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

Originally published in 1975, this book presents a lucid and comprehensive account of the political history of the different states of Eastern Europe, from the collapse of the Eastern monarchies of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary up to the Second World War. The author traces the history of six countries in the interwar period: Poland, Hungary, Austria, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia and democratic Czechoslovakia. Particular emphasis is placed on the economic and social problems of ...

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...

This study, originally published in 1980, was based on previously unavailable documents brought to the West in 1972. It provides a detailed account of the problems faced by a communist party taking power in a country in which it was opposed by the majority of the population. The eighteen months covered in this book were crucial for the establishment of communist rule in Poland. They saw the setting up of a governmental structure effectively dominated by the communists and the emergence of ...

"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 RussiaAs the Nazi army swept into Eastern Europe in 1939, Richard Fenigsen, a sixteen year-old Polish Jew, fled his hometown of Radom and arrived w...

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...

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...

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...

There were eighty of them. They were young, clever and cultivated; they were barely in their thirties when Adolf Hitler came to power. Their university studies in law, economics, linguistics, philosophy and history marked them out for brilliant careers. They chose to join the repressive bodies of the Third Reich, especially the Security Service (SD) and the Nazi Party’s elite protection unit, the SS. They theorized and planned the extermination of twenty million individuals of allegedly ‘i...

This is the portrait of a world on the eve of its destruction. Bernard Wasserstein presents a disturbing interpretation of the collapse of European Jewish civilization even before the Nazi onslaught and World War Two.In this revisionist account of modern European Jewry, Wasserstein shows how the harsh realities of the age devastated the lives of communities and individuals. By 1939, the Jews faced an existential crisis that was as much the result of internal decay as of external at...

The story of an extraordinary woman who refuses to succumb to the inevitable and flees Nazi occupied Poland with two childrena journey that brought her love, betrayal and miraculously narrow escapes.