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1. Jewish Female Mental Health Professionals between Poland, the Nazis, and America (3/29/23)

Author:
Klara Naszkowska and Christopher Caes
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
The forced migration of the Jewish people from Europe to the United States in 1933-1941 is one of the most significant phenomena in twentieth–century intellectual history. However, close to nothing has been written on over eighty Jewish women mental-health professionals (mostly psychoanalysts) who fled Nazi persecution to the US, where they became “essential workers” in mental-health care when America joined World War II. Their professional contributions notwithstanding, they are now neglected, understudied, and at risk of being forgotten. The presentation introduces the diaspora of Polish Jewish mental-health professionals: psychoanalysts, social workers, child welfare workers, social psychologists, and body psychotherapists. It will discuss their personal and professional biographies, including family and religious backgrounds, education and career patterns, experiences of exile and (non)belonging, their relationships with the past, and the construction of national, spiritual and cultural identities, with a special attention to Jewish identity. The presentation is based on an ongoing research project located at the intersection of Jewish gender and women’s studies, personal and oral history, and immigration. The primary source of information on the women under investigation is archival personal accounts: unpublished memoirs, correspondence, interviews, diaries, remnants, memories, and post–memories, along with original interviews with family members, friends, and colleagues.
Topic:
History, Holocaust, Forced Migration, Jewish community, and Nazi Germany
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Poland, North America, and United States of America

2. Fighting antisemitism should not be Israel’s primary concern

Author:
Efraim Inbar
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS)
Abstract:
Fighting with Poland over Holocaust restitution is not in Israel’s national interest.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Holocaust, Conflict, Memory, and Reparations
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, Israel, and Poland

3. Deconstructing the Topos of Poland as a Jewish Necropolis in Texts by Israeli Authors of the Third Post- Holocaust Generation

Author:
Jagoda Budzik
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Polish Political Science Yearbook
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
The paper aims at recognizing and describing the ways of deconstructing the to- pos of Poland as a Jewish necropolis, a process that in the last decade appears more and more often in the works of Israeli authors of the third generation after the Shoah. The generation concept – as I argue – can serve here as a useful tool for understanding the shift which oc- curred in the specific national context of Israeli Holocaust discourse and strongly influenced the image of Poland in Israeli literature and culture. Poland depicted as a Jewish necropolis has become one of the central motifs present in Israeli literary as well as the artistic canon of Shoah representations. As the central space where the Shoah occurred, Poland was obviously perceived as a land marked by death and formed exclusively by the experience of the Holo- caust. However, in the aftermath of two major shifts that have occurred in the last decades: a meaningful change in the Israeli Holocaust discourse and the new reality of Poland after 1989, and also as a consequence of the growing time distance separating yet another genera- tion from the events themselves, numerous authors born in Israel mostly in the 1970s and in the 1980s began approaching the abovementioned motif critically. This tendency, one of the few typical for the third generation, is demonstrated either through the motif ’s deconstruc- tion and subversive usage or, more radically, by employing the genre of alternate history and changing the place’s identity (e.g. Tel Aviv by Yair Chasdiel). The topos of Poland as a ne- cropolis has therefore been turned into a part – or even a starting point – of the reflection on collective memory patterns (e.g. Kompot. The Polish-Israeli Comic Book), stereotypes (e.g. Bat Yam by Yael Ronen), and on the authors’ own roots and identity (e.g. The Property by Rutu Modan). By analyzing the abovementioned texts, I will explore the process of constant interaction occurring between collective and the individual memory, between the Israeli national perspective and Polish landscapes, between an author and the space and, finally – between the category of the third generation and its representatives themselves.
Topic:
Nationalism, Culture, Holocaust, Memory, and Literature
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, Israel, and Poland

4. The Train Journey: Transit, Captivity, and Witnessing in the Holocaust

Author:
Simone Gigliotti
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Deportations by train were critical in the Nazis’ genocidal vision of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Historians have estimated that between 1941 and 1944 up to three million Jews were transported to their deaths in concentration and extermination camps. In his writings on the “Final Solution,” Raul Hilberg pondered the role of trains: “How can railways be regarded as anything more than physical equipment that was used, when the time came, to transport the Jews from various cities to shooting grounds and gas chambers in Eastern Europe?” This book explores the question by analyzing the victims’ experiences at each stage of forced relocation: the round-ups and departures from the ghettos, the captivity in trains, and finally, the arrival at the camps. Utilizing a variety of published memoirs and unpublished testimonies, the book argues that victims experienced the train journeys as mobile chambers, comparable in importance to the more studied, fixed locations of persecution, such as ghettos and camps.
Topic:
Genocide, Infrastructure, Holocaust, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Poland, and Germany