Jewish life. New York YIVO), and general readers interested in From Left to Right is structured Germany. Part three tells how Jewish and women’s studies. n in four parts. Part one tells the Dawidowicz became an

56 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 The King of Warsaw By Szczepan Twardoch, translated by Sean Gasper Bye Amazon Crossing, 2020

he King of Warsaw, the first novel by T the widely celebrated Polish writer Szczepan Twardoch to be translated into English, takes the reader into the grim underbelly of pre-war Warsaw. Twardoch deploys a mastery of historical detail to depict the violent, corrupt underworld of 1937 Warsaw, where Jewish boxer Jakub Szapiro schemes to fulfill his obsession with achieving power over the city. The boxer leverages his victories in the ring and on the street to gain respect in the Jewish community and breed fear among his enemies. Yet he also senses, in the rise of fascism and dictators like Hitler, that the world is changing in ominous ways. While many Jews around him feel threatened and contemplate leaving Poland, Szapiro must remain in the city to win his dream, despite the specter of rising forces that may destroy him. The King of Warsaw by Szczepan Twardoch, translated from the Polish by Sean Gasper Bye, Journalist and author Szczepan Twardoch, published by Amazon Crossing in April 2020. born in Silesia, is one of the new generation of Polish writers. His many works, which include the bestselling novels Morphine and Drach, address issues of personal and national identity and have brought him numerous awards and honors. Sean Gasper Bye is an American known for his translations of Polish literature, including books by Lidia Ostałowska, Filip Springer, and Małgorzata Szejnert. n

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 57 ANNOUNCEMENTS Honors and Awards National Jewish Book Council 2019 Awards

Robert Alter in his home office Deborah Lipstadt Naomi Seidman in Warsaw, 2013 Photograph by David A.M. Wilensky. Author’s collection. Used with Graduate Theological Union. Used with Used with permission. permission. permission.

rofessor Robert Alter eborah Lipstadt aomi Seidman, professor of the University of was honored with of Jewish Studies at the PCalifornia, Berkeley, Dthe Jewish Education NUniversity of Toronto and former received the National and Identity Award director of the Dinner Center for Jewish Book Council’s in Memory Award of Jewish Studies at UC Berkeley’s Lifetime Achievement Dorothy Kripke for Graduate Theological Union, Award for his monumental her most recent book, received the Barbara Dobkin and decades-long project Antisemitism: Here Award in Women’s Studies for The Hebrew Bible: and Now (Schocken, her acclaimed Sarah Schenirer A Translation with 2019). The book gives and the Bais Yaakov Movement Commentary (W. W. us a penetrating and (Littman Library of Jewish Norton & Company). provocative analysis of Civilizations and Liverpool Press, Alter’s once-in-a- the hate that will not die, 2019). This vivid portrait of Sarah generation translation of focusing on its current, Schenirer and her founding of the the entire Hebrew Bible virulent incarnations on Bais Yaakov schools in inter-war into English began in 1997 both the political right Poland explores the context and with the publication of his and left. n tensions that led to their founding translation of Genesis. In and subsequent movement in 2018, with the last few Orthodox education for girls— books complete, a three- to their near destruction during volume boxed set of the the Holocaust, to their post-war complete translation reconstruction. (See the fall/winter was released. n 2019 issue of Gazeta for this book announcement.) n

58 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 2019 National Translation Award in Poetry for Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania By Adam Mickiewicz, translated by Bill Johnston

an Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania has won the 2019 NationalP Translation Award in Poetry. The award is given each year by the American Literary Translators Association. The jury remarked: “Presented here for the first time in modern English, Johnston’s translation of Pan Tadeusz masterfully captures the exceptional beauty and disarming directness of Mickiewicz’s rhymed couplets. With its riveting narrative propulsion, intertwining plot lines, effortless ironic wit, and lovingly detailed portraits of a Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania by bygone gentry, Pan Tadeusz invites Adam Mickiewicz, translated from the Polish comparison with the best works of by Bill Johnston, published by Archipelago Books in 2018. Byron or Pushkin.” Congratulations to Archipelago Books translator Bill Johnston! n

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 59 Museum Worlds Honors Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Editors: Sandra Dudley, University of Leicester, Conal McCarthy, Victoria University of Wellington

useum Worlds, Advances in M Research has dedicated a special section of its 2019 annual journal to POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews Chief Curator of Core Exhibitions, Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. This special tribute includes an introductory article by volume co-editer Conal McCarthy, “Destination Museum,” which is a play on Dr. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s seminal book, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage (1998). The tribute also includes Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. articles by Erica Lehrer and Monika Photograph by M. Starowieyska. Courtesy of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Murzynn-Kupisz, “Making Space for Jewish Culture in Polish Folk and Ethnographic Museums: Curating Social Diversity after Ethhnic Cleansing,” “Anthropology, Art and Folklore,” by Ira Jacknis, and “Field Notes and Reading Notes,” by Nélia Dias.

Museum Worlds is a part of the Berghahn Open Anthro subscribe-to- open initiative, a pilot aiming to convert thirteen anthropology journals to full open access on an ongoing and sustainable basis. n Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (in the middle) with the co-directors of Handshouse Studio (on the left) and some of the 200 people who volunteered to help reconstruct the Gwoździec synagogue bimah and painted ceiling. Courtesy of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

60 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Devilspel Wins Literary Prize By Grigory Kanovich, translated by Yisrael Elliot Cohen Noir Press, Nottingham, 2019

novel about the world of Lithuanian Jews during World War II has won the EBRD ALiterature Prize of 2020. The author and his translator will share the €20,000 honor.

Grigory Kanovich, whom the Forward has called “one of the most important Jewish authors of our time,” deploys his skill for creating strong but subtle characters to populate the town of Mishkine, one small place amid the terrible events that devastated Eastern Europe and shook the world. One of the judges of the award panel called the novel “a literary microcosm of world history related through the lives of ordinary people … in a small town at a watershed moment of Lithuanian history when ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust enter the lives of the local Jews and non-Jews alike, dividing neighbors and families into persecuted and persecutors.” She praised the narrative for avoiding “breast-beating in spite of its horrific and heart-breaking subject matter.” Devilspel by Grigory Kanovich and translated from Kanovich is one of today’s most prominent Russian by Yisrael Elliot Cohen, published by Noir Lithuanian Jewish writers and has written more Press in 2019. than ten novels dealing with the history of Eastern European Jewry from the 19th century to the present. Born into a traditional Jewish family, he has dedicated his life “to what has been lost, to what has been destroyed—the small Jewish town.” His novel Shtetl Love Song was awarded the Liudas Dovydenas Prize by the Lithuanian Writers’ Union. n

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 61 POLIN Award 2019 to Natalia Bartczak

OLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews has Pgranted its 2019 POLIN Award to Natalia Bartczak, who has cared for the Jewish cemetery in Wińsko, in western Poland, for sixteen years — starting when she was just thirteen years old. The award—presented in conjunciton with an award to the Auschwitz Jewish Center—was bestowed at a gala ceremony at the museum on December 3, 2019. It was the Natalia Bartczak. fifth edition of the award, which Photograph by M. Starowieyska. Courtesy of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews “honors people, organizations and institutions that, in the past thanks to them that the memory of a book by Rita Steinhardt- few years, contributed to both of the history of Polish Jews Botwinick, about Wińsko from the revival of the memory of the is reborn. They are the ones 1933 to 1946, as well as to history of Polish Jews, and to who really contribute to mutual the film Maleństwo na górce building mutual understanding respect and understanding and to an exhibition of old and respect between Poles between Poles and Jews.” photographs of the German- and Jews.” Polish-Jewish history of Natalia Bartczak wrote her Wińsko. n “All over Poland,” said Marian master’s degree thesis on the Turski, president of the POLIN Jewish Cemetery in Wińsko Museum Council, “there are while a student at the Institute many people who work to of Prehistoric Studies of the preserve the heritage of Polish Adam Mickiewicz University Jews … Through the POLIN in Poznań. Her thesis became Award, we want to express our the basis for the Wińsko town appreciation and gratitude for council appling for EU funding their work. We care to show for the restoration of the how important and needed what cemetery. Bartczak was also they are doing [is], because it is a consultant to the translator

62 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 ANNOUNCEMENTS Conferences and Seminars Conference at the Polish Embassy Antony Polonsky in London to Launch Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 32

n January 23, 2020, a In five thematic sections, chief historian of POLIN Oone-day conference, this multi-disciplinary Museum of the History of “Jews and Music-Making Polish Jews, and Benjamin in the Polish Lands,” was volume presents rich Matis, spiritual leader of the held at the Polish embassy coverage of the main Agudath Achim Congregation, in London to launch volume genres produced by Altoona, Pennsylvania. 32 of Polin: Studies in Polish Cantor Matis also performed Jewry. The astounding variety musicians of Jewish examples of cantorial music. of music of all genres and origin in the Polish lands. The second session was styles produced by musicians devoted to Jews in Polish of Jewish heritage in Europe area of the Polish-Lithuanian popular music. Tamara since 1750 has been examined Commonwealth and its Sztyma of POLIN Museum almost entirely in the context successor states from 1750 delivered a paper, “Popular of German-speaking Europe to the present. Music in the Inter-war Period: or in studies of a group of Polish, Jewish, Shared.” Beth composers who strongly After the formal opening Holmgren of Duke University self-identified as Jews. In five by H.E. Arkady Rzegocki, could not attend, but her thematic sections, this multi- ambassador of the Republic paper, “The Jews in the disciplinary volume presents of Poland, Vivian Wineman, Band: Anders Army’s Special rich coverage of the main president of the Institute for Troupes,” was read by Dr. genres produced by musicians Polish-Jewish Studies, and François Guesnet. One of the of Jewish origin in the Polish Sir Ben Helfgott, chairman of most stimulating papers of the lands: Cantorial and Religious the Institute for Polish-Jewish conference, it highlighted the Music, Jews in Polish Popular Studies, the first session paradox that General Anders, Culture, Jews in the Polish was devoted to a general in spite of his somewhat Classical Music Scene, The introduction to the topic and prejudiced view of Jews, was Holocaust Reflected in Jewish a discussion of changes in eager to recruit Jews for his Music, and Klezmer in Poland Jewish cantorial practice in the army’s entertainment corps. Today. It thus explores the 19th and 20th centuries. This took the form of an exchange activities and great creativity The afternoon session between two of the editors of of musicians of the “Mosaic examined “Yiddish Folk the volume, Antony Polonsky, persuasion,” covering the Song and Klezmer” with

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 63 a presentation by the co-organized and supported independent scholar Michael by the Polish embassy in Aylward on “Gimpel’s London and the Polish Cultural Theatre, Lemberg: The Sounds Institute, London, and was of a Popular Yiddish Theatre made possible by the support of Preserved on Gramophone Slipaczek Chartered Financial Records 1904 – 1910,” and Planners and the American one on “Klezmer for All Association for Polish-Jewish Occasions. The Consumption Studies. Attended by over a of ‘Jewish Music’ in hundred people, it was a most contemporary Poland,” by stimulating and diverse event, Magdalena Waligórska of the which highlighted an aspect University of Bremen. of Polish life whereby people of all backgrounds—Catholic, The day ended with a concert Jewish and non-religious— of popular Polish songs from cooperated to produce art which the inter-war years, many of still moves audiences today. n which were either written or performed by Jews. The singer was Katy Carr, a local artist who also has Polish connections. Among the songs she performed was Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy (Love Forgives Everything; 1933, music by Henryk Wars, lyrics by Julian Tuwim) and many other collaborations among Polish recording artists. Her performance was enthusiastically received, and a CD recording is underway.

The conference was organized by the Institute for Polish- Jewish Studies and the Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL. It was

64 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Biographies and Politics: The Involvement of Jews and People of Jewish Origin in Leftist Movements Antony Polonsky in 19th and 20th Century Poland

rom its inception, the of Jewish clandestine rule of the History of Polish Jews socialist movement, was embodied in the Polish organized an international Fwhether in its parliamentary stereotype of Żydokomuna conference late last year or its revolutionary form, (Judaeo-Communism). Thus, (December 1-2), “Biographies has attracted significant during the Polish-Soviet and Politics: The Involvement support from people of Jewish war of 1920, in an attempt of Jews and People of Jewish origin. Some saw socialism, to discredit communism as Origin in Leftist Movements with its promise of a world a Jewish phenomenon, the in 19th and 20th Century where ethnic and religious Polish episcopate published an Poland,” attended by over difference would play no role, open letter to the bishops of sixty leading scholars in the as a more effective path to the the world: field from Germany, France, integration of the Jews. Others the United Kingdom, Sweden, Bolshevism is truly were inspired by the similarity Croatia, Israel, the United aiming at the conquest between the millennial States, Canada, Australia, of the world. The race promises of the socialist and Poland. The aim of the which leads it previously movement and Jewish conference was to investigate subordinated the world messianism, while many the actual Jewish engagement to it through gold and the were impelled to support in leftist movements in Poland banks. Today, driven by the the movement as a means from the point of view of their age-old imperialist drive of redressing the growing individual ideological choice. which flows in its veins, impoverishment of the Jews Biographical tools were to it is undertaking the final and of the larger society in the be used to examine personal conquest of all peoples course of industrialization. histories, family fortunes, and under its yoke. All the Jewish support for socialism developing political identities slogans which are used: was also strongly attacked. to help answer the question of People, Workers, Freedom The movement was seen as what drove Polish Jews to join and so on are only masks a new form of the alleged leftist organizations. whose aim is to hide the Jewish desire to dominate true face. The conference raised the world. The view that many issues and shed much communism, as it had In an attempt to move beyond new light on the complex established itself in the Soviet oversimplifications and question of why socialism Union, was merely a new form stereotypes, POLIN Museum

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 65 proved so attractive in the The conference concluded of the Communist Party Jewish world. The issues with a showing of the of Poland, reflected on were examined in eleven “How Jewish Were My parallel sessions. On the documentary film Tonia Communist Ancestors? morning of the first day, the and her Children by Revisiting the Question topics discussed were “How Marcel Łoziński, an of Jewish Responsibility.” Jewish are Leftist Ideas? Another striking presentation How Leftist is Jewishness?” account of the life of was the attempt by Marcin and “Internationalist Politics, Jewish communist Moskalewicz of Poznań Transnational Biographies, University of Medical Tonia Lechtman. Local Activism.” Four Sciences to assess how one topics were discussed in the should evaluate the actions of afternoon sessions: “Social of people of Jewish origin Helena Wolińska, wife of the and Cultural Activism,” involved in the publishing economist Włodzimierz Brus, “Anti-Fascism Facing the industry in Poland, and used who as military prosecutor Holocaust,” “Exclusion and these techniques to provide in the Stalinist years in Inclusion in Leftist Jewish an innovative and challenging Poland has been accused Biographies,” and “After account of what led Jews of organizing the unlawful the Holocaust, Towards a to adopt a socialist point of arrest, trial, and execution Brighter Future?” view, with the title “Jewish of General Emil August Biographies, Leftist Politics, Fieldorf, a commander of the In the evening, the keynote and the History of Emotions.” underground Polish Home speech was given by Karen Army during World War II. Auerbach of the University The morning of the second of North Carolina, author of day was devoted to sessions The afternoon session The House at Ujazdowskie 16: on “Negotiating Religion included “Different Jewish Families in Warsaw and Socialism,” on “Jewish Generations? Different after the Holocaust (Indiana Perspectives on the History of Biographies?” in which the University Press, 2013), which the Left—Marxist Approaches tensions between different is a collective portrait of the on Jewish History,” on communist generations were generation of ‘68, the children “Emancipatory Empowerment analyzed. Also presented was of those Jews who opted for and Leftist Politics,” and a roundtable on “Jewish Left- the socialist alternative and a most stimulating session wing Activism and Family remained in Poland after the on “Responsibility.” In this, History” in which Alex Sobel, war, later becoming active in Stanisław Krajewski, a key a Labor MP in the UK, and the opposition to communism. figure in Polish Jewish life his father, Leopold Sobel, She has continued this and the great-grandson of Ewa Herbst, a descendant approach in her analysis Adolf Warski, a founder of the PPS leader Herman

66 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Diamand, and David Slucki, the archival resources in the It is very much to be hoped child of Bundist activists in museum on the subject of that the papers presented Melbourne, reflected on their Tonia Lechtman. will be published as soon families’ past. as possible. n The conference was jointly The conference concluded organized by POLIN Museum with a showing of the of the History of Polish Jews, documentary film Tonia and the Aleksander Brückner Her Children by Marcel Center for Polish Studies Łoziński, an account of the (Halle/Saale), the Centre for life of Jewish communist Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Tonia Lechtman, who was University of Oxford, and the sentenced in 1949 to five Department of Hebrew and years in prison for allegedly Jewish Studies at University spying for the United States. College London, within the This moving and disturbing framework of the Global film presents the figure of Education Outreach Program Tonia Lechtman through her of the POLIN Museum. It prison correspondence as was made possible thanks well as the reminiscences of to the support of Taube her adult children, Wera and Philanthropies, the William Marcel, who recall being K. Bowes Jr. Foundation, the separated from their mother Association of the Jewish and being moved from one Historical Institute of Poland, orphanage to the other. This the Stiftung für deutsch- was a traumatic experience. At polnische Zusammenarbeit, the front door of a children’s the European Association home in Wrocław, they are of Jewish Studies, the asked who they are. Wera Deutsch-Polnische replies, “We are children of Wissenschaftsstiftung, and communists.” In response the the Gotteiner Institute for teacher shouts at her, “Why the History of the Bund and do they only send us Judeo- the Jewish Labor Movement communists?!” The showing at the University of Haifa. It was preceded by an account was a most stimulating and by Dr. Przemysław Kaniecki thought-provoking event, from the POLIN Museum shedding light on many Collection Department of complex and disputed topics.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 67 ANNOUNCEMENTS In Brief Newly Released on Amazon: Raise the Roof by Filmmakers Yari and Cary Wolinsky

his 2015 feature documentary tells the Tstory of a ten-year campaign to reconstruct the beautifully decorated roof and ceiling of an 18th-century wooden synagogue inside POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Wooden synagogues once dotted many parts of the Eastern European landscape, but fire and the vicissitudes of time had greatly reduced their number when scholars began to document them in the 20th century. American designers Rick & Laura Brown of Handshouse Studio, though not Jewish, found the wooden synagogue so intriguing that they decided to recreate one—the mural- covered Gwozdziec synagogue, which had been burned by the Yari and Cary Wolinsky place projects with partners around Nazis during the war. the synagogue in the context the world as a way to explore of a thousand years of Polish history, science, and the arts. Assembling an international Jewish history, with klezmer Raise the Roof is distributed team of artisans and students, music providing an evocative by Trillium Studios (https:// the Browns used period sonic background. www.polishsynagogue.com/) tools and techniques, applied and is available at Amazon according to the best scholarly Non-profit Handshouse (https://www.amazon.com/ advice, to build and paint the Studio, based in Norwell, Raise-Roof-Yari-Wolinsky/dp/ twenty-two-ton replica. Their Massachusetts, is an B081ZJYPFW/). n reconstruction was unveiled educational organization that in 2014 as the centerpiece of creates hands-on projects the new museum. Filmmakers through community service

68 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Midrasz Closes its Doors The Editorial Board of Midrasz

Dear Friends and Readers, this long. We did not he next copy of Midrasz expect it ourselves, magazine will be the nor that these twenty- Tlast. Yes, it is true. We have two years would have been struggling with this passed so quickly. decision for some time, and The reasons why upon deciding on it and Midrasz will stop sharing the news with some being published are of our friends, we heard complex—from local voices of disbelief and the to global. To stop any question how it is possible. further speculations, We therefore now officially we need to openly confirm it: after twenty-two reveal that the crucial years, Midrasz will no longer factor lies in the be published. Twenty-two annually progressing years, like twenty-two letters financial problems. of the Hebrew alphabet, one We struggled with for each year. Maybe it is just them for a long time, The final issue ofMidrasz , winter 2019. a coincidence, maybe there and despite continual did. It probably would not is some hidden meaning. In and generous donations from have started at all. Now, as either case, let it become a the Polish Ministry of the the financial situation of symbol. When, at the turn Interior and Administration, the paper print media market of 1996 and 1997, under the Book Institute, and (as well for the small as the leadership of Konstanty the Jewish Community of for the giants) gradually Gebert, we began planning Warsaw, as well as private deteriorates, our adventure the newspaper and established philanthropists, we were is coming to an end. the office at 6 Twarda Street, unable to solve them probably no one—not systemically. We would like We are closing the magazine the editorial staff, not the to whole-heartedly thank our aware of the era behind sponsors, not the readers— benefactors, without whom the us. When the first issue of could have guessed that experience of Midrasz would Midrasz was released in Midrasz would have lasted not have lasted as long as it April 1997, the Internet was

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 69 in its infancy, there were no We would like to whole- Polish Jewish research and social media, and printing heartedly thank our researchers that obliges us to of an illustrated magazine celebrate our achievements lasted over a week. On the benefactors, without and summarize them, to create “Jewish street,” the Ronald whom the experience of a public online archive, and S. Lauder Foundation, our Midrasz would not have to present selected texts in first sponsor, was energizing books to be published. It is not a small community of Polish lasted as long as it did. a small task, but, to say the Jews for whom Midrasz was It probably would not least, we already have some intended. We were spectators practice in it. have started at all. and participants of this To all of our readers and process, and over time—also co-creators past and present, under the influence of online We have twenty-two years thank you! forums—we changed our behind us, 210 issues profile from informational of Midrasz, and several Note: All archival issues will to socio-cultural, and finally thousand articles, journalistic be available online on the to cultural-literary, as we texts, essays, translations, National Library website. followed the transformations religious commentaries, To learn more about Midrasz, of this community. Today, it is notes, interviews, and pieces visit our website at: www. transformed. The formula, the of literature. Almost 200 midrasz.pl. n needs have changed, and the colorful covers, hundreds people have changed as well. of illustrations. The editors Many of the most faithful have initiated a dozen or so friends of Midrasz are gone. discussions on all topics, Within the last two decades, although always related to the almost a full generation of main mission of Midrasz—to readers has regrettably passed explain and familiarize the away, among them Jews readers with Jewish tradition, from Poland and from the culture, and identity. Some of diaspora, who were our main them are reprinted in the first subscribers. We were not very part of this issue. They will successful with finding new tell more about us than just readers. Maybe it is our fault, dry statistics. but probably also a sign of the The work of archivists is times, and therefore another ahead of us, with a duty reason why we must say good- toward future readers, toward bye to you. the press and the history of

70 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Contemporary Jewish Art and Artists in Poland Fay Bussgang

espite the rise in anti- Semitism in many parts of Dthe world, Jewish art in Poland seems to be flourishing.

One of Warsaw’s most visible landmarks, the “blue skyscraper” at Plac Bankowy, was built on the former site of Warsaw’s historic Great Synagogue, the Tłomackie Synagogue, destroyed during the war. The façade of the modern building, made completely of glass, served as the perfect backdrop for the projection of an image of the former synagogue created by Gabi von Seltmann’s ceremonial reconstruction of Warsaw’s Great Synagogue, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April artist Gabrielle von Seltmann. 19, 2018. This stark, nostalgic image Photograph by Marta Kuśmierz. Used with permission. was made visible on two occasions, first in April 2018 alive in art and film. In Another artist active in the to commemorate the 75th addition to her own work, Jewish art world in Poland, anniversary of the Warsaw she has collaborated with her Yaelle Wiśnicki-Levi, based Ghetto Uprising, and last German-born husband, Uwe in Warsaw since 2015, is the year on the uprising’s 76th von Seltmann, on several founder of Artours Warsaw, anniversary. films, among them Boris an organization that provides Dorfman, a Mentsh (shot contemporary English- As reported by Foreign Press, entirely in Yiddish) and Die language art tours in Warsaw. Gabi von Seltmann is one of dritte Generation nach der Born in New York, Wiśnicki- a small number of artists who Shoah (The Third Generation Levi attended school in the live in Poland and are actively after the Shoah), as part of U.S. and Israel and is now a engaged with commemorating Denkzeit, a TV series in Polish citizen. She is a member the Holocaust by keeping Germany. of the Six Verbs Movement, the legend of Polish Jewry

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 71 an ongoing artistic research create their own. project that takes place in Taking a wax imprint public spaces around Poland from door frames and brings together artists who where mezuzahs were work in different media such as once attached, they theater, dance, visual arts, and hand cast a three- music. One of their projects dimensional bronze was a work in 2015 focusing replica of the original. on the history of Lublin, They also have a line examined from a contemporary of menorahs, candles, point of view while bringing and assorted jewelry, in the past perspectives of largely sold online. In different religious groups. addition to creating works of art, they are Zuza Hertzberg is a painter Zuza Hertzberg, Tribute to International Brigades, 2016, helping to preserve the mixed media on canvas, 46x38cm. and author of installations Photograph by Mikołaj Tym. Courtesy of the artist. memory of Jews who and performative actions. once lived in Poland. color portraits taken by Caryl Her works use the artist’s own Englander—over the course of method of mixed painting FestivALT is an independent three years—of Jewish, Polish techniques, rich texture, and arts collective in Kraków that Catholic, and Sinti survivors intense color. Hertzberg is produces an annual program of the camp. The repetitive interested in memory and body, of critically-minded Jewish art pattern of the three-meter- as well as issues related to a and activism. Each year, they tall, vertical steel panels on broad sense of identity and invite artists from Poland and which the portraits are placed belonging to a place. In 2019, around the world to produce is reminiscent of the stripes she took part in Individual visual art, theater, site-specific of a prisoner’s uniform. The and Organized Resistance of performance, and activist proportion of Jews to non-Jews Women During the Holocaust, interventions. FestivALT aims depicted in the show is roughly an exhibit at POLIN Museum to provide an inclusive platform that of the population murdered of the History of Polish Jews. for under-represented voices at Auschwitz. Erected in and perspectives. (See Adam Two artists in Warsaw who July 2019, the installation Schorin’s update on FestivALT create modern versions of is scheduled to remain at activities in this issue, pp. 47-48) Jewish religious objects are Auschwitz-Birkenau through Alexander Prugar and his On the grounds of the October 2020, by which time partner, Helena Czernek. They Auschwitz-Birkenau State we hope to be able to travel founded Mi Polin, a design Museum is an outstanding again to see these and other n collaborative specializing in temporary installation inspiring works of art. contemporary Judaica. After commemorating the 75th Fay Bussgang, along with having photographed traces anniversary of the camp’s her husband Julian Bussgang, of mezuzahs found on older liberation. Through the Lens of is a longtime contributing buildings, the pair began to Faith consists of twenty-one editor to Gazeta.

72 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 OBITUARIES

Krzysztof Penderecki Antony Polonsky November 23, 1933–March 29, 2020

rzysztof Penderecki, a composer of international Kreputation, died on March 29, 2020. According to the Ludwig van Beethoven Association in Kraków, with which he was closely associated, Penderecki was “an eminent artist and humanist, one of the world’s best known and most acclaimed Polish composers… [whose music] with its unique dramatic structure and a deeply humanistic message… transcended the avant-garde and became popular with a Krzysztof Penderecki. Photograph by Mirosław Pietruszyński. wide audience.” Wikimedia Commons. in Kraków. He paid homage between 1954 and 1958, Penderecki came from a mixed to his Armenian background whereupon, after graduation, background. He was born in in his choral work, Psalm no. he was appointed a teacher Dębica in Galicia, about 120 3, which was premiered in of composition. He came km southeast of Kraków. His Carnegie Hall in 2015 on the to intellectual maturity just grandfather, Robert Berger, a centenary of the Armenian as the Stalinist system was talented painter and director Genocide of 1915. collapsing in Poland, and of the local bank, was the son his early work, reflecting Penderecki received of Johann, who had moved the new freedom achieved his musical training at to Dębica from Breslau with the Polish October, Jagiellonian University and (today Wrocław) in the mid- was characteristic of the then studied composition at 19th century. Penderecki’s modernism of the period. the State Higher School of grandmother was an Armenian It was now, for instance, Music (now known as the from Isfahan with whom he that Witold Lutosławski Kraków Academy of Music) attended the Armenian Church introduced the twelve-tone

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 73 system into his compositions. including quarter-tones, His later style was more Works in this style were also tremolos, and multiple lyrical and romantic, often premiered at the annual glissandi. Similar in character redolent of 19th-century Warsaw autumn international is his Saint Luke’s Passion compositional techniques. It festival of contemporary for two vocal soloists, was attacked by some critics music which began in 1956. reciter, three mixed choruses, as an abandonment of his children’s choir, and orchestra modernist principles but it In compositions from these —employing chanting, assured Penderecki a large years, Penderecki replaced recitative, and chorales. He audience. He defended this themes and tonality with composed it as part of the musical shift, claiming “[it] new and innovative textures, commemorations in Poland wasn’t I who betrayed the influenced by Anton Webern, of the thousandth anniversary avant-garde, but the avant- John Cage, and Pierre Boulez. of the Christianization of the garde which betrayed music.” What marked his work was his country. Characteristic of his Examples of his later work reliance on sound itself, rather desire to overcome national are his First Violin Concerto, than on melody or harmony— written in 1977 for Isaac an approach that came to be and political divisions, its called “sonorism.” He came premiere took place in March Stern, the Polish Requiem to prominence in an unusual 1966 in Münster Cathedral. for four soloists, chorus, manner. Three works he had The German critic Hans Heinz and orchestra (1984, revised submitted anonymously, as Stuckenschmidt remarked on in 1993), although here the was required by the rules, the singularity of this event: Dies Irae, composed in 1967, remained evocative of his to a competition for young A large ecclesiastical modernist period, as did his composers organized by the choral work, composed Credo for five vocal soloists, Union of Polish Composers— by a representative of the chorus, children’s choir, and Strophes, Emanations, and new music in socialist orchestra (1998), which makes Psalms of David—won Poland, performed use of material from Bach and the first three prizes and for the first time in a established him as a leading early Polish music, treated in a centre of West German avant-garde composer. generally diatonic manner. Catholicism, in the former His first major work was bishop’s seat of the daring The British premiere of Polish Threnody for the Victims of anti-Nazi Graf von Galen Requiem was organized Hiroshima (1961), for which [a prominent critic of the under the auspices of the he won a UNESCO prize. It Third Reich when bishop Oxford-based Institute is written for a large string of Münster during the for Polish Jewish Studies, orchestra and uses many 40s]: this gives occasion sister body of the American unconventional techniques, to a variety of thoughts. Association for Polish Jewish Studies—a reflection of the

74 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 requiem, which was made up of different works composed between 1967 and 1984, turned out to be an appropriate choice. The Lachrymosa had been commissioned by Lech Wałęsa to accompany the unveiling of a statue in the Gdańsk shipyards honoring those killed in the strike there in 1970; the Agnus Dei was dedicated to the memory of Cardinal Wyszyński, and the Dies Irae commemorated the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It is a very powerful piece and its impact is increased by the way in which it quotes old Polish hymns. After the concert, Alexandra Loyd, lady-in- waiting to Princess Diana, wrote to Ian Stoutzker, chairman of the concert organizing committee, A letter written on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales, following the Arthur expressing her pleasure “to Rubinstein Memorial Concert, the British premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s have been able to be present at Polish Requiem. Used with permission. the first British performance of Krzysztof Penderecki’s commitment of Penderecki Rubinstein’s birth and took Polish Requiem.” and his second wife Elżbieta, place at the Royal Festival whom he married in 1965, to Hall in London in support Penderecki was by Polish-Jewish understanding. of the Royal College of then a well-established As a child, he himself had Music and the institute. The international figure. Those witnessed the liquidation of concert was attended by who commissioned work the ghetto in Dębica. The Princess Diana, patron of the from him include Mstislav concert commemorated the Royal College of Music, and Rostropovich, for whom the 100th anniversary of Arthur Rubinstein’s widow, Nela. The Second Cello Concerto (1982)

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 75 was written, and Anne-Sophie Penderecki was by of his own music but also of Mutter, for whom both the then a well-established other composers, most notably Second Violin Concerto, Dmitri Shostakovich. Between subtitled Metamorphosen international figure, as 1972 and 1987 he was rector (1995), and La Follia (2013), reflected by those who of the Kraków Academy of a virtuoso set of variations for commissioned work Music and between 1973 and unaccompanied violin, were 1978 taught at Yale University. composed. from him. He won four Grammy awards, most recently in 2016 for He wrote four operas, of Jerusalem, a choral work his CD Penderecki Conducts including one, The Devils of with three choirs, had its Penderecki, Volume 1. His Loudun (1969), based on a premiere in Jerusalem in work has also inspired that book by Aldous Huxley. Parts January 1997 as part of the of the English pop musician of this work, as well as his celebrations of the three- Jonny Greenwood of string quartet and a canon thousandth anniversary of the Radiohead. Penderecki and his for orchestra and tape, were founding of the city. Its title wife often entertained friends used on the soundtrack to alluded to its seven legendary in the manor house and estate the film The Exorcist (1973). gates, and the work was at Lusławice near Zakliczyn, Penderecki’s music has also composed of seven parts, each not far from his birthplace, been used in other films, using texts from the Hebrew which they had painstakingly including Stanley Kubrick’s Bible. His eighth symphony, and beautifully restored. It has The Shining (1980), David finally finished in 2008, for become a center for musical Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990), three vocal soloists, chorus education. The Pendereckis Alfonso Cuarón’s Children and orchestra, has the title were committed to the of Men (2006), and Martin Lieder der Verganglichkeit establishment of a tolerant and Scorsese’s Shutter Island (Songs of Transience) and is civil society in Poland. One of (2010), as well as in the TV made up of twelve movements his final public appearances, series Twin Peaks. He was setting 19th- and early in spite of the severe illness friendly with fellow Cracovian 20th-century German poets. which marred his last years, Andrzej Wajda and provided Another commemorative was to attend the funeral the music for his film Katyn composition is the Dies Illa, of Paweł Adamowicz, the (2007). which premiered in Brussels, mayor of Gdańsk, murdered in Koekelberg Church, on Penderecki wrote eight by a right-wing fanatic in November 9, 2014, and honors symphonies, commemorating January 2019. We express the victims of World War I. historical events with his our condolences to his wife compositions. His seventh Penderecki was a very Elżbieta and his five children. n symphony, The Seven Gates successful conductor, not only His music will live on.

76 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Remembering Mikhl Baran: American Yiddish Cultural Icon Samuel Norich 1922 – April 17, 2020

have the sad duty to inform you of the death of Mikhl Baran, at age ninety- Iseven, after a long illness unrelated to the coronavirus. Our condolences go out to his dear wife Millie and daughters Ruth and Janice.

A member of the Forward Association for many decades, Chaver Mikhl was admired by generations of listeners to the Forward’s radio station, WEVD, where he had a daily news broadcast, as he was by successive cohorts of his students in the Workers Circle Mikhl Baran. From the personal archive of Nikolai Borodulin. shules on Long Island, where he taught. Used with permission. During World War II, Mikhl Baran fought the Nazis and their local helpers as a partisan in the forests of Lithuania and northeast Poland and as a soldier in the Red Army. After four years in DP Camp Feldafing, he and Millie emigrated in 1949 to the United States, where he became a teacher and a communal activist. His articulate and engaging personality made him an effective transmitter of the Yiddish cultural traits he absorbed during his youth in Europe, which he embodied and taught in the decades that followed.

Zol er hobn a likhtikn gan-eden. n

Samuel Norich is President of the Forward and has served as executive director of the Forward Association since 2000. He was the publisher of the English and Yiddish Forward for nineteen years until 2016.

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 77 Walentyna Janta-Pol/czyn´ska Antony Polonsky February 1, 1913–April 2, 2020

alentyna Janta- and Commander-in- Połczyńska, who died Chief Władysław Wat the beginning of April at Sikorski. She acted the age of 107, was one of as translator in his the last of those who served meetings with allied in the Polish government-in- statesmen, including exile in London during World Winston Churchill, War II. She was frequently and was responsible interviewed by scholars for translating and working on this period, and editing the reports most recently by Andrew brought to London in Nagorski for his book 1941: November 1942 by The Year Germany Lost Jan Karski regarding the War (2019). Her father, the conditions of Ludwik (William) Stocker, Nazi-occupied was an English engineer Poland, including working in the Galician oil the mass murder industry and her mother, of the local Jewish Karolina Kochanowska, was population. She Polish. In 1938, Walentyna admired Sikorski Walentyna Janta Połczyńska in the uniform of moved from Lwόw to London enormously, but as the Polish Armed Forces in the West, American to further her education, and she told Andrew Zone of Occupation, Germany 1945 when the war broke out was Nagorski in 2016, Photo from the Karolina Rostafiński Merk collection. Used with permission. hired by the Polish embassy, she felt he lacked where her knowledge of “the temperament center at Bletchley Park. At English was clearly useful. that you needed to deal with the end of the war she was When in June of 1940 the the Russians.” After Sikorski assigned as a translator with Polish government-in-exile, was killed in a plane crash at the rank of second lieutenant established in France in Gibraltar in July 1943, she in the Polish army to the September 1939, moved worked for the radio station U.S. forces in Frankfurt. She to London, she became Świt (Dawn), broadcasting to was principally responsible secretary to Prime Minister Poland from the intelligence for interviewing Poles

78 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 who had survived German Among her many Because of the COVID-19 concentration camps and pandemic, her many friends decorations were the were then in the American and relations had to watch her zone of occupation. She was Commander’s Cross of funeral online. Her ashes will particularly concerned with the Order of Merit of find their final resting place women prisoners who had alongside those of her been subjected to medical the Republic of Poland, husband in the Powązki experimentation. the Polish Ministry Cemetery in Warsaw. n In 1947, she emigrated to the of Culture’s Medal United States with her mother for Services to Polish (her father had died before the war). There she married the Culture, and the Jan Polish writer and journalist Karski Eagle Award. Aleksander Janta-Połczyński, whom she had met in London communities, and from 1959- after his escape from German 61, she and her husband captivity. They settled first (who died in August 1974) in Buffalo and subsequently succeeded in facilitating the in Elmhurst, Queens, in New return to Poland of artworks York City, where they ran an from the Wawel in Kraków antiquarian bookstore that which had been stored in also supported exiled Polish Canada during World War II. writers, scholars, and artists. After her husband’s death she Their home became a meeting donated maps, documents, place for leading Polish manuscripts, and early printed intellectuals and she was books that the couple had described as “the first lady of collected to the National American Polonia.” Among Library in Warsaw. Among their guests were Jan Kott, her many decorations were Jerzy Kosiński, Zbigniew the Commander’s Cross of the Herbert, Antoni Słonimski, Order of Merit of the Republic Kazimierz Wierzyński, Marek of Poland, the Polish Ministry Hłasko, Jerzy Giedroyc, of Culture’s Medal for Witold Gombrowicz, and Services to Polish Culture, and Czesław Miłosz. She remained the Jan Karski Eagle award. active in Polish immigrant

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 79 Jerzy E. Gl/ówczewski (1922-2020) Julian Bussgang

erzy Główczewski, who South Africa, Rio de Janeiro, In retirement, Jerzy wrote was said to be the last and New York en route to his memoirs, producing three Jknown Polish fighter pilot to Liverpool, while escorting volumes in Polish, which were have flown for the RAF during 4,000 German prisoners of combined and translated into World War II, died in New war. English under the title The York on April 13 at the age of Accidental Immigrant. In England, he trained to ninety-seven. become a pilot in the Polish Having made lifelong Jewish Jerzy Eligiusz Główczewski Air Force in the west, and in friends at the Polish refugee was born November 19, 1922, July 1944, he joined Polish schools in Bucharest and Tel in Warsaw, Poland, where he fighter squadron 308, flying Aviv, Jerzy gladly accepted an lived until the outbreak of the some one hundred missions. invitation to be on the board war. On September 6, 1939, he He received the Polish Cross of the newly formed American left Warsaw with a few other of Valor three times for his Association for Polish Jewish men of his family, crossing service. Studies and participated in the border into Romania its endeavors. Living in New After the war, Jerzy returned on September 17. After the York and having a connection to Poland. He studied Germans entered Romania in with the Polish Consulate, he architecture in Warsaw and the winter of 1941, he left via often represented AAPJS at then participated extensively Turkey for Palestine. Both in events there. in the reconstruction of the Bucharest and again in Tel city. In 1961, he was invited His wife Irena (“Lenta”) passed Aviv, he attended a Polish by the Ford Foundation to go away in December 2018 after a refugee high school directed to the United States, where he long illness. Daughter Klara is by Pani Helena Barysz. began teaching as head of the executive travel editor of Town In July 1941, Jerzy joined Architecture Department at the & Country. n the Polish Carpathian University of North Carolina Brigade, fighting in Egypt. in Raleigh. He then worked as Julian Bussgang, along with After completing the Polish chief architect to build a new his wife Fay Bussgang, is a Officers’ School, he signed up city in Aswan, Egypt. In 1967, longtime contributing editor to join the Polish Air Force in he returned to the U.S., taught to Gazeta. England. In August 1942, he at Pratt Institute in New York, joined a military team that left and continued working as an Egypt and traveled through architect worldwide.

80 n GAZETA VOLUME 27, NO. 1 Passing of Dr. Łucja Pawlicka-Nowak, Longtime Activist Regarding Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Studies in Poland

r. Łucja Pawlicka- with Yad Vashem in Israel, Nowak, for decades a and with American Jewish Dkey figure in research on the communities. In a letter read Holocaust and Jewish heritage out at her funeral, the Jewish in Poland, died February 27 Community in Poznań recalled at the age of eighty-two. her as “an extraordinary figure, deserving of great Pawlicka-Nowak was the respect and gratitude.” Her director of the District life was devoted to a noble Museum in Konin, in and sacred mission, namely central Poland, from 1975 Łucja Pawlicka-Nowak (1938-2020). to commemorate Jewish to 2006 and was founder Photograph courtesy of the District Museum cities, towns, and villages of the Museum of the in Konin. Used with permission. murdered by the German Former German Kulmhof and her team also rescued occupier. Jewish martyrs Death Camp in Chełmno- several hundred matzevot were not buried, prayers over nad-Nerem, which was or fragments which had their bodies were not said, established in 1990. She been removed from Jewish they were not escorted in a carried out extensive research cemeteries. funeral procession to a place and commemoration work where they would wait for regarding Jewish cemeteries Her obituary on the Konin the coming of the Messiah. and heritage in the Konin Culture Foundation website Mrs. Łucja, through her many region and was an early noted: “Dr. Łucja Pawlicka- works, mourned for those who recipient of the Preserving Nowak was particularly did not have to mourn.” n Memory award, a recognition involved in documenting the lives of Jews in Konin and established in 1998 to honor Reprinted with permission the Konin region. She did it non-Jewish Poles preserving from Jewish Heritage Europe with tireless energy, saving Jewish heritage. Under her www.jewish-heritage-europe-eu. direction, the Konin Museum matzevot and numerous organized research, recovery, Jewish cemeteries. In order and commemorative efforts at to be able to work more approximately twenty Jewish effectively, she learned cemeteries, marking them Yiddish, established contacts with signage, commemorative with the Institute of Martyrs plaques, and memorials. She and Holocaust Remembrance,

GAZETA SPRING 2020 n 81 29th Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków in 2019 Photography by Pan Borsuk. Used with permission.

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