New directions in the history of the Jews in the Polish lands

Source: Academia.edu

Contents

• Foreword ix
• Preface x
• Introduction xi
  Antony Polonsky, Hanna Węgrzynek, and Andrzej Żbikowski
• List of Contributors lvii

  PART ONE

  Museological Questions 01

• Te Voice of the Curators Something Old, Something New: Creating the Narrative for the Early Modern Galleries. 01
  Adam Teller
• The Nineteenth-Century Gallery. 13
  Sam Kassow
• The Interwar Gallery. 20
  Sam Kassow
• Curatorial and Educational Challenges in Creating the Holocaust Gallery. 29
  Maria Ferenc Piotrowska, Kamila Radecka-Mikulicz, and Justyna Majewska
• Assumptions behind the Postwar Gallery of the Core Exhibition at POLIN. 40
  Stanisław Krajewski

  Comments on the Museum

• Polish-Jewish Historiography 1970–2015: Construction, Consensus, Controversy. 60
  Moshe Rosman
• POLIN, The Medieval and Early Modern Galleries: A Comment. 78
  Kenneth Stow
• Modernism and Identity. Polish Jews Facing Change in the Nineteenth Century. 85
  Tomasz Kizwalter
• Hasidism in the Museum: The Social History Perspective. 93
  David Assaf
• What’s in, What’s out: A Critique of the Interwar Gallery. 105
  Michael Steinlauf
• The Truth and Nothing But: The Holocaust Gallery of the Warsaw POLIN Museum in Context. 111
  Omer Bartov
• Perspectives: A Lithuanian Visit to the POLIN Museum Holocaust Gallery. 119
  Saulius Sužiedėlis
• Polin: A Bildungsroman. 130
  Marci Shore
• A Historian’s Response. Comments on the Postwar Gallery. 134
  Andrzej Paczkowski

  Museums and Education

• Jewish Tourism to Poland: The Opportunities for New Museum Narratives to Recontextualize Jewish Histories. 139
  Jonathan Webber
• Jewish Museums in Moscow 150
  Victoria Mochalova
• The Challenges of New Work in History and Education about the Holocaust in Poland. 170
  Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs

PART TWO

• Historiographic Questions 183

  Premodern Poland–Lithuania

• Did the Polish Nobility Take Seriously the Teaching of the Catholic Church? Refections on the Relations between the Nobility, the Church, and the Jews. 183
  Adam Kaźmierczyk
• Relations between Jews and Non-Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth: Perceptions and Practices. 198
  Jürgen Heyde
• Agreements between Towns and Kahals and Their Impact on the Legal Status of Polish Jews. 219
  Hanna Węgrzynek
• The Role and Significance of Jews in the Economy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: The State of Research and Research Directions. 231
  Jacek Wijaczka
• A Reassessment of the Jewish Poll-Tax Assessment Lists in Eighteenth-Century Crown Poland. 255
  Judith Kalik
• Frankism: The History of Jacob Frank or of the Frankists. 261
  Jan Doktór

  Te Nineteenth Century

• Modern Times Polish Style? Orthodoxy, Enlightenment, and Patriotism. 280
  Israel Bartal
• Jew-Hatred and Anti-Jewish Violence in the Former Lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Long Nineteenth Century. 285
  Darius Staliūnas
• Those Who Stayed: Women and Jewish Traditionalism in East Central Europe. 285
  Glenn Dynner
• Pauline Wengeroff: Between Tradition and Modernity, East and West. 313
  Shulamit Magnus

  The Interwar Years

• One Jewish Street? Reflections on Unity and Disunity in Interwar Polish Jewry. 324
  Gershon Bacon
• Not Just Mały Przegląd: The Ideals and Educational Values Expressed in Jewish Polish-Language Journals for Children and Young Adults. 338
  Anna Landau-Czajka
• Legitimizing the Revolution: Sarah Schenirer and the Rhetoric of Torah Study for Girls. 356
  Naomi Seidman
• Contested Jewish Polishness: Language and Health as Markers for the Position of Jews in Polish Culture and Society in the Interwar Period. 366
  Katrin Stefen

  The Holocaust

• Historiography on the Holocaust in Poland: An Outsider’s View of its Place within Recent General Developments in Holocaust Historiography. 386
  Dan Michman
• The Dispute over the Status of a Witness to the Holocaust: Some Observations on How Research into the Destruction of the Polish Jews and into Polish–Jewish Relations during the Years of Nazi Occupation Have Changed since 1989. 402
  Andrzej Żbikowski
• Beyond National Identities: New Challenges in Writing the History of the Holocaust in Poland and Israel. 423
  Daniel Blatman

  The Postwar Period

• Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47: The State of Research and Its Presentation. 442
  Grzegorz Berendt
• The Jews and the “Disavowed Soldiers.” 452
  August Grabski
• In or Out? Identities and Images of Poland among Polish Jews in the Postwar Years. 472
  Audrey Kichelewski

  Index 486

Foreword

We are very happy to introduce this collection of scholarly papers which were first delivered at the International Conference “From Ibrahim ibn Jakub to 6 Anielewicz Street”, organized to mark the opening of the core exhibition of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. The Conference was jointly organized by the POLIN Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and it took place within the framework of the Museum’s Global Education Outreach Program. Financial support was provided by the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.

The conference showed how much progress has been made in the last thirty years in illuminating the multi-faceted history of the Jews in the Polish lands. It demonstrated that there is now an international community span- ning Poland, Israel, Eastern and Western Europe and North America devoted to examining this important topic. This community and the development of Polish-Jewish studies provided solid historiographic basis for the creation of the narrative core exhibition of the POLIN Museum.

We are confident that this volume will have the widest possible circulation and will contribute to making better known the achievements of the Jews of the Polish lands and their complex and often fruitful co-existence with their neighbors.

Dariusz Stola,
Director of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews Paweł Śpiewak,
Director of the Jewish Historical Institute.

Preface

T his volume is made up of essays that were first presented as papers at the conference held in May 2015 to introduce the scholarly community to the permanent exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Nevertheless, it does not follow the usual pattern of conference publications, as the articles have been thoroughly rewritten for publication and organized in a clear thematic pattern.

In the last forty-five years, tremendous progress has been made in the study of the Polish Jewish past. One clear indication of how far understanding of the Polish Jewish past has evolved was the opening in October 2014 of the perma- nent exhibition of the POLIN Museum. In May 2015, a major international con- ference was held to mark this opening. This volume contains most of the lectures which were delivered on that occasion. It is divided into two parts. The first, deal- ing with museological questions, is divided into three part, the first provides an account of what the curators were trying to achieve, the second comments on the content of the museum and the third analyzes the role of museums in popu- larizing the study of the past. The second part contains a series of articles reflect- ing the present state of the historiography of Jews on the Polish lands. These examine the pre-modern period, the nineteenth century, the interwar years, the Holocaust, and the postwar period. Making use of the leading scholars in the field from Poland, Western Europe, North America, and Israel, the volume provides a definitive overview of the history and culture of one of the most important communities in the long history of the Jewish people.

We should like to thank Magdalena Prokopowicz, Publications Officer at the POLIN Museum for the History and Culture of Polish Jews, and Joyce Rappoport for their help in editing and producing this volume. Financial support has been provided by the Museum’s Global Education Outreach Program, the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.

Introduction

ANTONY POLONSKY, HANNA WĘGRZYNEK, and ANDRZEJ ŻBIKOWSKI

T he essays in this volume are expanded versions of papers presented at the conference held in May 2015 to introduce the scholarly community to the permanent exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. As Moshe Rosman shows in his chapter in this book, “Polish–Jewish Historiography 1970–2015: Construction, Consensus, Controversy,” in the last forty-five years, tremendous progress has been made in the study of the Polish Jewish past. The enormously disruptive impact of the Holocaust, Stalinism, and the imposition of Marxist-Leninist norms of historical writing in People’s Poland meant that a new cadre of scholars had to be created from the 1980s and that many topics had to be investigated anew. At the scholarly conference at Oxford in September 1984 on Polish–Jewish relations (one of the turning points in the revival of interest in the history and culture of Polish Jews), Stefan Kieniewicz, the doyen of nineteenth-century Polish historians, observed: After the Holocaust and the post-war exodus, research in this field was mostly conducted outside Poland; these findings and publications are hardly available and, in any case, their language is unfamiliar to my coun- trymen. The researchers are hindered, too, I fear, because of an inad- equate knowledge of purely Polish affairs. It is indeed unfortunate that there is now in Poland no one who is able to study and revive the history of Polish Jews—a history that is most important to the Polish people, for its own sake and because of the Jewish participation in or contribution to our national past. /1

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1 Stefan Kieniewicz, “Polish Society and the Jewish Problem in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Jews in Poland, ed. Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 71.

Introduction

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

• Names: Polonsky, Antony, editor. | Węgrzynek, Hanna, editor. | Żbikowski,
• Andrzej, editor.
• Title: New directions in the history of the Jews in the Polish lands / edited
• by Antony Polonsky, Hanna Wegrzynek and Andrzej Zbikowski.
• Description: Boston, MA : Academic Studies Press ; Warsaw, Poland : POLIN
• Museum of the History of Polish Jews, [2017] | Series: Jews of Poland |
• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Identifiers: LCCN 2017044794 (print) | LCCN 2017047212 (ebook) | ISBN
• 9788394914905 (e-book) | ISBN 9788394914912 (Open Access) | ISBN
• 9788394426293 (hardback)
• Subjects: LCSH: Jews--Poland--History--Congresses. | Poland--Ethnic
• relations--Congresses. | Museums--Educational aspects--Poland--Congresses.
• Classification: LCC DS135.P6 (ebook) | LCC DS135.P6 N475 2017 (print) | DDC
• 943.8/004924--dc23
• LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044794