Holocaust History, Holocaust Memory: Jewish Poland and Polish Jews, During and After the Holocaust

by Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz (Editor), Lea Ganor (Editor)

Overview

This volume is both a study of the history of Polish Jews and Jewish Poland before, during, and immediately after the Holocaust and a collection of personal explorations focusing on the historians who write about these subjects.

While the first three parts of the book focus on "text," the broad nature of Polish Jewish history surrounding the Holocaust, the last section focuses on subtext, the personal and professional experiences of scholars who have devoted years to researching and writing about Polish Jewry. The beginning sections present a variety of case studies on wartime and postwar Polish Jews, drawing on new research and local history. The final part is a reflection on family memory, where scholars discuss their connections to Holocaust history and its impact on their current lives and research. Viewed together, the combination sheds light on both history and historians: the challenges of dealing with the history of an unparalleled cataclysm, and the personal questions and dilemmas that its study raises for many of the historians engaged in it.

Holocaust History, Holocaust Memory is a unique resource that will appeal to students and scholars studying the Second World War, Jewish and Polish history, and family history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032461458
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/26/2025
Series:	Routledge Studies in Second World War History
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz is the director of the Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research and Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She has written and edited numerous publications about gender, Holocaust, memory, commemoration, Israel, and descendants of Holocaust survivors.

Lea Ganor is the founder and Director of the Mashmaut Center in Kiryat Motzkin and Senior Scholar/Coordinator of the Poland Forum, Bar-Ilan University. Her research focuses on the IDF and the Holocaust. She received the Night Cross Order of Merit from the president of Poland for fostering Polish-Israeli dialogue.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Introduction and Overview  Introduction  1. Jews in Twentieth Century Poland  Part 2: Studies of Wartime  2. The Capacity of the Tzadik in the Late 1930s in Poland According to the "Akedat Yitzchak" Book  3. “I'm Being Punished Despite My Complete Innocence!”: Soviet Secret Police (NKVD) Meets Holocaust Refugees from the German-Occupied Part of Poland, 1939-1941  4. "Maybe the Afterlife Will Be Better"- Letters from Włodawa County During the Holocaust  5. Jews From Markowa: Life, War, and the Struggle to Survive  6. Josef Bürger – the Executioner of the Jews in Łuków  7. Jewish Initiatives of Rescue by Means of Labor and Jewish Self-Help in the Face of Aktion Reinhardt  8. February 1943 in the Białystok Ghetto: The Writings of Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tamaroff  Part 3: Postwar Jewish Life, Historiography, Commemoration, and Representation  9. Holocaust Monuments in Poland: Forms, Meanings, and Messages  10. Passports From Switzerland: How History Becomes Politics  11. My Love Affair With Jewish History: From Small Town to Source of Identity  12. In Search of the Victims’ Agenda: German Scholarship on Polish Jews During the Holocaust   13. March 1968 - The Last Chapter in the History of Polish Jews - Reflection and Representation of the Events of March 1968 in Polish Films  14. Two Jewish Traitors from Ostrowiec: The Zeyfman Brothers  15. “Windows of Memory. The Jewish Community of Bochnia” – Exhibition Organised by the Stanisław Fischer Museum in Bochnia  16. 21st Century Polish Literature and the Shoah: The Struggle for the Memory  Part 4: Family History, Family Memory  17. In Search of the Lost Tydors: An Exercise in Holocaust Documentation  18. "My Parents Left Poland, but Poland Didn't Leave Them":  History and Personal Memory  19. Dis-location: Past - Present – Future in a Changing Silesian Town  20. My Jewish Kraków  21. Following My Roots: Building the Unknown Puzzle of My Family Roots in Poland  22. Can I Be a Good Historian?