Inside the Museum: Curating between hope and despair: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

The reception of the core exception of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened in Warsaw on 28 October 2014, is the focus of this essay. While eschewing a master narrative, the exhibition is guided by metahistorical principles and a distinctive approach to mode of narration. Both have proven controversial as evidenced by answers to the following questions. What is the difference between a history of Polish Jews and a history of Polish Jewish relations? What is the most important period in the history of Polish Jews? Can visitors be trusted to draw the proper conclusions from a multi-voiced narrative based largely on quotations from primary sources, supported with scholarly commentary? Is a museum whose core exhibition features relatively few original objects a museum? What is the role of intangible heritage in such a museum?     

The politics of Agudas Yisroel in inter‐war Poland

Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames. The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust. New York: Holocaust Library, 1982. 500pp. Index. $8.95.

Lucjan Dobroszycki (ed.). The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984. lxviii +551pp. Index. £25.

Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943. Ghetto, Underground, Revolt. Brighton (UK): Harvester Press, 1982. xviii + ‐487pp. Index. £28.

Shmuel Krakowski, The War of the Doomed. Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942–1944. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1984. xii +340pp. Index.     

Ritual slaughter and animal welfare in interwar Poland

This articles examines the ritual slaughter debates in the Polish Second Republic (1918 to 1939) from the perspective of the organized animal welfare movement, and argues that animal welfarists both supplied and reinforced antisemitic arguments for banning ritual slaughter; Poland partially banned the Jewish rite in 1936. Animal protectionists in Poland subscribed to the view that the level of civilization reached by a people was best measured by their attitudes towards animals, the most defenseless of living creatures; compassion and humanitarianism, they believed, were defining feature of modern civility. Animal protectionists understood ritual slaughter to be unusually cruel, and as such they saw it as violating the imperatives of the modern and rational era. Given that Jews were the ones who practiced ritual slaughter, they in turn were described as a cruel anachronism that jeopardized animal protectionists' goal of establishing Poland's place in a civilized Europe.     

Personal,Inherited, Collective: Communicating and Layering Memories of Forced Polish Migration

This article concentrates on the specific wartime experiences of Polish émigrés in Britain who were deported from eastern Poland to Siberia in 1940 by Soviet forces. However, rather than considering these experiences in themselves, the focus is on the communication, layering and sharing of these wartime histories. The essay examines how the extraordinary events of war are conveyed in an interview setting; how the Polish émigrés have lived with these memories in their daily lives; the extent to which the children of these migrants have inherited the memories of their parents; and whether there is a wider collective consciousness underpinning the memory of the Siberian deportation.     

Contradictions of state socialism: the case of Poland*

This article originates from an invitation to give a paper at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw m the Autumn of 1980. As then drafted, the paper consisted mainly of a discussion of the writings of selected Polish and British sociologists on the structure and workings of contemporary state-socialist societies, and it was my intention to revise it for submission to the Sociological Review as a sequel to, and commentary on, the article by Christopher G.A. Bryant published in the issue of February, 1980.¹ On return from Warsaw, I decided against doing so for two reasons: first, it seemed to me that the writings which I had taken as my starting-point were too remote from the actual course of events in Poland; second, I did not see how I could use the many informative conversations about those events which I had had with Polish sociologists and others in an academic journal article. On further reflection, however, I do not believe that either of these reasons should prevent my attempting to set out and justify my view of the implications for sociological theory of the Polish case, even though it is based in part on non-documentary sources and (more seriously) I lack the knowledge of the language which would give me direct access to the documentary ones. In what follows, accordingly, I first outline the framework within which the forms and distribution of power in state-socialist societies in general and Poland in particular can, in my view, best be analysed; I then set out in slightly more detail what I see as the reasons why events in Poland between 1956 and 1981 followed the course they did; and I conclude with a brief discussion of what I believe to be the principal weakness in the recent British sociological literature on state socialism insofar as it relates to the Polish case.     

The Polish Parliament and the Making of Politics through Abortion: Nation,Gender and Democracy in the 1996 Liberalization Amendment Debate

The collapse of communism across East Central Europe was marked by a renewal of debates around reproduction, with abortion debates surfacing in Romania, Germany and Poland. Reproductive politics and more specifically abortion debates typically come to the forefront in times of crisis or societal transformation. Struggles over women's reproductive rights in Poland, as evidenced by continuing debate around the legal status of abortion, are in this postcommunist context intimately related to and bound up with ongoing symbolic and concrete re-definitions of Polish nationhood, identity and citizenship. Focusing on the connections between discourses of Polish nationhood, gender and democracy, this article offers a detailed and critical engagement with debate in the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Polish parliament) during the second reading of the 1996 liberalization of abortion amendment. Using a discourse analysis methodology, the article argues that abortion is a symbolic issue through which anxieties about postcommunist reform are raised, nationalist pasts and futures are imagined and through which political projects are articulated.     

Stakeholder identities in Britain's neoliberal ethical community: Polish narratives of earned citizenship in the context of the UK's EU referendum

This article examines the narrative strategies through which Polish migrants in the UK challenge the formal rights of political membership and attempt to redefine the boundaries of ‘citizenship’ along notions of deservedness. The analysed qualitative data originate from an online survey conducted in the months before the 2016 EU referendum, and the narratives emerge from the open‐text answers to two survey questions concerning attitudes towards the referendum and the exclusion of resident EU nationals from the electoral process. The analysis identifies and describes three narrative strategies in reaction to the public discourses surrounding the EU referendum – namely discursive complicity, intergroup hostility and defensive assertiveness – which attempt to redefine the conditions of membership in Britain's ‘ethical community’ in respect to welfare practices. Examining these processes simultaneously ‘from below’ and ‘from outside’ the national political community, the paper argues, can reveal more of the transformation taking place in conceptions of citizenship at the sociological level, and the article aims to identify the contours of a ‘neoliberal communitarian citizenship’ as internalized by mobile EU citizens.     

A teacher and his students: child Holocaust testimonies from early postwar Polish Bytom

ABSTRACT

The document presented here was created in 1945 in Bytom, Poland. It contains testimonies by Holocaust survivor children collected and put down in a notebook by their survivor teacher, Shlomo Tsam, in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. The testimonies shed light on Jewish children's experience in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust, describing oppression, flight, and survival in the words of the weakest segment of Jewish communities – children. The testimonies provide raw data on the encounters between Jews and non-Jews in the territories in which the “Final Solution” was carried out. It is thus an important source contributing to the burgeoning research on the involvement of local populations in the murder of the Jews, on one hand, and in saving Jews, on the other. The creation of this document, one of several collections of Jewish survivor children's testimonies produced in the immediate postwar years, is also indicative of post-Holocaust Jewish sensibilities and concerns regarding surviving children.     

The intricacies of education about the Holocaust in Poland. Ten years after the Jedwabne debate,what can Polish school students learn about the Holocaust in history classes?

In many European countries, disparities have grown between history and the memory of the Holocaust. Debates on Polish–Jewish relations during the Holocaust and empirical studies in the field of education reveal that there is a gap between research and education. The emphasis in this paper is on the content of new history textbooks published after the 2008 educational reforms in Poland.     

“I bled like you,brother, although I was a thousand miles away”: postwar Yiddish sources on the experiences of Polish Jews in Soviet exile during World War II

ABSTRACT

An estimated 230,000 Polish Jews escaped Nazi persecution during World War II by flight or deportation to the interior of the Soviet Union. This article examines early postwar Yiddish and Polish sources on their survival in Soviet exile such as poems, newspaper articles, and witness testimonies. Two sets of sources are analyzed in-depth, testimonies written by young people in Jewish Displaced Persons (DP) camps in occupied Germany and Yiddish poetry from Poland and the DP camps. The author argues that many former exiles were eager to write down their experiences. In doing so, they were aware of the complex nature of deportation and flight that characterized the experiences of Polish Jews in the Soviet Union. In their testimonies many young witnesses express their understanding that they too were “marked by the khurbn.” Whereas Yiddish poetry from the same period helps us understand how writers dealt with their own story of wartime survival outside the realm of German persecution. In their poetry they seek meaning in their own suffering and express their desire to establish a dialogue with other survivors.     

Staging Traumatic Memory: Competing Narratives of State Violence in Post-Communist Hungarian Museums

The article examines the way three contemporary Hungarian museums–the House of Terror Museum, the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial and Documentation Center–represent the history of the Holocaust and the history of Jewish/non-Jewish relations. Reflecting different political agendas, each of the three museums offers a different interpretation of how the Holocaust fits into the larger narrative of Hungary's 20th century history. The article argues that post-communist public memory has been constructed through debates about these histories. By analyzing the three museums' displays, narratives and the debates surrounding them, the article argues that Hungarian public discourse has yet to come to terms with the meaning and place of “Jewishness” (and the way it has informed “Hungarianness”) in modern Hungarian history. Despite the centrality of Jews and Jewish-non-Jewish relations to the museums' narratives, none are able to offer a clear definition of what “Jewishness” means and how it functioned at different times throughout the 20th century.     

Revis(it)ing nuclear history: narrative conflict at the bradbury science museum ∗

Nuclear criticism theorizes culture as the site of struggle between ideological narratives seeking authority over the meaning of nuclear symbols. Following the end of the cold war, various groups have conducted this struggle through public discourse about U.S. nuclear weapons organizations. This paper examines symbolic conflict over the history and future of one such organization, the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This conflict was conducted between pro-nuclear Laboratory officials and employees of its Bradbury Science Museum, and local anti-nuclear activists. The conflict centered around the activists' construction of an alternative exhibit that was placed in the Museum, and that challenged its dominant narrative of nuclear history. Analysis reveals that the identities and activities of these two groups can be distinguished by three sets of opposing constructs: nuclearism/pacifism; monologue/dialogue, and fact/narrative. These frames guided the groups' interpretive practices, and heuristically condense the heteroglossia of post-cold war debate about nuclear history. They clarify, in turn, the process by which cultural memory is constructed and transformed to serve nuclear-ideological interests.     

The image of the Warsaw Pogrom of 1881 in late nineteenth‐century Polish literature

This article interprets how the Christmas 1881 Warsaw Pogrom was depicted in Polish literature, using novels and short stories written soon after this incident as the source. It considers Eliza Orzeszkowa's “O ?ydach i kwestii ?ydowskiej,” written soon after the pogrom, in which she tried to analyse the reasons for what had happened in Warsaw. Other sources it examines are Konopnicka's short story “Mendel Gdański” and Boles?aw Prus's Lalka, which is often considered the best Polish novel of the nineteenth century. In analysing these sources, the article considers the varying responses to the pogrom, which was a kind of shock, since Polish liberals considered their part of the tsarist empire exempt from the anti‐Jewish excesses that had occurred in earlier months in southern Russia. However, the outbreak of violence in the Polish capital inevitably meant a closer re‐examination of the Polish context and its often complex Jewish–gentile relationship.     

Polish Households During the Economic Transformation

Two topics are presented in this paper: a short history of the Polish economic transformation, begun in 1989, and analyses of aggregate data describing the life conditions of Polish households in the period immediately following the transformation.     

Polish queer lesbianism: sexual identity without a lesbian community

The article investigates the state of Polish lesbianism. It presents the history of lesbian groups, lesbian culture, and community in Poland. It puts social and political activism of lesbians in the context of the growing feminist movement and strong nationalism in Poland. Showing the important role of the Internet communication and the way in which queer philosophy is understood in this country, it investigates sexual identity formation and the process through which lesbian communities develop in Poland. The analysis of Polish lesbianism confirms the constructionists' theory that sexual identity formation highly depends on cultural and political circumstances.     

Historical Heritage in Contemporary Polish Law Relating to Foreigners

The Polish diaspora living around the world is best described as an inheritance of the turbulent history of Poland. For decades, citizens of Polish origin from various states have been trying to maintain ties with their kin and country. During communist times, citizens of Eastern European countries (including the Soviet republics) could not enjoy free contacts across borders. Poland's accession to the European Union and Schengen area has created new barriers for third country nationals willing to come and stay in Poland. Therefore, any facilitation or exemption from visa requirements is very attractive for them. Legal instruments relating to foreigners which have recently been adopted in Poland affect the situation of Polish minorities and the rights of their members. The author reveals the historical roots of the legal solutions and indicates the specificity of Polish immigration law. First, she considers the historical background of the links between immigration law and minority rights, particularly in the area of economy, culture and education. She comes to the conclusion that well-constructed immigration provisions may be useful in filling gaps in the protection of minorities and that the new ways of acquisition of citizenship may to some extent compensate old harms and injustice.     

The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow: Judaism for the masses

In 2012, a new Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opened in Moscow – an event unthinkable during the Soviet regime. Financed at the level of $50 million, created by an international crew of academics and museum designers, and located in a landmark building, the museum immediately rose to a position of cultural prominence in the Russian museum scene. Using interactive technology and multimedia, the museum's core exhibition presents several centuries of complex local Jewish history, including the Second World War period. Naturally, the Holocaust is an important part of the story. Olga Gershenson's essay analyzes the museum's relationship to Holocaust history and memory in the post-Soviet context. She describes the museum's struggle to reconcile a Soviet understanding of the “Great Patriotic War” with a dominant Western narrative of the Holocaust, while also bringing the Holocaust in the Soviet Union to a broader audience via the museum. Through recorded testimonies, period documents, and film, the museum's display narrates the events of the Holocaust on Soviet soil. This is a significant revision of the Soviet-era discourse, which universalized and externalized the Holocaust. But this important revision is limited by the museum's choice to avoid the subject of local collaborators and bystanders. The museum shies away from the most pernicious aspect of the Holocaust history on Soviet soil, missing an opportunity to take historic responsibility and confront the difficult past.     

The Polish family: Stability, change and conflict

This article analyzes and interprets empirical findings from studies carried out in Poland over the last years to identify changes in familial support networks for the elderly. In comparison with Western Countries, the Polish family is much closer to the traditional mode and plays a key role in the supportive networks of the elderly. This analysis points to considerable changes in the model of family help. Its shape has become more symmetrical: the help given by old parents to adult children has increased visibly whereas the children's help for parents has decreased. These changes have not seriously reduced the importance of the family as a primary support group. This fact is related to cultural factors and the economic and political situation in Poland. It is concluded that while various services need to be developed along Western lines, this development should be accompanied by a strengthening of various forms of family care.     

Gorbanevskaia and Poland: From Pol’sha to Novaia Pol’sha

Natal’ia Gorbanevskaia is primarily known as a poet and leading human rights activist, as well as for her role as author and editor at Kontinent and Russkaia mysl’. One important and substantial aspect of her life that is not well known outside of limited circles is the formative influence of Polish culture and thought on her as well as her extensive contribution to Polish culture and its dispersion, and the promotion of mutual understanding between Poles and Russians. This article traces this relationship and situates it within the context of a broader pattern of Polish influence on Russian culture beginning in the mid-1950s as well as connecting Gorbanevskaia to the seminal figure of Giedroyc, both directly and by virtue of shared concerns and interests. The period beginning with her emigration to Paris in 1976 sees her fully committed to expanding access for Russians, in exile and at home, to cultural, political, social and other texts and information about Poland. Chronologically, the nominal limits of this narrative are the popular interest journal Pol’sha which had a huge appeal for many Soviets beginning from 1956, and the journal Novaia Pol’sha of which she is a member of the editorial board, and which has been published in Russian in Warsaw since 1999 with the goal of establishing thoughtful dialogue between Poles and Russians.     

Sounding the Holocaust,silencing the city: memorial soundscapes in today’s Berlin

Silence appears frequently in discourses of the Holocaust – as a metaphorical absence, a warning against forgetting, or simply the only appropriate response. But powerful though these meanings are, they often underplay the ambiguity of silence’s signifying power. This article addresses the liminality of silence through an analysis of its richly textured role in the memorial soundscapes of Berlin. Beyond an aural version of erasure, unspeakability, or the space for reflection upon it, I argue that these silent spaces must always be heard as part of their surrounding urban environment, refracting wider spatial practices and dis/order. When conventions are reversed – when the present is silent – the past can resound in surprising and provocative ways, collapsing spatial and temporal borders and escaping the ritualized boundaries of formal commemoration. This is explored through four different memorial situations: the disturbing resonances within the Holocaust Memorial; the transgressive processes of a collective silent walk; Gleis 17 railway memorial’s opening up of heterotopic ‘gaps’ in time; and sounded/silent history in the work of singer Tania Alon. Each of these examples, in different ways, frames a slippage between urban sound and memorial silence, creating a parallel symbolic space that the past and the present can inhabit simultaneously. In its unpredictable fluidity, silence becomes a mobile and subversive force, producing an imaginative space that is ambiguous, affective and deeply meaningful. A closer attention to these different practices of listening disrupts a top-down, strategic discourse of silence as conventionally emblematic of reflection and distance. The contemporary urban soundscape that slips through the silent cracks problematizes the narrative hegemony of memorial itself.