Polish Literature and Genocide

Polish Literature and Genocide PDF

Author: Arkadiusz Morawiec

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-30

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1000534499

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Polish Literature and Genocide presents the attitude of Polish literature to the 20th-century acts of genocide. This volume examines the literary representations of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the massacre in Srebrenica in a rich, detailed, and comprehensive way, expanding the existing research and, in some cases, challenging the former sometimes ossified ideas. Polish literature not only reflects the obvious extermination of Jews and Poles, but also records what had been largely overlooked: the extermination of disabled and mentally ill people, the Roma and Sinti, and the Soviet prisoners of war by the Nazis. This volume includes analysis of the literary works of Władysław Szlengel, the most prominent Polish-language poet in the Warsaw ghetto; the peculiar reception of Julian Tuwim’s famous poem for children "Locomotive;" the memoir of Leon Weliczker, a prisoner of the Janowska concentration camp in Lvov and a member of the ‘death brigade’ (Sonderkommando); the origins of Medallions by Zofia Nałkowska, who ‘processed’ historical documents into literature and contributed to the making of professor Rudolf Spanner’s ‘dark legend,’ and the textual origins of Tadeusz Różewicz’s ‘poetry after Auschwitz.’ Furthermore, this volume addresses issues related to the genesis and function of ‘genocide literature’ – aesthetic, cognitive, ideological, and social. This volume will be a crucial resource for academics interested in genocide and Holocaust literary studies.

Polish Literature and the Holocaust

Polish Literature and the Holocaust PDF

Author: Rachel Feldhay Brenner

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2019-04-15

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0810139820

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In this pathbreaking study of responses to the Holocaust in wartime and postwar Polish literature, Rachel Feldhay Brenner explores seven writers’ compulsive need to share their traumatic experience of witness with the world. The Holocaust put the ideological convictions of Kornel Filipowicz, Józef Mackiewicz, Tadeusz Borowski, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Leopold Buczkowski, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Stefan Otwinowski to the ultimate test. Tragically, witnessing the horror of the Holocaust implied complicity with the perpetrator and produced an existential crisis that these writers, who were all exempted from the genocide thanks to their non-Jewish identities, struggled to resolve in literary form. Polish Literature and the Holocaust: Eyewitness Testimonies,1942–1947 is a particularly timely book in view of the continuing debate about the attitudes of Poles toward the Jews during the war. The literary voices from the past that Brenner examines posit questions that are as pertinent now as they were then. And so, while this book speaks to readers who are interested in literary responses to the Holocaust, it also illuminates the universal issue of the responsibility of witnesses toward the victims of any atrocity.

The Holocaust Object in Polish and Polish-Jewish Culture

The Holocaust Object in Polish and Polish-Jewish Culture PDF

Author: Bozena Shallcross

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2011-02-21

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0253005094

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In stark contrast to the widespread preoccupation with the wartime looting of priceless works of art, BoÅ1⁄4ena Shallcross focuses on the meaning of ordinary objects -- pots, eyeglasses, shoes, clothing, kitchen utensils -- tangible vestiges of a once-lived reality, which she reads here as cultural texts. Shallcross delineates the ways in which Holocaust objects are represented in Polish and Polish-Jewish texts written during or shortly after World War II. These representational strategies are distilled from the writings of Zuzanna Ginczanka, WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Szlengel, Zofia NaÅ‚kowska, CzesÅ‚aw MiÅ‚osz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Tadeusz Borowski. Combining close readings of selected texts with critical interrogations of a wide range of philosophical and theoretical approaches to the nature of matter, Shallcross's study broadens the current discourse on the Holocaust by embracing humble and overlooked material objects as they were perceived by writers of that time.

Poland's Holocaust

Poland's Holocaust PDF

Author: Tadeusz Piotrowski

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2007-01-09

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 0786429135

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With the end of World War I, a new Republic of Poland emerged on the maps of Europe, made up of some of the territory from the first Polish Republic, including Wolyn and Wilno, and significant parts of Belarus, Upper Silesia, Eastern Galicia, and East Prussia. The resulting conglomeration of ethnic groups left many substantial minorities wanting independence. The approach of World War II provided the minorities' leaders a new opportunity in their nationalist movements, and many sided with one or the other of Poland's two enemies--the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany--in hopes of achieving their goals at the expense of Poland and its people. Based on primary and secondary sources in numerous languages (including Polish, German, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian and English), this work examines the roles of the ethnic minorities in the collapse of the Republic and in the atrocities that occurred under the occupying troops. The Polish government's response to mounting ethnic tensions in the prewar era and its conduct of the war effort are also examined.

Polish Film and the Holocaust

Polish Film and the Holocaust PDF

Author: Marek Haltof

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0857453572

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During World War II Poland lost more than six million people, including about three million Polish Jews who perished in the ghettos and extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in occupied Polish territories. This book is the first to address the representation of the Holocaust in Polish film and does so through a detailed treatment of several films, which the author frames in relation to the political, ideological, and cultural contexts of the times in which they were created. Following the chronological development of Polish Holocaust films, the book begins with two early classics: Wanda Jakubowska’s The Last Stage (1948) and Aleksander Ford’s Border Street (1949), and next explores the Polish School period, represented by Andrzej Wajda’s A Generation (1955) and Andrzej Munk’s The Passenger (1963). Between 1965 and 1980 there was an “organized silence” regarding sensitive Polish-Jewish relations resulting in only a few relevant films until the return of democracy in 1989 when an increasing number were made, among them Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Decalogue 8 (1988), Andrzej Wajda’s Korczak (1990), Jan Jakub Kolski’s Keep Away from the Window (2000), and Roman Polański’s The Pianist (2002). An important contribution to film studies, this book has wider relevance in addressing the issue of Poland’s national memory.

Polish Literature and the Holocaust (1939-1968)

Polish Literature and the Holocaust (1939-1968) PDF

Author: Dorota Krawczynska

Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften

Published: 2020-06-29

Total Pages: 770

ISBN-13: 9783631672730

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Polish Literature and the Holocaust (1939-1968) scrutinizes literary and documentary testimonies produced during or after the extermination of Jews in the Second World War and rooted in that historical, political, and anthropological context. Whether someone wrote a text during or after the war influenced the nature of what was communicated. Hence, the authors divided this publication to separately cover two periods: 1939-1944/45 and 1945-1968. This publication overviews belles-lettres, personal document literature, and press publications. Almost all texts were written in the Polish language. The genre category constitutes the basic compositional criterion. The individual parts of our publication discuss poetry, narrative prose, personal document literature, and the press discourse.

In the Shadow of Auschwitz

In the Shadow of Auschwitz PDF

Author: Daniel Brewing

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2022-06-10

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 180073090X

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The Nazi invasion of Poland was the first step in an unremittingly brutal occupation, one most infamously represented by the network of death camps constructed on Polish soil. The systematic murder of Jews in the camps has understandably been the focus of much historical attention. Less well-remembered today is the fate of millions of non-Jewish Polish civilians, who—when they were not expelled from their homeland or forced into slave labor—were murdered in vast numbers both within and outside of the camps. Drawing on both German and Polish sources, In the Shadow of Auschwitz gives a definitive account of the depredations inflicted upon Polish society, tracing the ruthless implementation of a racial ideology that cast ethnic Poles as an inferior race.

Surviving Genocide

Surviving Genocide PDF

Author: Donna Chmara

Publisher: Winged Hussar Publishing

Published: 2022-04-26

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 9781950423804

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The author describes the loss of er home in Eastern Europe during World War II, her family’s deportation to a Nazi labor camp, and our eventual arrival in the United States. Relying on historic sources, interviews with twenty survivors and personal experience, I focus on the danger of identifying solely with a group or ideology rather than with the fact of our shared humanity. Exiled from her home in Eastern Poland as a baby, the author chronicles the aggression against Polish citizens, Jewish and Christian, by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. For many it will be the first time hearing about the deportation of thousands to the Soviet Union for forced labor, a topic they have not met in school or in the media. Nor do they know about plans to replace Christianity and all religion with deification of Hitler and the Nazi party. She weaves this type of information into true accounts of survival from 20 eyewitnesses whom I interviewed over the course of 10 years. Surviving Genocide: Personal Recollections expands our knowledge of World War II, that of the attempted genocide against Slavic Christians of Eastern Europe. Most books about surviving the war describe the struggles of one person or family. This book is different in that the people I interviewed faced diverse and generally unknown hostile environments. For example, a family is exiled to Russia near the Arctic Circle, women toil on the Kazakhstan steppe to produce food for the Soviet army, people in my village of birth in what is now Belarus face winter in holes in the ground, single girls are forced to work in German factories and as domestics, and a Catholic priest is used for medical experiments in Dachau. These survivors are primary sources who begin to demonstrate the full sweep of events as they shine a light on the dangers of identifying with a group or philosophy at the expense of our shared humanity. Surviving Genocide: Personal Recollections contains a foreword by British historian Norman Davies, an interview with Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, an annotated bibliography, photographs, and maps. Survivors’ statements have been fact-checked and are validated by citing historic sources. I will market the book through public speaking and use of social media platforms. The number of World War II survivors is dwindling. Their witness will ensure a broader knowledge about a particular time and place in history.

Genocide and Rescue in Wołyń

Genocide and Rescue in Wołyń PDF

Author: Tadeusz Piotrowski

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780786407736

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After the 1939 Soviet and 1941 Nazi invasions, the people of Southeast Poland underwent a third and even more terrible ordeal when they were subjected to mass genocide by the Ukrainian Nationalists. Tens of thousands of Poles were tortured and murdered, not by foreign invaders, but by their fellow citizens, who sometimes turned out to be their neighbors, relatives, and former friends. Other Ukrainians took terrible risks to protect Poles from the slaughter, and often paid for their compassion with their lives. The children who survived them vividly remember these atrocities and now, many decades later, tell their tragic tales. These accounts, never before published in English, describe the brutal murders these children witnessed, their own miraculous survival, and the heroic rescues that saved them. Demographic and other statistical information on the area is provided. Also included are appendices listing the Ukrainian victims and providing additional stories from other provinces, as well as ample Ukrainian, Polish, Soviet, German, and Jewish documentation and a comprehensive chronology. An index and bibliography are also included.

On the Edges of Whiteness

On the Edges of Whiteness PDF

Author: Jochen Lingelbach

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2020-05-01

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 178920447X

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From 1942 to 1950, nearly twenty thousand Poles found refuge from the horrors of war-torn Europe in camps within Britain’s African colonies, including Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya and Northern and Southern Rhodesia. On the Edges of Whiteness tells their improbable story, tracing the manifold, complex relationships that developed among refugees, their British administrators, and their African neighbors. While intervening in key historical debates across academic disciplines, this book also gives an accessible and memorable account of survival and dramatic cultural dislocation against the backdrop of global conflict.