Some Methodological Problems of the Study of Jewish History in Poland Between the Two World Wars

Author(s):  
Jerzy Tomaszewski

This chapter identifies some methodological problems of the study of Jewish history in Poland between the two World Wars. The growing public interest in the history of Polish Jews between the wars has been the reason for the publication of many books and articles. Some are based on only a superficial survey, others present a deep and penetrating analysis of specific problems. This body of literature deserves methodological consideration, together with a critical review of the most important sources, so that some queries, doubts and suggestions can be raised. During at least the past hundred years, a tradition developed in some Jewish and Polish political circles of treating the Jews as a kind of alien body within Polish society. This attitude can also often be observed in contemporary historical studies, despite the authors' declared intentions. This can partly be explained in terms of the distant past, when Jews constituted a distinctly different class of people with its own legal status and institutions, but there is no reason to maintain such an approach when investigating the history of the 20th century.

2021 ◽  
Vol 201 (3) ◽  
pp. 534-545
Author(s):  
Janusz Zuziak

Lviv occupies a special place in the history of Poland. With its heroic history, it has earned the exceptionally honorable name of a city that has always been faithful to the homeland. SEMPER FIDELIS – always faithful. Marshal Józef Piłsudski sealed that title while decorating the city with the Order of Virtuti Militari in 1920. The past of Lviv, the always smoldering and uncompromising Polish revolutionist spirit, the climate, and the atmosphere that prevailed in it created the right conditions for making it the center of thought and independence movement in the early 20th century. In the early twentieth century, Polish independence organizations of various political orientations were established, from the ranks of which came legions of prominent Polish politicians and military and social activists.


Author(s):  
Marta Koval

Although Ukrainian emigration to North America is not a new phenomenon, the dilemmas of memory and amnesia remain crucial in Ukrainian-American émigré fiction. The paper focuses on selected novels by Askold Melnyczuk (What is Told and Ambassador of the Dead) and analyzes how traumatic memories and family stories of the past shape the American lives of Ukrainian emigrants. The discussion of the selected Ukrainian-American émigré novels focuses on the dilemmas of remembering and forgetting in the construction of both Ukrainian and American narratives of the past. The voluntary amnesia of the Ame- rican-born Ukrainians in Melnyczuk’s novels confronts their parents’ dependence on the past and their inability to abandon it emotionally. Memories of ‘the old country’ make them, similarly to Ada Kruk, ambassadors of the dead. The expression becomes a metaphoric definition of those wrapped by their repressed, fragmentary and sometimes inaccessible memories. Crucial events of European history of the 20th century are inscribed and personalized in the older generation’s stories which their children are reluctant to hear. For them, their parents’ memories became a burden and a shame. Using the concept of transgenerational memory, the paper explores the challenges of postmemory, and eventually its failure. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Michalski

In the context of reflections on the breakthrough moments in the history of Poland in the first half of the 20th century, the content of the volume of the journal “Nauki o Wychowaniu. Studia Interdyscyplinarne” (Nowis. Interdisciplinary Studies) which testifies to the preservation of their historical memory, is discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-182
Author(s):  
Galina A. Eremenko

The specialists note and highly appreciate the openness to creative dialogue with different European and regional cultures in their works about the artistic history of France. In the introductory section, the article is focused on the importance of the opposite trend, developed in the 19th — early 20th century in all spheres of art. The purpose of the new movement is “national revival”, interest in the ori­gins of the great heritage of the French masters of past epochs. The author concentrates on the peculiarities of interaction between leading composers, musicians-performers and teachers with the traditions of music professionalism of the French compo­ser school. Furthermore, she explains the main reason of “back to the past” addiction by desire to preserve the unique distinction of artistic thinking in the terms of intensive cultural influences in Italy, Germany and Russia. The article provides the facts of creative activity of the leaders of “national renewal”. There are presented some journalistic statements of the leading French composers to confirm their unanimous recognition of the actual value of national classics to the future of French culture. There is explicated the pa­norama of creative experiments (C. Franck, C. Saint-Saëns, E. Satie, impressionists and composers of the “young generation”) on reconstruction of national traditions of distant epochs. The coverage of events and display of artistic phenomena of musical and cultural life of France allowed the author to form a context to consider the problem of aesthetic and stylistic character: new understanding of the phenomenon of “artistic tradition” and “dialogue with tradition” in the epoch of modernism. The comparison of diffe­rent forms of “dialogue with the past” in the Russian culture of the beginning of the 20th century and in creative works of the leader of European retrospectivisme I.F. Stravinsky gave grounds to use the concept of “passeism” to characterize the special French type of inheritance of the “lessons” of the predecessors. Introducing the concept of “passeism” in contrast to the accepted in Russian musicology “musical neoclassicism” and giving reasons of the effectiveness of its application, the author seeks to identify the idea of preser­ving soil foundations of tradition as a way of national self-identity (prosody, rhetoric, form) pertaining to the French composer school.


Author(s):  
Agata Łuksza

The author recognizes Włodzimierz Perzyński’s comedy Aszantka as a meaningful remnant of „blackness” in the history of Polish theatre, and therefore she uses it as a point of entrance into a broader inquiry about the entanglement of Polish society into European colonial project, and the ideas, values, and cultural practices it entailed. That is why in the article the author attempts to reconstruct possible concepts and images of “blackness” which Warsaw dwellers might have shared at the end of the 19th century by analysing the reception of the performances of alleged representatives of Ashanti people in the Warsaw circus in 1888. From “Ashanti” performances on, the popularity of this type of entertainment – so called ethnographic shows or human zoos – grew in the colonized capital of the Kingdom of Poland. The author points to “savageness” and “nakedness” as constitutive traits of “blackness” which she understands as a specific human condition, experienced both by overseas colonized societies as well as subaltern social groups (to which “Aszantka” from Perzyński’s comedy belonged) in European societies.


Author(s):  
Moshe Mishkinsky

This chapter describes a turning point in the history of Polish Socialism and its attitude towards the Jewish Question. In dealing with the concept of the Jewish Question, the intention is not, as is often the case, to dwell solely upon the legal status of Jews (emancipation) but to view the problems of Jewish existence in their diversity. According to one view, the dependence upon non Jewish society represents an integral element or, even a determinant, in these problems. In the context of Polish–Jewish relations from the historical perspective of the last hundred years, one may discern six aspects of the subject. These include the development of Socialist thought in its different versions as regards the Jews; the influence of the gradual growth and development of the emerging working class in Polish society; the influence of the relatively large involvement of Jews within the Socialist Labour Movement; the impact of the new processes which matured in the last quarter of the 19th century on the life of Eastern European Jewry in general, and on the Polish–Jewish area in particular; the growth alongside each other, but also in conflict, of two political and ideological movements — Polish Socialism and Jewish labour Socialism; and the tension between the Socialist and the national elements which was common to both yet different in its concrete content.


Author(s):  
Antoine Borrut

Writing the history of the first centuries of Islam poses thorny methodological problems, because our knowledge rests upon narrative sources produced later in Abbasid Iraq. The creation of an “official” version of the early Islamic past (i.e., a vulgate), composed contemporarily with the consolidation of Abbasid authority in the Middle East, was not the first attempt by Muslims to write about their origins. This Abbasid-era version succeeded when previous efforts vanished, or were reshaped, in rewritings and enshrined as the “official” version of Islamic sacred history. Attempts to impose different historical orthodoxies affected the making of this version, as history was rewritten with available materials, partly determined by earlier generations of Islamic historians. This essay intends to discuss a robust culture of historical writing in eighth-century Syria and to suggest approaches to access these now-lost historiographical layers torn between memory and oblivion, through Muslim and non-Muslim sources.


1986 ◽  
Vol 168 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Willinsky

The place of writing in the curriculum has recently increased in importance under a series of new approaches based on a processing model of how writers write. An overlooked aspect of these new programs in the schools is the degree to which they parallel aspects of an earlier, popular literacy. In a brief recounting of incidents in the history of literacy with a focus on Renaissance Europe, 17th- and 18th-century England, and the 20th-century United States, three historical elements are brought to light which now play a strong part in the new programs. In these programs literacy (a) is sociable, (b) has its roots in nonstandardized language, and (c) places a premium on performance and publication. Insofar as the new writing takes up these aspects of popular literacy, there is reason to feel that it will work to some degree in meeting the current literacy crisis. However, the traditions of popular literacy have both political and social ramifications which warrant our attention. Popular literacy in the past has been entangled in the sensational and subversive and has not always been well received. This history raises questions as to what can be expected and what is desired of this new thrust in writing. The advocates of the new writing programs need to confront the potential of this increased voice, this latest form of popular literacy, which they have begun to encourage.


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Blas Arroyo ◽  
Javier Vellón Lahoz

AbstractBased on a corpus of ego-documents (private letters, diaries, memoirs) from the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, this paper presents a variationist comparative study to determine the fate of the modal periphrasishaber de + infinitive in the history of modern Spanish. Detailed analysis of the envelope of variation enables us to show that, despite an abrupt decline in the selection ofhaber derelative totener que, both ‘to have to’, grammatical environments that favor its use remain in the mid-20th century. Many of the factor groups and the hierarchy of constraints during this period are similar to those that operated in previous periods. Nevertheless, a generalized decrease in the explanatory power of these factor groups, as well as some divergent patterns within several of these groups are also observed, mainly as a result of the fact thathaber de + infinitive is increasingly relegated to some restricted areas of the grammar and lexicon. Based on these results, some theoretical implications for changing rates and constraints in language change and grammaticalization are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 149-181
Author(s):  
Iwona Cybula

Purpose. This issue attempts to identify “Wędrowiec” [The Wanderer] as a source of knowledge about the history of tourism and to define the editorial team’s approach to this subject. Method. The study covers the information related to tourism in general, its types and development, and promotion among the Polish society published in “Wędrowiec” [The Wanderer] for 44 years when the magazine was being published, i.e. from 1863 until 1906. 2,289 issues of the magazine were published. Historical methodology has been applied. Findings. Analysis of the material led to the conclusion that “Wędrowiec” [The Wanderer] proved to be an appreciated and involved witness of the emergence and development of tourism. For 44 years, the subject was handled with varying levels of intensity. Nevertheless, the publications helped restore the picture of the conditions and problems faced by the tourism of those days. Research limitations and conclusions. Conclusions were based on analysis of the collected source material. An interesting complement would be to compare the collected material with the remaining contents of the magazine (as indicated in the article, topics related to tourism are just a small part of the issues presented in “Wędrowiec” [The Wanderer]). Practical implications. Conclusions from analysis of the collected material are very important for the existing knowledge about the history of tourism in the latter part of the second half of the 19th and early beginnings of the 20th century. Originality. Approaching the subject from the perspective of a specialist magazine and analysis of the collected material included in “Wędrowiec” [The Wanderer] that has not been analysed within the context of the influence it could have on the development and promotion of tourism among the Polish society in the second half of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century. Type of paper. Monographic article.


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