Ideology and Its Ethics: Maria Da̧browska's Jewish (and Polish) Problem

Slavic Review ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 399-421
Author(s):  
Rachel Feldhay Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Human Interaction ◽  
Ethical Aspects ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Face ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

This article is part of a project that examines Polish writers' diaristic responses to the Warsaw ghetto and to the Holocaust in general. Rachel Feldhay Brenner examines Maria Da̧browska's response in the context of her prewar attitude to Polish Jews, which was shaped by her nationalistic ideology of Poland's messianic position among the nations. Although Da̧browska publicly denounced Endecja and its antisemitism, in private she cultivated a powerful sense of ressentiment toward the Jews, seeing Jews as outsiders who stood in the way of Poland realizing its special mission. This attitude persisted during the Holocaust and explains Da̧browska's emotional disengagement in the face of Jewish extermination. In the postwar years, her resentment became more pronounced, as even Jewish suffering in the Holocaust became an object of competition and envy. Da̧browska's response to the Holocaust offers a poignant example of the impact of ideological beliefs on emotional and ethical aspects of human interaction.

Singing Their Way Home

2020 ◽  
pp. 411-428
Author(s):  
Eliyana R. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Face ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
The Many ◽  
Spiritual Resistance ◽  
The Way

This chapter analyzes the way wartime experiences were reflected in the songs of Polish Jews who escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to the Soviet Union. It introduces both the contours of the controversy and the broad outlines of what the Polish Jews went through during the war years. It also looks into the research about partisans and ghetto fighters that far outweighs their significance and their percentage of the Jewish population in Europe. The chapter investigates the hegemony of armed resistance by introducing the idea of “spiritual resistance,” which encompassed explicitly religious and other actions that raised the human spirit in the face of the Nazi effort to destroy it. It identifies singing as one of the many phenomena to describe spiritual resistance, which is considered an act that could have no possible effect on the war and yet allowed its victims to find the strength to continue living.

scholarly journals The Language of Cruelty of the Holocaust on the Example of “The Ringelblum Archive. Annihilation – Day by Day”

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Izabela Olszewska
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Day By Day

The Language of Cruelty of the Holocaust on the Example of The Ringelblum Archive. Annihilation – Day by DayThe Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto is one of the most significant testimonies of the annihilation of Polish Jews to be preserved in social life documents, mainly written reports and photographs. The founder of the Archive, Emanuel Ringelblum, described the purpose of the collected materials as follows: “We wanted the events in every town, the experiences of every Jew – and every Jew during this war is a world unto himself – to be conveyed in the simplest, most faithful manner. Every redundant word, every literary addition or embellishment, stood out, causing a sense of dissonance and distaste. The life of Jews during this war is so tragic that not a single extra word is needed”. The aim of the paper is a linguistic analysis of the drastic language of the Holocaust on the basis of The Ringelblum Archive: Annihilation - Day by Day. Język okrucieństwa Holokaustu na przykładzie Archiwum Ringelbluma. Dzień po dniu ZagładyPodziemne Archiwum Getta Warszawskiego jest jednym z najważniejszych świadectw zagłady polskich Żydów zachowanych w dokumentach życia społecznego, głównie w reportażach i fotografiach. Założyciel Archiwum, Emanuel Ringelblum, następująco opisał cel zebranych materiałów: „Chcieliśmy, aby wydarzenia w każdym mieście, doświadczenia każdego Żyda – a każdy Żyd w czasie tej wojny jest światem dla siebie – były przekazywane w najprostszy, najwierniejszy sposób. Każde zbędne słowo, każdy dodatek literacki czy ozdoba wyróżniały się, powodując poczucie dysonansu i niesmaku. Życie Żydów w czasie tej wojny jest tak tragiczne, że nie potrzeba ani jednego dodatkowego słowa”. Celem artykułu jest analiza lingwistyczna drastycznego języka Holokaustu na podstawie książki Archiwum Ringelbluma. Dzień po dniu Zagłady.

Maimonides and Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira: Abandoning Reason in the Warsaw Ghetto

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Face

This chapter focuses on theological implications of the Holocaust, which was a time when suffering and loss were of such catastrophic proportions for Jewish history and theology. It talks about the Maimonidean view of evil as a ‘privation’ or an absence of good that is no longer acceptable in the face of a million children systematically gassed and burned. It also points out the acceptance of a theory of divine providence that conditions God's watchful eye on the development of one's intellect that is considered morally problematic and theologically offensive. The chapter concentrates on Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe who heroically persevered as a hasidic master that ministered to his followers during the Holocaust. It recounts how Rabbi Shapira delivered sermons and published posthumously as Holy Fire in the Warsaw ghetto between autumn 1939 and summer 1942.

scholarly journals The Sacrosanctity of the Holocaust and its Influence on Judaism and the State of Israel

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-247
Author(s):  
Victoria Nesfield
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Impact ◽  
State Of Israel

The Holocaust maintains a status of inviolability in the Christian religious public sphere and also the mainstream media. The scale, gravity and sheer atrocity of the Holocaust still commands a response. The article argues that questions demanded by the Holocaust of the Christian church and the free world’s passivity in the face of genocide, led to a Christian support for the State of Israel driven by guilt and a sense of moral obligation which side-lined the impact of the State on the Palestinian people. With the Israel-Palestine conflict in its seventh decade, the imperative to overcome the hegemony of Holocaust memory is more urgent than ever. Seventy years after the Holocaust, its legacy in public and theological memory dominates questions of Judaism within the polity and the State of Israel. Two legal cases, which attracted media attention, illustrate how Holocaust memory is evoked in response to questions of Jewish practice in the European polity. Two further examples demonstrate how the pernicious influence of Holocaust memory and rhetoric colour responses to criticism of the State of Israel.

scholarly journals Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN [Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews]

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Konrad Matyjaszek
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Design Structure ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Post War

Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish JewsOpened in 2013, the Warsaw-based POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is situated in the center of the former Nazi Warsaw ghetto, which was destroyed during its liquidation in 1943. The museum is also located opposite to the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and Martyrs, built in 1948, as well as in between of the area of the former 19th-century Jewish district, and of the post-war modernist residential district of Muranów, designed as a district-memorial of the destroyed ghetto. Constructed on such site, the Museum was however narrated as a “museum of life”, telling the “thousand-year old history” of Polish Jews, and not focused directly on the history of the Holocaust or the history of Polish antisemitism.The paper offers a critical analysis of the curatorial and architectural strategies assumed by the Museum’s designers in the process of employing the urban location of the Museum in the narratives communicated by the building and its main exhibition. In this analysis, two key architectural interiors are examined in detail in terms of their correspondence with the context of the site: the Museum’s entrance lobby and the space of the “Jewish street,” incorporated into the main exhibition’s sub-galleries presenting the interwar period of Polish-Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust. The analysis of the design structure of these two interiors allows to raise a research question about physical and symbolic role of the material substance of the destroyed ghetto in construction of a historical narrative that is separated from the history of the destruction, as well as one about the designers’ responsibilities arising from the decision to present a given history on the physical site where it took place.Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLINOtwarte w 2013 roku warszawskie Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN stanęło pośrodku terenu dawnego nazistowskiego getta warszawskiego, zburzonego podczas jego likwidacji w 1943 roku, naprzeciwko powstałego w roku 1948 Pomnika Bohaterów i Męczenników Getta; jednocześnie pośrodku obszaru dawnej, dziewiętnastowiecznej warszawskiej dzielnicy żydowskiej i powojennego modernistycznego osied­la Muranów, zaplanowanego jako osiedle-pomnik zburzonego getta. Zlokalizowane w takim miejscu Muzeum przedstawia się jako „muzeum życia”, opowiadające „tysiącletnią historię” polskich Żydów, niebędące insty­tucją skoncentrowaną na historii Zagłady Żydów i historii polskiego antysemityzmu.Artykuł zawiera krytyczną analizę kuratorskich i architektonicznych strategii przyjętych przez twórców Mu­zeum w procesie umieszczania środowiska miejskiego w roli elementu narracji historycznej, komunikowanej przez budynek Muzeum i przez jego wystawę główną. Szczegółowej analizie poddawane są dwa kluczowe dla projektu Muzeum wnętrza architektoniczne: główny hall wejściowy oraz przestrzeń „żydowskiej ulicy” stanowiąca fragment dwóch galerii wystawy głównej, poświęconych historii Żydów w Polsce międzywojen­nej oraz historii Zagłady. Analiza struktury projektowej tych dwóch wnętrz służy próbie sformułowania od­powiedzi na pytanie badawcze dotyczące właściwości fizyczno-symbolicznych materialnej substancji znisz­czonego getta w odniesieniu do narracji abstrahującej od historii jego zniszczenia oraz odpowiedzialności projektantów wynikającej z decyzji o umieszczeniu narracji historycznej w fizycznej przestrzeni, w której wydarzyła się historia będąca tej narracji przedmiotem.

scholarly journals A TEMPORALIDADE NA ERA DA URGÊNCIA: CONSIDERAÇÕES SOBRE O TEMPO DO SUJEITO

polemica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 001-021
Author(s):  
Alice Vargas Vieira Mattos ◽  
Ligia Gama e Silva Furtado Mendonça
Keyword(s):  
Production System ◽  
Proper Time ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Logical Time ◽  
The Face ◽  
Current Production ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Resumo: Este artigo se propõe a analisar a experiência da temporalidade nos dias atuais, a partir do impacto da urgência contemporânea que ocorre, principalmente, por meio dos imperativos de desempenho. Com isso, busca- se pontuar a maneira pela qual tal problemática reverbera no sujeito, hoje, e explora-se a importância de não atrelar o tempo do sujeito ao sistema de produção vigente. Inicialmente, serão discutidos os imperativos de produtividade e o consumismo para, assim, elaborar a concepção do tempo para a psicanálise, desenvolvendo o modo pelo qual ela concebe a temporalidade em seus diferentes aspectos, tais como a atemporalidade do inconsciente, o tempo próprio da pulsão e o tempo lógico. Com esse percurso, a relevância da experiência analítica hoje será investigada; questiona-se a possibilidade de adoecimento do sujeito diante desse tempo experienciado como pura pressa. Palavras-chave: Psicanálise. Temporalidade. Urgência.Abstract : This article proposes to analyze the experience of temporality nowadays from the impact of contemporary urgency, which occurs, mainly, from the imperatives of performance. With this, it seeks to point out the way in which this problem reverberates in the subject today, and explores the importance of not linking the subject's time to the current production system. Initially, the imperatives of productivity and consumerism will be discussed in order to elaborate the conception of time for psychoanalysis, developing the way in which it conceives temporality in its different aspects, such as the timelessness of the unconscious, the proper time of the drive and the logical time. With this path, the relevance of analytical experience today will be investigated, and the possibility of illness of the subject in the face of this time experienced as a pure haste is questioned. Keywords: Psychoanalysis. Temporality. Urgency. 

Hersz Wasser. Sekretarz Archiwum

2014 ◽  
pp. 297-303
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Person
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Underground Press ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Face ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One

This article discusses the life of Hersch Wasser (1910–1980), secretary of the “Oneg Shabbat” and the closest collaborator of Emmanuel Ringelblum. Wasser, an economist from Łódź, who was a key personality in the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. He was the one who coordinated its activities and recorded both its collaborators and incoming documents. He was one of the creators of the press department of the “Oneg Shabbat”, which provided information on the Holocaust to the Polish and Jewish underground press. As a secretary of the Central Refugee Commission, he interviewed refugees arriving in the ghetto and supplied the Archive with information on the persecution of Jews outside Warsaw. After the end of the war, Wasser played a key role in unearthing the first part of the Underground Archive in September 1946 and in preparing their first catalogue. Simultaneously, between April and September 1947, Wasser took out about 140 documents from the collection and together with other documents relating to the Holocaust (altogether 244) sent them to YIVO in New York, seeing it as a way of safekeeping them in the face of a dif????icult situation in post-war Poland. He emigrated to Israel in 1950.

scholarly journals ‘Our’ vs. ‘Inherited’ Museums. PiS and Fidesz as Mnemonic Warriors

Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radonić
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe Polish and the Hungarian governing party, PiS and Fidesz, are mnemonic warriors who had already tried to enforce their memory politics during their first government terms, as their flagship museums, the Warsaw Rising Museum, opened in 2004, and the House of Terror in Budapest, opened in 2002, show. In museums they ‘inherited’ from their predecessors, the current governments either change content, as PiS at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, or ‘only’ battle against the directors in office, as happened at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. Yet even mnemonic warriors cannot ignore international developments like the ‘universalization of the Holocaust’. As the author shows, the Polish and the Hungarian governments favored opening new museums over changing existing museums identified as ‘Jewish’, including those that explicitly deal with Polish and Hungarian complicity. New museums, like the Ulma Family Museum in southeastern Poland, the House of Fates in Budapest, and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, focus on rescuers of Jews and uplifting messages of Polish and Hungarian heroism.

6. Where are we going?

2018 ◽  
pp. 98-118
Author(s):  
Michael Fairhurst
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Keystroke Dynamics ◽  
Biometric Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

‘Where are we going?’ looks at some other biometric modalities that may achieve a higher profile in future, including hand-based biometrics, keystroke dynamics, ear-shape biometrics, and electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram measurements. It then discusses the problem of ageing in the design and use of biometric systems before considering human interaction with biometric systems and the impact of the usability of systems on their success. Biometrics systems are increasingly and manifestly having an impact on everyday life. Properly understood and sensitively applied, these can improve our security, increase our confidence in processes that are designed to dovetail into the way modern society works, and enhance the convenience and power of technology, for the benefit of everyone.

Proces Szepsla Rotholca a polityka kary w następstwie Zagłady

2006 ◽  
pp. 221-241
Author(s):  
Gabriel Finder
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Fair Share ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Sports Club ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
War Survivors ◽  
Polish Jews

This article follows the postwar trial of Shepsl Rotholc.  Rotholc was a successful interwar boxer for the Jewish sports club Gwiazda who was a Polish national champion in the flyweight class.  In the Warsaw ghetto he joined the ranks of the Jewish police [służba porządkowy].  After the war survivors accused Rotholc of mistreating them during deportations from the ghetto, and the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce), the principal representative of the postwar Jewish community in Poland in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, put him on trial in November 1946 in its recently established citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny], whose charter authorized it to determine whether a Jew suspected of reproachable behavior under the German occupation of Poland “behaved in a manner befitting a Jewish citizen” [“zachował postawę godną obywatela-Żyda”].  Rotholc was the first defendant to be tried before the citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP.             At his trial Rotholc denied the charge that he had abused fellow Jews in the ghetto.  By his own account, he had joined the Jewish police to support his family because under the color of his authority and thanks to his reputation in the boxing ring he was able to protect smugglers who compensated him for his assistance.  He even claimed to have rescued members of his family and friends from deportation.  Defense witnesses painted a different picture.  His alleged victims repeated their accusations of his mistreatment of them during roundups, and postwar Jewish leaders who had taken part in the Jewish underground vilified the Jewish police in the ghetto.             The citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP found Rotholc guilty of violating its charter.  The basis for his conviction was not his mistreatment of fellow Jews but rather his continued service in the Jewish police after the conclusion of the first wave of deportations from Warsaw in September 1942, when, the judges reasoned, the Germans’ true intentions not to resettle but to murder the Jews of Poland was unmistakable.  In accordance with sanctions authorized in its charter, the tribunal [sąd społeczny] expelled Rotholc from the Jewish community for two years, revoked his right to participate in communal activities for three years, and ordered publication of his conviction in the Jewish press.  After two years Rotholc petitioned for and received a commutation of his sentence.  He then left Poland and immigrated to Canada.             After Rotholc an additional twenty-four Jewish defendants were tried in the citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP through the end of 1949.  Of these, eighteen, including Rotholc, were found guilty, while seven were acquitted.  The cases of an additional fifty suspected Jewish collaborators were dropped by lawyers for the CKŻP because of the lack of incriminating evidence.  Although Rotholc’s conviction was to be expected, the subsequent record of the tribunal [sąd społeczny] suggests that it took seriously the agonizing task of identifying putative collaborators from within the ranks of the Jewish remnant in postwar Poland and acted with a fair share of judicial integrity.

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