Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry

‘Contains too many riches for a brief review to do them justice …It is instructive to see how the subject of antisemitism is reflected in the pages of this volume, especially because of the number of contributions by Polish scholars, some of them young, to a field that only a few years ago was virtually taboo in Poland.’ Abraham Brumberg, Times Literary Supplement In the period between the two world wars, Poland’s Jewish community of three million was second only in size to that of the United States, and was the laboratory in which the ideological orientations which dominated the Jewish world-Zionism, Bundism, Neo-Orthodoxy, assimilation-were tested. There has been much disagreement as to the character and strength of antisemitism in Poland at that time, and the extent to which it aided the Nazis in carrying out their genocidal plans. This volume of Polin includes contributions from Poland, western Europe, Israel, and North America that together provide a clearer understanding of the issues which have in the past proved so divisive. It also includes a number of personal testimonies from people who experienced the interwar period at first hand. CONTRIBUTORS Franciszek Adamski, Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Szyja Bronsztejn, Alina Cala, David Engel, Bina Garncarska-Kadary, Jerzy Holzer, Karol Jonca, Zbigniew Landau, Anna Landau-Czajka, Mark Levene, Ezra Mendelsohn, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, Andrzej Paczkowski, Antony Polonsky, Rafael F. Scharf, Robert Moses Shapiro, Dariusz Stola, Jerzy Tomaszewski, Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk, Alfred Wislicki