In this path-breaking book, he reflects on the evolution of Polish Jewry in these years against the background of its enormous contribution to Jewish religious traditions and its tragic fate in the Holocaust. A Jewish community, ‘small in numbers’ but with a ‘big presence’, continues to function in Poland. This book is essential reading for all those who wish to understand this remarkable phenomenon.Antony Polonsky, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies,Brandeis University

"An extraordinary memoir.” Luba Vinogradova, co-author of A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist With the Red Army, 1941-1945 “An important contribution to our understanding of the Second World War in Eastern Europe, and also very funny, which I was not expecting.” Antony Polonsky, author of The Jews in Poland and Russia As the Nazi army swept into Eastern Europe in 1939, Richard Fenigsen, a sixteen year-old Polish Jew, fled his hometown of Ra...

Since Polish Catholics embraced some anti-Jewish notions and actions prior to WWII, many intertwined the Nazi death camps in Poland with Polish anti-Semitism. As a result, more so than local non-Jewish population in other Nazi-occupied countries, Polish Catholics were considered active collaborators in the destruction of European Jewry. Through the presentation of these negative images in Holocaust literature, documentaries, and teaching, these stereotypes have been sustained and infect at...

Paradox is no new feature of Polish political life. A Slavnation, fiercely Catholic, yet looking towards the non-Slavonic, largely non-Catholic west; a people whose sense of nationhood is uniquely strong, yet who have spent much of their history under foreign rule. Poland remains headline news, and her present is as full of paradoxes as her past. First published in 1990, Polish Paradoxes explains how Poles themselves look at their problems and opportunities and provides a unique i...

A poignant account of the perils and fortunes of an indomitable survivor of violence in Eastern Europe during World War II.In 1939, to escape Nazi occupation, 14-year-old Adam Broner and his older brother Sam left their home and family in Lodz, Poland, and made their way to the Soviet Union. Adam enlisted in the Red Army to join the fight against the Nazis but was sent to work in a Siberian coal mine instead when his nationality was discovered. After a bold and daring escape from S...

Neighbors--Jan Gross's stunning account of the brutal mass murder of the Jews of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbors--was met with international critical acclaim and was a finalist for the National Book Award in the United States. It has also been, from the moment of its publication, the occasion of intense controversy and painful reckoning. This book captures some of the most important voices in the ensuing debate, including those of residents of Jedwabne itself as well as those o...

In recent years, a lively debate has developed in Poland on the question of what responsibility the Poles share for the mass murder of the Jews, which took place largely on Polish soil. This debate was sparked off by the showing in Poland of Claude Lanzmann's film, Shoah , which revealed how deeply-rooted anti-Jewish prejudice could still be found in the Polish countryside. Anti-semitism is something which Poland has preferred to forget. But before the Second World War hostility to the Jew...