Historiografia polska przełomu XX/XXI stulecia wobec Zagłady Żydów oraz stosunków polsko-żydowskich. Zarys problematyki

Abstract

This article is devoted to Polish historiography of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries concerning the Extermination of Jews and Polish-Jewish relations. It presents the works of both Polish historians and representatives of other scientific disciplines published in Poland and abroad and the Polish translations of foreign scientists’ works. Nevertheless, the article is mainly focused on the output of Polish historians because their contribution thereto is the greatest. Since the end of the 20th century, many works devoted to the Extermination of Jews to a greater or lesser extent have been published. These include both works giving the general outlook of the preparatory measures and mechanism of extermination of the Jewish population during the II World War and regional studies concerning the extermination of Jewish population in individual regions or localities in Poland under German occupation. The biographies of persons who affected the lives of thousands of people (not only the perpetrators of crimes but also the employees of Jewish administration) have been published, too. The latter has given rise to a discussion among historians as to the attitude of Jewish leaders towards their fellow-citizens and the invader’s authorities. These publications also depict issues related to various activities undertaken by the Jewish authorities (both civil administration and ghetto police), which have been discussed by Polish historians. One of the continuous concerns of Polish historians is the issue that has been studied since the end of the German occupation (penal liability of the perpetrators of crimes, the functioning of ghettos, extermination camps, labour camps and concentration camps, and the lot of Jews who were kept and murdered there). Only recently the issues pertaining to the Jewish resistance movement and the economic factors determining the Extermination of Jews in Poland under German occupation have become the subject matter of discussions and verifications. Since the end of the 20th century, Polish historiography has been much more focused on Polish-Jewish relations during the German occupation. However, studies and articles concerning this issue certainly do not exhaust the subject. Polish historiography is still searching for answers to questions concerning diversified attitudes of the Polish society towards Jewish population during the Holocaust and factors that determined these attitudes. The review of various research concerning the Extermination of Jews and Polish-Jewish relations at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries accomplished by Polish historians, which is presented in this article, shows that many new documents, memoirs and reports became then the subject matter of scientific examination and analysis, and matters that had long been ignored or consistently not mentioned for different reasons started to be discussed.