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The article reflects on the possible reasons for the silence about Stanisław Lem’s Jewish background. This was not an isolated matter in Poland. Thus, the article treats Lem’s example as a case study of the troubled identity of Polish Jews after the Second World War in Poland. First, the article considers the situation of a Jewish writer in the face of the – predominantly Catholic – society’s anti-Semitism, then the article analyzes the concept of allosemitism introduced by Artur Sandauer, and finally, the article considers Stanisław Lem’s statements about himself. The author concludes with the question of whether Lem can be called a prophet of extra-religious sources of ethics and freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trauma of the Holocaust, despite being dismissed for many years, has profoundly shaped the identity of successive generations of Jews. The main character of the film Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs (Hannas schlafende Hunde, 2016, Andreas Gruber) inherits the trauma of the tragic events of World War II, even though she initially remains unaware of her Jewish heritage. Upon discovering the family secret, the nine-year-old Johanna embarks on a journey to unravel her true identity. This task proves challenging in Austria, where anti-Semitism still prevailed in the 1960s, and “the myth of Hitler’s first victim” dominated the public discourse. The article aims to identify the stylistic devices employed in depicting the struggle between memory and (post)memory of tragic events. It also focuses on how Gruber narrates the story of trauma passed down from generation to generation and examines the representation of Jewish figures in his films. In addition, the film is analyzed within a sociocultural context to highlight its relevance to public discussions about Jewish identity in post-war Austria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Adeptus is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Judaism, calamity [Hebr. חורבן churban, plural. חורבנות churbanot] is a cultural category that is not necessarily characterized as negative. It is viewed as a form of purification, which begins a crisis that finally leads to a religious and moral recovery. Three most important churbanot are usually recognized in the history of Israel: the destruction of Salomon’s Temple by Nebuchadnezzar (586 B.C.) followed by the Babylonian captivity, the destruction of Herod’s Temple by Titus (70 A.D.) with the subsequent dispersion of Israelites (Hebr. גלות [‘galut’]) and the Holocaust (1939–1945 A.D.), a planned and methodical extermination of European Jews. All these experiences of Jewish disaster strongly resonated with the work of Aleksander Wat (1900-1967), a Polish poet with Jewish roots. Two of his poems are analyzed here. The first one (consisting of two parts), entitled Na melodie hebrajskie ['To Hebrew Tunes'] (from the volume Wiersze ['Poems'], 1957), explicitly mentions two churbanot: the Babylonian captivity and the diaspora of 70 A.D. The other poem is the third part of Pieśni wędrowca ['The Songs of a Wanderer'] (from the volume Wiersze śródziemnomorskie ['Mediterranean Poems'], 1962). It allusively mentions the Holocaust as the greatest Jewish disaster. In each case, the churban helps to identify the heart of Jewish identity. Because the Shoah cannot be said to have any positive consequences, Wat treats it in mystagogical terms, i.e., as a mystery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo is the property of University of Warsaw and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In my paper I tackle the issue of the cultural self-image of the East European Jew. I provide a critical analysis of a number of texts, of different kinds and bents - confessional, literary, historical, political - to demonstrate the paradoxes and contradictions of Jewish identity. Noticing the bi-polar paths of Jewish self-interpretation (as exemplified, for instance, by Heschel and Szahak), neither free from the subjective and emotional trends, I argue for the truth closer to those views which acknowledge the religious specificity of the Jewish nation as the chosen people. Regardless of multiple contexts worth considering and at work, the essence of Jewishness dwells in the religious feeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cywja Asterblumowa was a first-year law student at the University of Warsaw when during one of many antisemitic riots in 1936 she was beaten and accused of insulting the Polish nation. In the trial, the judge and the prosecutor, taking into consideration her religious faith, refused her the right to feel Polish. The author of the article presents not only Asterblumowa’s case—from her enrolling in the university to being imprisoned—but above all, concentrates on the reactions of the public opinion in which the discussion centered on the Polishness and Jewishness as well as the truth and the usurpation. In Asterblumowa’s case and the discussion surrounding it, all the divisions, prejudices, stereotypes, fierceness, disappointment and resignation, which the late 1930s brought upon the PolishJewish relations, are clearly visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text is an editorial introduction to the group of essays in this issue, which are devoted to the "Marranos of Polish literature." What we call here a 'Marrano phenomenon' is still a relatively unexplored fact of modern Western culture: the presence of the borderline Jewish identity, which avoids clear-cut cultural and religious attribution but nevertheless exerts significant influence on modern humanities. Our aim, however, is not a historical study of the Marranos (or conversos), i.e. mostly Spanish and Portuguese Jews of the 15th and 16th century, who were forced to convert to Christianity, but were suspected of retaining their Judaism 'undercover': such approach already exists and develops within the field of historical research. We rather want to apply the 'Marrano metaphor' to explore the fruitful area of mixture and cross-over which allowed modern thinkers, writers and artists of the Jewish origin to enter the realm of universal communication - without, at the same time, making them relinquish their Jewishness which they subsequently developed as a 'hidden tradition.' The 'Marranos of Polish Literature' constitutes a vital part of this project, which applies the Marrano methodology to the reading of the Polish- Jewish writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Kamil Kijek's book Dzieci modernizmu: Świadomość, kultura i socjalizacja polityczna młodzieży żydowskiej w II Rzeczypospolitej [Children of Modernism: The Consciousness, Culture and Political Socialization of Jewish Youth in the Second Polish Republic]. Using young people's diaries which were sent to three competitions held in the 1930s by the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO), Kijek studies the ways young Jewish people described themselves, their visions of Jewish or Polish-Jewish identity, and the influence exerted on their attitudes and ideological choices by schooling, the activities of political youth organizations and the antisemitism of interwar Polish culture. This was the first generation to grow up in newly independent Poland, in a state that simultaneously demanded loyalty from its Jewish denizens and excluded them from its symbolic universe. Kijek calls the worldview predominant among this Jewish generation "radical modernism" - a conviction that the world requires a radical transformation. The political shades of this view - Communism, Zionism, or the Jewish right - were of lesser importance, with membership in a particular organization often depending on the circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Seweryn Pollak's poetry, despite him being known first and foremost as an essayist and translator. Although meeting mixed and negative reviews (including his own), Pollak's poetry is not only a space where personal and fascinating accounts, memories, conversations with the loved ones, and farewells collide, but also the precise genre which the author chooses to talk of his Jewish ancestry, which is left unmentioned in his narrative works, including those addressed to his family and friends. Among Pollak's poems, there are texts devoted to the Shoah that actualise the sense of danger and alienation; these painful recollections, although dictated by fear, happen to be the poems where self-reflection becomes sharp and thorough, while the poetic persona - predominant. Searching for an insightful perspective on Pollak and his work, this article turns to his captivating handwritten texts with a special emphasis put on the collections of letters exchanged between him and his wife, Wanda Grodzieńska. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Autobiografia is the property of Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecinskiego / University of Szczecin Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The declarative anti-traditional attitude, which often has been mentioned as the chief feature of the avant-garde, was of double significance in the case of Jewish artists. In addition to striving for a new form in art, they also wanted to transform their Jewish identity and express it in artistic creation. This attitude united the milieus of Jewish artists who in the first two decades of the 20th century were creating a complex and multidirectional network, outstretched between Berlin, Warsaw, Kiev, Lwów and Łódź (to mention just a few). The character of this network was heterogeneous - on the one hand it was a cultural space, a field of constant migrations of ideas and mutual influences. Simultaneously, it was full of tensions, conflicting cultural projects and expectations regarding the form and role of Jewish modern art. The development of Jewish avant-garde groups, their character and dynamics influenced the process of transforming the project of creating national art, as well as its final destiny. The field of particularly intense contacts was the relationship between Jewish expressionists from Poland and Germany. The main aim of this article is take a closer look at the contacts between the milieus of the Berlin group Die Pathetiker and the Łódź group Yung-Yidish. Indeed artists from both groups, tried to combine the Jewish themes and topos with the aesthetics of expressionism. However, their potential and apparent similarities can be challenged by posing basic questions: did they have similar assumptions and goals, where is the essence of mutual inspirations, and where foundations of differences between them lie? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of the article analysed the profile of Jewish identity and education, indicating some essential problems and describing the way they are being tackled today. As far as Jewish identity is concerned, Z. Gross distinguished and depicted two separate standpoints, thus establishing two kinds of identity: substantive and constructive. She also described the diachronic and synchronic types of Jewish identity discourse, highlighting their implications for education. The educational system in Israel points to five fundamental historic events (the establishment of the Zionist Movement, the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, The Six Day War and the assassination of prime Minister Rabin) constituting a significant factor of Jewish Zionist education, addressing them in school curricula of particular subjects. Also, it is important to commemorate these events in educational processes in order to nurture the Jewish memory and strengthen Jewish national solidarity and identity despite the internal conflicts and fundamental reservations. Hence, the ability to compartmentalize and differentiate between consensus and conflict in the educational process is a salient feature of post-modern education. As to the synchronic discourse, the educational system in Israel requires transformation, since essentially no promoting forms have been undertaken, only some sporadic activities done by few teachers personally aware and committed to this problem. The contemporary educational system in Israel, according to Z. Gross, faces three closely interconnected cardinal problems in the ideological, social and administrative spheres. These difficulties result from the conflict between two Jewish civilizations and traditions: the traditional and the modern. As a consequence, dramatic transformations in Jewish identity and Jewish education are taking place. Therefore, these days the Israeli educational system needs to cerate a new, multicultural Jew, embodying the various identity conflicts that originated in historical and cultural processes. Such Jews are able to develop a dialectical approach towards the inherent conflicts, employing various identities as the basis of an identity capable of facing the special challenges of traditional society and adjusting itself gradually to ensure integration in the post-modern world.

Broadcasts aired by the Polish Radio in the Yiddish language in the 1950s were listened to all over the world. All the audience felt that for them, due to numerous reasons, the broadcasts were a matter of high value, and it is confirmed in letters sent to the station. It is also confirmed by negative reaction of the audience to the programme’s closure in 1958. The majority of letters was written in the Yiddish language, and in some cases other languages were used too – Russian, Polish, German. The letters contained many different personal traits, while reflecting the condition of preserved the Yiddish language, after the loss of homeland. The condition of Yiddish language that was used in the letters, for example informs about whether the author was subject to socialization in the original Jewish community (family home, school), whether they were present in the Jewish community, or whether they were affected by linguistic alienation in the country of their residence. Sometimes the audience would tackle the subject of their language deficiencies and point out to the forceful interruption of their Jewish education or the conditions in the country of their asylum.

On the basis of three literary texts quoted in the title of the article, the author analyses and interprets the categories of postmemory and inherited trauma. Roman Gren and Piotr Paziński create fictious nostalgic prose, whereas Mikołaj Grynberg uses a feature genre, i.e. recorded conversations with the Auschwitz survivors' children. The focal idea and a starting point of the discourse is Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory. The authors of the selected texts attempt to face those experiences. Though differently emotionally and artistically loaded, the texts focus on searching for the traces of ancestors and reconstructing family stories, frequently shrouded in a veil of mystery. Recalling childhood memories, the characters reveal family secrets (Jewish ancestry, the Holocaust experience and repercussions) and gradually begin to understand vague and problematic family relations. All three texts aim at reconstructing the identity of the descendants of the salvaged from Extermination, which allows them to recognize themselves in social, psychological and historical dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with biographical, ideological and artistic links between Julian Tuwim, Alfred Döblin and Kurt Tucholsky. On the one hand, the basis of comparison are biographical similarities, the Jewish origin of those three writers, their family dramas, the experience of politically opressive school, the trauma of revolution or war, and the exile to name just a few. On the other hand, the article demonstrates the ways the modernity has influenced the attitudes and texts of Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim. While talking about modernity, the author focuses on such phenomena as secularisation and urbanisation processes, mass political movements, and new cultural challenges. Tuwim, Döblin and Tucholsky were born into assimilated Jewish families. Their perspective on the stereotypical Jews (the orthodox Jews as well as Jewish bankers or manufacturers) is marked with antipathy, or even contempt. The writers’ ambivalence towards the diapora and towards their own origin illustrate “Jewish self-hatred”; however, all three authors change their opinion on Jewry in the face of the growing anti-Semitic and Nazi danger, and especially the Holocaust. Döblin is proud of being Jewish after his visit to Poland in 1924, Tucholsky warns German Jews against the consequences of their passivitivy, and Tuwim publishes in 1944 his agitating manifesto We, Polish Jews. Last but not least, the three authors go into exile because of their Jewish ancestry and sociocultural activities. Therefore, it is no coincidence thatone cannot help having associations with Heinrich Heine: his biography can be interpreted as a prefiguration of a Jewish artist’s biography. Furthermore, Tuwim, Döblin and Tucholsky are notably sensitive to social questions, and their sensitivity to such issues results to some extent from their difficult childhood and youth. Especially significant seem in that respect family conflicts and the moving from city to city, since such experiences increase the feeling of loneliness and the vulnerability to depression. Nevertheless, Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim come with impetus into the cultural life of Germany and Poland and work in the areas of literature, cabaret (satire) as well as journalism. They share sympathy for the political left and fears of the orthodox communism. They are simultaneously advocates and ardent critics of great cities. They pay attention to new phenomena (the popularity of cars, the role of the press, the new morality) and react to them. Their aim is creating a culture which appeals to the masses and educates them in a non-intrusive way. However, the awareness of their own intellectual superiority imposes distance towards lower social groups. The distance stems, firstly, from the universal ambivalence artists feel towards the masses, and secondly, from the ideological moderation characteristic of petit bourgoisie and of the political centre. In general, Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim are idealists who hope for a humanitarian world which is impossible in the era of extrem political violence leading to the Holocaust.

The article discusses the reception of Tuwim’s manifesto in Israel, focusing in particular on the 1940s. The author analyses various critical reponses to the poem expressed by Jewish critics in Palestine. Tuwim’s reception in Israel is presented from a new perspective which has not been explore so far.

Tuwim’s approach to the “Jewish question” has already been analyzed by Polish and foreign scholars. The article is intended to consider some “survival strategies” of the Polish poet from a slightly different angle. In Poland, in the period between the wars Jewish writers were persuaded to accept total polonization and a rejection of their ethnic identity; yet, at the same time they often suffered a rejection from the circles of Polish artists. Any attempt of highlighting their Jewish identity or even a slight interest in Jewish culture incited brutal Jew-bashings. Tuwim considered his being a Polish Jew not only as a fact to be proud of, but also as an opportunity for engaging with self-criticism. He painfully felt the Jewish question as “a powerful wedge cleaving [his own] worldview”. However, like many other Polish-Jewish writers he masked its enduring presence in his own psyche, constructing his public persona through a process of self-fashioning. This paper tries to follow the traces of this “wedge” in Tuwim’s works: from poems supposedly having nothing to do with the “Jewish question”, to encrypted allusions to the great Yiddish writers, from his relentless questioning of all forms of intolerance and nationalist rhetoric, to his conviction that a new poetic language could “reform the world” and become a homeland for all readers regardless of their nationality.

Henri Raczymow's term of mémoire trouée - memory with holes - is often understood as a synonym to Marian Hirsch's “postmemory”. Even though there is a semantic connection between these two concepts, it seems important to point out differences between them. Mémoire trouée concept was presented by Raczymow in 1986 on the Jewish Writers Conference. The essay became a collective voice of Jewish immigrants in France. What is this “hole” in the memory? How did it appear? What are literary methods of description of this void? Most of all, this void has its “double” - emptiness in the “shtetl memory” and emptiness in the “Shoah memory”. The aim of this article is to analyze Raczymow's essay, especially his conception of “the second generation's” writing; to interpret voids in the memory in the Jewish experience and literary transposition of mémoire trouée in Raczymow novels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The memory has a special meaning both in the Jewish as well as the Christian tradition. It differs from other religious and cultural traditions. Its heart comes from the commandments Zakhor, Remember which means the permanent actualisation of the events which founded and essentially shaped the identity of Jews and Christians. The notion of zikkaron (memorial) reveals the duty to be in relation with the past in function of the present and the future in order not to be separated from God. Thus these two traditions allow to their believers to discover and not to lose the very sense of the human life with its most challenging aspects as suffering, weakness and death. Probably the most influential event in the history within this path of reflection was the Shoah, erroneously named Holocaust, the catastrophe which happened to the Jewish people in result of the Nazi ideology. If we don't include this horrifying genocide into the Jewish, Christian and human history as a subject of a deep biblical and profound thinking, we cannot avoid two traps: to be fixed and lost in the past or to lose our memory and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the complex relationship of both Jews and non-Jews to Yiddish language and Jewish literature in Poland. It analyses the evolution of translators' motivations and their approach to the original texts, as well as the reactions of readers of Jewish literature during three decades (1885-1914). The study opens with the fi rst translations from Yiddish into Polish (and at the same time the fi rst translations from Yiddish to foreign languages in general): Klemens Junosza-Szaniawski's Donkiszot żydowski (The Jewish Don Quixote, 1885) and Szkapa (The Nag, 1886) by Mendele Moykher Sforim (Sholem-Yankev Abramovitsh). Their publication was a notable event in Warsaw's intellectual circles and provoked lively polemics in the press. In his introduction, Junosza used the expression "the Great Wall of China" to defi ne the barriers dividing the Jewish and Polish societies, which he hoped to overcome at least in part through his translations. The phrase was later adopted by critics and the following generation of translators, who regularly, albeit with different intentions, made references to the work of their predecessor. Apart from the translations of Mendele's novels, the article also discusses the texts published by Yiddish-language writers in assimilatory periodicals in Congress Poland (Izraelita in Warsaw) and in Galicia (Ojczyzna in Lwów). They were programmatically hostile to the language of Ashkenazi Jews, but their relationship to Yiddish literature turns out to have been more complex and changing with time. The analysis also includes: the anthology Miliony! (Millions!, 1903) translated by Jerzy Ohr, a journalist close to the extreme right circles; Miasteczko (The Shtetl, 1910) by Sholem Ash, whose introduction refl ected the radicalization of Polish-Jewish relations; and Safrus (1905), a collection of fi ction and essays edited by Jan Kirszrot, who represented the Jewish nationalist milieu. These translations and their reception illustrate well the complex issues of identity, cultural belonging, assimilation, return to the roots, image of the Other, cultural stereotypes or fascination and rejection, characteristic of a multicultural and a multinational society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]