scholarly journals Poles and Jews in the Second World War: the Revisions of Jan T. Gross

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Connelly
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Local Police ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Lincoln University ◽  
Second World

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 261 pp., ISBN 0-691-08667-2.Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy 1918–1955: Współistnienie – zagłada – komunizm (Warsaw: Biblioteka Frondy, 2000), 731 pp., ISBN 8-391-25418-6.Leo Cooper, In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle: The Poles, the Holocaust, and Beyond (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave, 2000), 255 pp., ISBN 0-333-75265-1.Martin Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), ISBN 0-312-22056-1.Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union, 8th edn (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1999), 508 pp., ISBN 0-803-21050-7.

Jews in Poland and Russia: A Short History

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Yiddish Literature ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Modern Hebrew ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

For many centuries Poland and Russia formed the heartland of the Jewish world: right up to the Second World War, the area was home to over 40 per cent of the world's Jews. Yet the history of their Jewish communities is not well known. This book recreates this lost world, beginning with Jewish economic, cultural and religious life, including the emergence of hasidism. By the late eighteenth century, other factors had come into play: with the onset of modernization there were government attempts to integrate and transform the Jews, and the stirrings of Enlightenment led to the growth of the Haskalah movement. The book looks at developments in each area in turn: the problems of emancipation, acculturation, and assimilation in Prussian and Austrian Poland; the politics of integration in the Kingdom of Poland; and the failure of forced integration in the tsarist empire. It shows how the deterioration in the position of the Jews between 1881 and 1914 encouraged a range of new movements as well as the emergence of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. It also examines Jewish urbanization and the rise of Jewish mass culture. The final part, starting from the First World War and the establishment of the Soviet Union, looks in turn at Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union up to the Second World War. It reviews Polish–Jewish relations during the war and examines the Soviet record in relation to the Holocaust. The final chapters deal with the Jews in the Soviet Union and in Poland since 1945, concluding with an epilogue on the Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia since the collapse of communism.

Local Experiences and the Second World War: New Perspectives on Mass Violence in Mid-Twentieth Century Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip Erdeljac
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
World War ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe ◽  
Second World

The extensive attention that Timothy Snyder’sBloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalinhas attracted since its publication in 2010 has raised our overall awareness of the structural might that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany displayed as they reshaped the territories that had separated the two states during the interwar period. In addition to earning widespread acclaim, the volume has been widely criticised by scholars who have exposed the extent to which non-German populations in Eastern Europe participated in the violent persecution of unwanted minority communities during the Second World War. Jan Gross, whoseNeighborsunearthed that the Poles of Jedwabne murdered their Jewish neighbours without significant prompting from the German occupiers, has argued that Snyder deprives the inhabitants of his ‘bloodlands’ of agency by blaming wartime violence in the region almost exclusively on Hitler, Stalin and their overlapping policies of state destruction. The evident tensions between micro-historical approaches that stress the importance of local agency and macro-level analyses of larger geographical spaces have obscured how profoundly the interplay of broader structural factors and local variables shaped the course of the Second World War in different locations. Four recent micro-historical works help to partially reconcile the two seemingly oppositional approaches by providing new frameworks for thinking about the complex interactions that occurred between smaller groups of people and the broader forces that shaped their lives during the 1930s and 1940s. The four volumes show that global, national, regional and local agendas overlapped to make ordinary people reconfigure how they saw themselves and how they interpreted the world around them. The identities and perceptions that emerged from these interactions enhance our understanding of the multiple factors that determined people’s actions during the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Implications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

This chapter turns to the present and explains the implications of the current study for the ongoing debate about the Soviet Union in the Second World War and in particular about the role of loyalty and disloyalty in the Soviet war effort. It argues that this study strengthens those who argue for a middle position: the majority of Soviet citizens were neither unquestioningly loyal to the Stalinist regime nor convinced resisters. The majority, instead, saw their interests as distinct from both the German and the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, ideology remains important if we want to understand why in the Soviet Union more resisted or collaborated than elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

Brazilian historiography on the participation of the USSR in the Second World War

2021 ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Boris Martynov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Correct Treatment ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
International Authority ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Second World

The article deals with the evolution of views of the Brazilian authors on the role, played by the Soviet Union in the WWII and its contribution to the victory of the anti-Hitlerian coalition. It contains a historiographical review of the works, written by the Brazilian authors on the theme, beginning from 2004. One follows the process of their growing interest towards clarifying the real contribution of the Soviet part to the common victory, along with the rise of the international authority of Brazil and strengthening of the Russo – Brazilian ties. One reveals the modern attitude of Brazilian authors towards such dubious or scarcely known themes as the Molotov – Ribbentrop pact, the battles for Smolensk and Rhzev, town–bound fights in Stalingrad, liberation of the Baltic republics, the Soviet war with Japan, etc. The author comes to conclusion, that in spite of the Western efforts to infuse the people`s conscience with the elements of the “post – truth” in this respect, the correct treatment of those events acquires priority even in such a far off from Russia state, as Brazil.

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