Books in the Jews of Poland series

A document of a personal and family memory, authored by Artur Lilien-Brzozdowiecki (1890-1958) in 1944-45. Lilien invites his new-born granddaughter to encounter her family, generations of Polish Jewry: merchants, lease-holders, bankers, industrialists, politicians, communal leaders, army officers, scholars, physicians, artists, and art collectors.

This story of Krystyna Bierzynska, an acculturated Polish Jew, explores how she survived the Holocaust thanks to the efforts of her Jewish and surrogate Christian families and served in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Bierzynska's is a Warsaw story that demonstrates how, in urban interwar Poland, acculturated Jews at last dared to believe that they qualified as Polish patriots.

Boleslaw Prus and the Jews shows the complexity of the so-called "e;Jewish question"e; in nineteenth-century Congress Poland and especially its significance in Prus' social concept, reflected in his extensive body of journalistic work, fiction, and treatises. The book traces Prus' evolving worldview toward Jews, from his support of the Assimilation Program in his early years to his eventual support of Zionism. These contrasting ideas show us the complexity of the discourse on Jewish issues from the individual perspective of a significant writer of the time, as well as the dynamics of the Jewish modernization process in a "e;non-existent"e; partitioned Poland. The portrait of Prus that emerges is surprisingly ambivalent.

Dr. Kessler, a Jewish attorney from Lwow, Poland, gives an eye-witness account of the Holocaust through the events recorded in his diary between the years 1942 and 1944. In vivid, raw, documentary style, he describes his experiences in the Lwow Ghetto, in the Janowska Concentration Camp, and in an underground bunker where he and twenty-three other Jews were hidden by a courageous Polish farmer and his family. The book includes a chapter written by Kazimierz Kalwinski, who as a teenager was a caretaker for the hidden Jews on his family's farm. Edmund's daughter, Renata Kessler, coordinated the book and has written an epilogue about her search for the story, which has taken her to Israel, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine. Renowned scholar Antony Polonsky contributes an insightful historical overview of the times in which the book takes place. This volume is a tremendous resource for historians, scholars, and those interested in the Holocaust.

Biography and Memory discusses the return of Jews to their places of birth in Poland. A biographical urge to come full circle often leads to symbolic journeys to one's roots, but in the case of Shoah survivors, such journeys are unexpected, defying the generational definition of their biography, which mostly draws a demarcation line between wartime trauma and a new post- Holocaust life. Analyzed biographical stories collected from Israeli survivors indicate that such returns may be considered the last chapters of their wartime experiences. Survivors' biographies are examined in the context of both Jewish and Polish memory. This book will be of interest to sociologists, historians, and to general readers.

Takes the reader through Dr. Wlodzimierz Szer's childhood in Yiddish prewar Warsaw, adolescence and imprisonment in wartime Russia, to the brutal reality of immediate postwar Poland. Although largely autobiographical, the book provides a historically and intellectually compelling analysis of the social and political situation in Poland and Soviet Russia from the early 1930s to 1967.

Tens of thousands of Jewish children were orphaned during World War I and in the subsequent years of conflict. In response, Jewish leaders in Poland established CENTOS, the Central Union of Associations for Jewish Orphan Care. The work of CENTOS exemplifies the community's goal to build a Jewish future.

Presents a brief history of the Jewish community of Volodymyr-Volynsky, going back to its first historical mentions. It explores Jewish settlement in the city, the kahal, and the role of the community in the Vaad Arba Aratsot, and profiles several important historical figures. It also considers the city's synagogues and Jewish cemetery, and explores the twentieth-century history of the community.

This vivid and moving memoir describes the survival of a Jewish child in the hell of Nazi occupied Poland. Rubin Katz was born in Ostrowiec Swietokrzyskie, Poland, in 1931. This town, located in the picturesque countryside of central Poland 42 miles south of Radom, had in 1931 a population of nearly 30,000, of whom more than a third were Jews. The persistence of traditional ways of life and the importance of the local hasidic rebbe, Yechiel-Meier (Halevi) Halsztok, as well as the introduction of such modernities as bubble gum, are clearly and effectively described here. This memoir is remarkable for the ability of its author to recall so many events in detail and for the way he is able to be fair to all those caught up in the tragic dilemmas of those years. It is a major contribution to our understanding of the fate of Jews in smaller Polish towns during the Second World War and the conditions which made it possible for some of them, like Rubin, to survive.

A book of reportage originally published in Poland in 1933 by Ksawery Pruszyski, a young reporter who went to Mandate Palestine to see for himself whether the Zionist dream of returning to Eretz Yisrael had a chance of turning into reality. This book is a unique firsthand account of the early stages in formation of the state and nation of Israel.

Through an innovative network of local associations, Jewish leaders in interwar Poland cooperated to aid orphaned children. Their work exemplifies the goal to build a Jewish future. Translations of sources from Yiddish and Polish describe the lives of Jewish children and the tireless efforts to better the children's circumstances.

Addresses Jewish forced labour in Poland's General Government during the Holocaust. The study presents German economic policy on the occupied territories, discussing Germany's misappropriation and misuse of available resources and how this policy ultimately led to the downfall of the Nazi regime.

Debora Vogel (1900-1942) wrote in Yiddish unlike anyone else. This ground-breaking collection presents the work of a strikingly original yet overlooked author, art critic and intellectual, and resituates Vogel as an important figure in the constellation of European modernity.

Debora Vogel (1900-1942) wrote in Yiddish unlike anyone else. This ground-breaking collection presents the work of a strikingly original yet overlooked author, art critic and intellectual, and resituates Vogel as an important figure in the constellation of European modernity.

A Partisan of Vilna is the memoir of Rachel Margolis, the sole survivor of her family, who escaped from the Vilna Ghetto with other members of the FPO (United Partisan Organization) resistance movement and joined the Soviet partisans in the forests of Lithuania to sabotage the Nazis. Beginning with an account of Rachel's life as a precocious, privileged girl in pre-war Vilna, it goes on to detail life in the Vilna Ghetto, including the development of the FPO and its struggles against the Nazis. Finally, the book chronicles the escape of a group of FPO members into the forest of Belarus, where Rachel became a partisan fighter. Rather than "e;keep house"e; back at their bunker like other female partisans, Rachel demanded assignments to active duty alongside the men. Going on military assignments, she burned down a bridge, blew up railroad tracks, and helped bring in food supplies for her fellow partisans. The book opens with an introductory essay by renowned historian Antony Polonsky.