In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry
  • Thaddeus C. Radzilowski
Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Vol. 19, edited by Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski and Antony Polonsky. Portland: Littman Library for Jewish Civilization, 2007, published for the Institute for Polish Jewish Studies and the American Association for Polish Jewish Studies. 653 pp. $29.95.

Polin has for more than two decades defined the field of Polish-Jewish studies. Volume Nineteen continues that tradition by opening up the area of Polish-Jewish relations in North America. The volume is dedicated to the late Professor Stanislaus Blejwas, who played a key role in its planning and development and who was for many years a moving force in the National Polish American-Jewish American Council. The insightful article on the history of the council and its accomplishments in the volume under review was one of his last contributions to the field.

The editors of Volume Nineteen have dedicated more than two-thirds of its space to articles devoted to its main theme—Polish-Jewish relations in North America—primarily on the United States. The exceptions are Tomasz Potworowski’s interesting and surprisingly rich piece on “The Evacuation of Jewish Polish Citizens from Portugal to Jamaica” and Daniel Stone’s solid article on Polish and Jewish press during the war in Winnipeg, which sheds additional light about knowledge of the Holocaust in the West and the effect [End Page 188] of the changing fortunes of war on relations between Poles and Jews. The introductory article by the editors stands out as a model of its kind. It not only introduces the articles in the collection and ties them together, but also stands as one of the best contributions in the volume for its incisive weaving of the Polish and Jewish stories in America.

The articles on Poles and Jews in the United States break down into several broad categories. The first, comprising three excellent articles by Ewa Morawska, the late Andrzej Kapiszewski, and John Radzilowski (full disclosure: John Radzilowski is my son) deal with Polish-Jewish relations in the United States before World War II, a much neglected topic. Radzilowski and Blejwas, in their contributions, touch on relations between Poles and Jews and African Americans. The question of race and its effect on Polish-Jewish relations in America is a significant, if yet unexplored topic that deserves further attention in some future issue.

A second theme is how Poles and Jews imagined and depicted each other. Here we have a fine series of essays that include Karen Majewski’s imaginative study of 19th-century Polish immigrant literature, Jonathan Krasner’s acute analysis of the way American Jewish textbooks depicted the old homelands of American Jews and their Gentile neighbors, and Danusha Goska’s groundbreaking study of Polish stereotypes in America. Although she sometimes overstates her conclusions given the evidence she is able to muster on this difficult and elusive topic, she has opened up a series of important questions about popular prejudices and the invidious stereotyping of Poles.

Two essays pick up some of the themes that appear in Krasner’s look at textbooks: Steven Whitfield’s delightful essay on Jewish memories of East Central Europe and their contrasting images of America, and Anna Ronell’s analysis of the portrayal of the “old country” in the writings of Thane Rosenbaum, Rebecca Goldstein, and Jonathan Safran Foer which helped shape in significant ways contemporary Jewish American views of the area and its peoples.

Fourthly, there are the articles dealing with the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations in America, which include five very solid pieces ranging from David Engel on Polish-Jewish relation in the United States 1940–41, Rona Sheramy on the issues raised by the Marches of the Living, Reverend John Pawlikowski’s challenging essay on Polish-Jewish relations, Robert Cherry’s survey of perceptions of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust, and Antony Polonsky’s thorough survey of the historiography of the Jedwabne debate. A final article in the section is Maja Trochimczyk’s study of the problems of three Polish-Jewish emigre composers in shaping a new, more exclusively Jewish identity in Hollywood. [End Page 189]

The second part of the volume titled...

pdf

Share