Ghetto in Flames: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Early Postwar Jewish Literature

Author(s):  
Avinoam J. Patt
2010 ◽  
pp. 439-450
Author(s):  
Marta Janczewska

Research team of physicians and lab technicians under Izrael Milejkowski’s direction undertook the effort to carry out a series of clinical and biochemical experiments on patients dying of starvation in the Warsaw ghetto so as to receive the fullest possible picture of hunger disease. The research was carried out according to all the rigors of strict scientific discipline, and the authors during their work on academic articles, published it after the war entitled: „Starvation disease: hunger research carried out in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942,” according to their own words, they “supplemented the gap in accordance with the progress of knowledge.” The article is devoted to the reflections over ethical dilemmas of the research team, who were forced in their work to perform numerous medical treatments of experimental nature on extremely exhausted patients. The ill, according to Dr Fajgenblat’s words,“demonstrated negativism toward the research and treatment, which extremely hindered the work, and sometimes even frustrated it.” The article attempts to look at the monumental research work of the Warsaw ghetto doctors as a special kind of response of the medical profession to the feeling of helplessness to the dying patients. The article analyzes the situation of Warsaw ghetto doctors, who undertook the research without support of any outer authority, which could settle their possible ethical dilemmas (Polish deontological codes, European discussions on the conditions of the admissibility of medical research on patients, etc.).


2008 ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Dariusz Libionka

This article is an attempt at a critical analysis of the history of the Jewish Fighting Union (JFU) and a presentation of their authors based on documents kept in the archives of the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw. The author believes that an uncritical approach and such a treatment of these materials, which were generated under the communist regime and used for political purposes resulted in a perverted and lasting picture of the history of this fighting organisation of Zionists-revisionists both in Poland and Israel. The author has focused on a deconsturction of the most important and best known “testimonies regarding the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising”, the development and JFU participation in this struggle, given by Henryk Iwaƒski, WΠadysΠaw Zajdler, Tadeusz Bednarczyk and Janusz Ketling–Szemley.A comparative analysis of these materials, supplemented by important details of their war-time and postwar biographies, leaves no doubt as to the fact that they should not be analysed in terms of their historical credibility and leads one to conclude that a profound revision of research approach to JFU history is necessary.


2006 ◽  
pp. 351-373
Author(s):  
Maciej Kubicki

This article describes the circumstances in which a German crew shot a film in the Warsaw Ghetto in May and June 1942. The author employs visual materials and eyewitness' accounts of Warsaw Ghetto Jews. They are an important counterpoint, revealing the background and the persuasive dimension of the Nazi message. The text is aimed at an understanding of the propagandistic intention, rooted in the specifically Nazi techniques of persuasion. To do this, the author refers to the sources of anti-Semitic imaginarium and the modes of depiction of the Jew as an enemy figure. The reconstruction of the image of the Jewish community in this film is reinforced by references to broader ideological and socio-cultural contexts.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-378
Author(s):  
Clint Burnett

This article questions the longstanding supposition that the eschatology of the Second Temple period was solely influenced by Persian or Iranian eschatology, arguing instead that the literature of this period reflects awareness of several key Greco-Roman mythological concepts. In particular, the concepts of Tartarus and the Greek myths of Titans and Giants underlie much of the treatment of eschatology in the Jewish literature of the period. A thorough treatment of Tartarus and related concepts in literary and non-literary sources from ancient Greek and Greco-Roman culture provides a backdrop for a discussion of these themes in the Second Temple period and especially in the writings of Philo of Alexandria.


2020 ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Yu. A. Volokhova

Prefacing the first ever publication of V. Grossman’s essay In memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [Pamyati vosstaniya v Varshavskom getto] (1948) in the Russian language, the article recollects the circumstances and reasons for the piece to have been kept from publication and defines its relevance in the author’s legacy. The work is analyzed in the context of the problems of a literary testimony. The researcher points out that Grossman wrote the story using a special writing strategy, where numerous meanings incompatible with official Soviet culture are incorporated by means of an uncontrollable symbolic subtext, decipherable with certain ‘keys’ created throughout the narrative. In this case, such a ‘key’ is provided by the character of the stocking knitter ofŁodź. The story and the editor’s corrections are reconstructed from an archived, typed manuscript. Also included in the publication and supplied with comments are V. Grossman’s answers to the questionnaire distributed by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to several cultural workers in 1946 ahead of the first Victory Day anniversary. 


Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. “Holiness” seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature. It offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the history of the development of the Jewish tradition. They think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.


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