Żydzi Wschodniej Polski. Seria I, Świadectwa i interpretacje

Abstract

The present volume is the publication of the material collected during the first edition of a scholarly project Jews of Eastern Poland. Culture – Tradition – Writings. Białystok 19.06.2012. The project was prepared by the following institutions: the Centre of Civil Education POLAND – ISRAEL , the Department of Comparative and Interdisciplinary Studies ‘East – West’ at the University of Białystok and Książnica Podlaska. A panel discussion at Pijalnia Czekolady „Wedel” (18 June 2012) and a one-day conference gathering pre-eminent specialists on the Shoah from Poland and from abroad (Israel, Germany, the USA) were integral part of the project. Among the honorary guests invited by the organizers of the project there were: the Ambassador of Israel in Poland, Ziv Rav-Ner; the Metropolitan Archbishop of Białystok, Professor Edward Ozorowski; and the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael of Schudrich. During the Conference Mr. Ryszard Löw from Tel-Aviv, a notable figure in Jewish and Polish culture, and the man who has promised to bequeath 5,000 Polish-émigré publications to the University Library of Jerzy Giedroyć, received the Honorary Medal of the University of Białystok. The conference was accompanied by the fifth edition of the „Zachor – Colour and Sound” Festival of Jewish Culture, featuring such musicians as David Krakauer, Gerard Edery and the Israeli group „Dolly’s Circus”. On 17 June the participants of the festival met in Orla’s synagogue to listen to the performance of „Acoustic Acrobats”. Volume I is part of the planned series of publications on Jews of Eastern Poland. Each volume will have its own patron to whom it will be dedicated. Józef Chazanowicz (1844–1915), a physician from Białystok who put forward the idea of setting up a national Jewish library, is the protagonist of Volume I. In order to achieve his goal, Chazanowicz collected thousands of books (some of them coming from his own library, some of them purchased) and sent them to Palestine. Chapter I (Voices from There) gathers the speeches of the conference’s guests and organizers. B. Olech and J. Ławski write about The Project of Studies on the Culture of Jews of Eastern Poland; the Ambassador of Israel, Zvi Rav-Ner describes his impressions from a journey From Warsaw to Białystok; Ryszard Löw introduces the volume’s patron in the text entitled On Józef Chazanowicz, a Physician from Białystok; the Chief Rabbi of Poland, M. Schudrich concisely defines the essence of Jewish Attitude to God; and, finally, J. Szczygieł-Rogowska, the head of Slendziński Gallery, tells us about Judaica in collections of Białystok cultural institutions (So Many Left So Few Traces). Chapter II (Jews from the East, Jews from Białystok) outlines historical aspects of Jewish presence in Eastern Poland. D. K. Sikorski ponders upon The Jewish Carrier of Spirit; M Śliż writes about Jewish Students from Białystok at Jagiellonian University in Cracow(1867–1939); M. Tramer examines the Polish- Jewish conflict in 1919 in Lvov; J. Auron deals with cultural significance of the sculptures depicting pre-war Jews, which, according to the author, exemplify pricks of Polish conscience after the Holocaust, the time conspicuous for Jewish absence; A. P. Kluczyński, a Protestant theologian, writes about Jew-Friendly Christian Reading of the Bible. Chapter III (The Shoah Fissure) treats of the destruction brought upon Jewish and Polish culture by the Holocaust. S. Buryła examines literary topoi of the Holocaust in Polish literature; J. Leociak shows „passageways”, symbolic gates between the ghetto and the world outside; Katrin Stoll from the German Institute of History in Warsaw examines the historical writings of Szymon Datner, a „historian of the Jews from Białystok”; G. Dawidowicz deals with the life and literature of Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, the author of famous Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land; J. Ławski deliberates upon the meaning and significance of „tradition” in the face of the Shoah, analyzing Jewish texts that relate to Polish and European literary tradition. Chapter IV (They Are From Here. Profiles) introduces intellectual and spiritual biographies of well-known representatives of Polish, Russian, German and American cultures. All of them were of Jewish origin and came from Eastern Poland: Berko Neuman, a printer from Vilnius (R. Löw); Chaim Zelig Słonimski, a mathematician (K. Trzęsicki); Herman Struck, a painter (J. Tomalska); Abraham Karpinowicz, a writer (B. Olech); and Emil Leon Post, a mathematician and logician (B. Chodźko). Chapter V (Jewishness, the East, Literature – Recordings) is dedicated to literary representations of Eastern Jews and to writers originating from Eastern Europe: to Izaak Cylkow (B. Brudziej); to the depictions of Jews in J. Słowacki’s oeuvre (G. Kowalski); to Cz. Miłosz’s poem „Campo dei Fiori” (J. Miklas-Frankowski); to The Representation of Polish Jews’ Linguistic Identity in American Novels (L. Aleksandrowicz-Pędich); to ways of describing the Holocaust by Charles Reznikoff (J. Partyka); to the image of Christ in the Hebrew poetry of contemporary writers originating from the East (A. Piątek); and to Jewish and Buddhist motifs in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg (A. Pietrasz). The scholars represent different academic institutions in Poland: Polish Academy of Sciences, Academy of Christian Theology, and the Universities of Białystok, Gdańsk, Warsaw, Toruń, Olsztyn, Katowice, Kraków and Słupsk. The analytical texts collected in the volume are informed by different scholarly approaches: from interdisciplinary to comparative to philological and cultural studies. The protagonist of the next volume of the Jews of Eastern Poland series will be Dora Kacnelson (1921–2003), born in Białystok but living for many years in Drohobycz, a notable scholar specializing in Polish Romantic literature. (Przełożył: Jacek Partyka)