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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...
Some unknown letters of Emanuel Ringelblum written in hiding in the bunker on the 'aryan side' and sent to the Jewish conspiracy in Warsaw compiled, decoded and described by Israel Gutman.
This article contains an analysis and extensive quotations from accounts of two Jewish women, the only survivors of prisoners' execution at the Poniatowa compulsory labour camp. This execution was part of a large-scale operation to physically liquidate Jewish prisoners, the so-called 'Operation Harvest' (Erntefest), carried out in the first week of November 1943 at the camps in Trawniki, Poniatowa...
Historiography of the Holocaust published in Poland in the period from the end of the Second World War and until the nineties seems quite complex. While it did not ignore the topic altogether, it avoided some topics. Especially in the period immediately after the war, Jewish historians in the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland engaged in research and published important pioneering studies...
The past can be described in different ways by historians and sociologists. They differ in their attitudes toward sources for their studies, and in terms of research sensitivity, which directs their analyses towards given aspects of the past. This text focuses on selected sociological studies of the Holocaust and issues of Polish-Jewish relations (before and during World War II as well as during the...
This article aims to present the picture of Polish partisans in the accounts of Jewish survivors, based on materials from the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute. This texts discusses the following Polish underground military formations: the Home Army, Peasants' Battalions, socialist armed groups, the National Armed Forces and the People's Guard /Army (GL/AL). In her discussion of pro-independence...
This article is based primarily on an analysis of hitherto unused trial records related to the so-called August Decree of the PKWN (Polish Committee of National Liberation), which was the basis for indictment of those suspected of committing crimes against Jews or complicity in such crimes. Additional sources are contemporary interviews with eyewitnesses of those events, known as 'Oral History'. The...
In this article the author focuses on two areas: first - the genre typology of texts that belong to the sphere of the so-called personal document, their specific character as a historical source for Holocaust studies; second - the methodological challenge this type of sources posits for the historiography (not only) of the Holocaust. He raises the following questions: what is the value of personal...
Although numerous writings have referred to Polish-Jewish relationships since the end of the Second World War, they have mainly focused on the Polish reaction toward the Jews, whilst the Jewish position toward the Polish society was somewhat neglected. The following paper is aimed to assess the Polish image held by Polish Jews during the war as it is reflected in the Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw...
This article analyses unpublished memoirs of Adam Zurawin, a Gestapo informer, believed to have been involved in the so-called 'Hotel Polski Affair'. Zurawin wrote them shortly before his death. They offer a rare opportunity to look at a German collaborator through his own eyes. The analysis is carried out from a few complementary points of view: historical (comparison with other sources), literary...
As part of the purification and self-cleansing atmosphere in the newly liberated countries of Europe following the end of World War II, dozens of Jews were put on trial for their actions during the war, and some were even convicted. This dispensation of justice did not pass by the young Jewish state. In 1950, the 'Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 5710-1950' was passed in Israel. Although...
This article follows the postwar trial of Shepsl Rotholc. He was a successful interwar boxer for the Jewish sports club 'Gwiazda'. In the Warsaw ghetto he joined the ranks of the Jewish police (sluzba porzadkowa). After the war survivors accused Rotholc of mistreating them during deportations from the ghetto, and the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Zydów w Polsce -CKZP), the principal...
This article deals with the most notorious political crime committed by the Germans on independence-oriented underground in German-occupied Poland. On 13 July 1944, Ludwik Widerszal and Jerzy Makowiecki with his wife were killed by a patrol of Andrzej Sudeczko's sabotage group. Both were prominent officers of the Information and Propaganda Bureau (BiP) of Home Army High Command, who exerted a powerful...
The main sources used in this article are investigation and court files of post-war trials of 15 former journalists of the 'Nowy Kurier Warszawski', so-called 'reptile newspaper' (gadzinówka), a newspaper published by German authorities in General Government throughout the entire occupation period. They were charged and convicted of collaboration on the basis of the so-called 'August decree' of the...
Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish 'national communism'. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers' Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this...
In this article, the author attempts to present the sensitive issue of denunciation of Jews during the occupation. The analysis is based on Polish sources, supplemented with memoirs and testimonies. The starting point and an important intellectual context is the pioneer book by Barbara Engelking 'szanowny panie gistapo' (Dear Mr Gistapo).Informers, acting anonymously, were therefore often more dangerous...
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