Żydzi wschodniej Polski. Seria XII: Uciekinierzy, ukrywający się, uchodźcy

Abstract

The volume contains articles presented first as papers during the 12th edition of the research project, “Jews of Eastern Poland,” carried out since 2012 at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Bialystok. Within the framework of the project, eleven collective monographs have been published in the series “Jewish Studies” in the Scholarly Publishing Series “Colloquia Orientalia Bialostocensia” (by 2023, 60 monographs and volumes of critical editions of sources have been published in this series). As part of the project, the Conference “Jews of Eastern Poland, 12th Edition: “Fugitives, Those in Hiding, and Runaways” was held on June 5–6, 2023, in Bialystok. The event was organized by Łukasz Górnicki Library Książnica Podlaska in Białystok and the Faculty of Philology at the University of Białystok. The leading theme of the volume and the meeting of researchers were inspired by historical events: the Russian aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the emergence of more Jewish victims and refugees (among them Holocaust survivors) as a result of the war. Michał Siedlecki addresses this issue in his “Media Image of Holocaust Survivors – Victims of the War in Ukraine in 2022.” However, the researchers took up a much broader spectrum of problems framed in this way: – Escapes of Central and Eastern European Jews from places of danger and oppression – Jews among refugees, Jewish refugees, Jews facing other refugees – Hiding: the Holocaust and hiding as a metaphor for the Jewish fate – Literary, press, and documentary testimonies of exile, escape, and hiding – Jews as victims of war in Ukraine after February 24, 2022 – Cultural, religious, historical, and linguistic contexts of refuge and hiding – Jewish woman and child in a situation of exile, flight, and hiding. – Political and geopolitical aspects of the Jewish refugee experience – Artistic transformations of the refugee experience: painting, film, theater, and music- Jewish refugee fates from Białystok, Podlasie, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia. The volume presents both the above-mentioned research areas and others proposed by the researchers (for example, the role of Israel and Tel Aviv in the Jewish refugee experience, the role of the Bible in shaping refugee perceptions, the fate of people in the Holocaust, and the fate of Judaica, the Polish, Jewish, and Kashubian experience of the death march). The project “Jews of Eastern Poland” includes research, as well as the experience of the cultural presence of the Jewish world and traces of the presence of Jewish heritage in the space of modernity. Within the framework of the conceived project, Mira Krum-Ledowski met with the participants during the conference on June 5. A conversation with a child of the Holocaust living in Tel Aviv was conducted online by Prof. Małgorzata Domagalska at the University of Łodź (her transcript is included in the volume). On the same day, Dr. Tomasz Wiśniewski introduced his new project, “Place. The World’s Smallest Jewish Museum” (until 2023, it was located at 6 Modlińska Street in Białystok). A special guest of the session was theater scholar Dr. Olga Tsivkach from Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, a refugee living in Poland since 2022, who presented a paper on Richard Haber’s memoirs entitled Still Here. The texts collected in the volume are grouped into four chapters: I: Introductions (capturing the problem from a general perspective, but through the fate of specific people); II: Fates (fates of Jewish refugees); III: Refugees, Those in Hiding, and Runaways (various issues related to refugees); IV: Written in Literature (analyses of literary testimonies). The whole is complemented by a Photo Appendix (Photos by Mirosław Szut) documenting the research, the conference as a cultural event, and the lived experience of its participants in 2023. The volume was edited by Dr. Jacek Partyka, an Americanist and researcher of Charles Reznikoff’s works from the Department of English Literatures, and Prof. Jarosław Ławski from the Chair of Philological Research ‘East-West’ at the University of Bialystok. Volume XII of “Jewish Studies” and the next session in the series “Jews of Eastern Poland” in 2024 will be devoted to Jewish journeys and Jewish travelers.