English
Język Polski
“… I Have Been Talking with God (You Are Smiling! He Is the Only One I Can Still Talk To!).” Prayer Lamentations in Karol Rotgeber’s Warsaw Ghetto Memoir
Jacek Leociak
Jacek.leociak@ibl.waw.pl Author BiographyFull professor in the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, head of the Holocaust Research at the Institute of Literary Research, member of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, editor of „Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały/Holocaust Studies and Materials”. Together with Barbara Engelking he is a scholarly curator of the Holocaust Gallery in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN in Warsaw. His research interests are in various forms of records of border situations (including Holocaust). Recently he published new, widened and corrected edition of Getto warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście (ed. 2, 2013, with Barbara Engelking); Tekst wobec Zagłady. O relacjach z getta warszawskiego (ed. 2 2016); Biografie ulic. O ulicach Warszawy od narodzin po Zagładę (2017); Młyny boże. zapiski o Kościele i Zagładzie (2018).
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1471-6926
Instytut Badań Literackich PAN
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 15 (2019), Pages: 274-304
Submission Date: 2020-09-02Publication Date: 2019-12-20
https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.2020.15.12
Abstract
A merchant and dental technician, Karol Rotgeber wrote his Warsaw ghetto memoir while hiding on the ‘Aryan’ side between April and June 1943. The fragments of the memoir presented here were selected mostly to show the thread of religious meditations which intertwines with a narration about the fate of the author, his family, and the Warsaw ghetto community.
Two different discourse orders clash in Rotgeber’s text: the diarist narration and theprayer-lamentation dimension. They co-exist. They do not merge or overlap, but intertwine with each other. There is no transition between them. The diarist narration is suddenly interrupted with an ejaculatory prayer, a supplication, a complaint, a call for help and revenge,a confession of faith, or an act of hope. And then, equally suddenly and without a warning, Rotgeber resumes his previous thread, comes back to the everyday life in the ghetto, a list of tortures and persecutions, to the concrete and the topography, and his private life.
Keywords
Karol Rotgeber , memoir , confession of faith , transcendence , prayer-lamentation style , ghetto , ‘Aryan’ side
References
Źródła archiwalne / Archival sources
Google Scholar
Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (AŻIH):302/48, Karol Rotgeber, Pamiętnik, 324/1904, Zaświadczenie dla Gołdy Rotgeber
Google Scholar
Źródła publikowane / Published sources
Google Scholar
Urzędowy spis: lekarzy, lekarzy dentystów, farmaceutów, felczerów, pielęgniarek, położnych, uprawnionych i samodzielnych techników dentystycznych oraz wykaz: aptek, szpitali, ubezpieczalni społecznych, ośrodków zdrowia, przychodni samodzielnych oraz centrali i filii Państwowej Szkoły Higieny, Warszawa: Ministerstwo Opieki Społecznej, 1939.
Google Scholar
Literatura przedmiotu / Content related literature
Google Scholar
Jewish philosophical and theological responses to the Holocaust [w:] Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, red. Israel Gutman, New York: Macmillan, 1990.
Google Scholar
Leociak Jacek, Tekst wobec Zagłady. O relacjach z getta warszawskiego, Wrocław: Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej, 1997 (wyd. 2 Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK, 2016).
Google Scholar
Sadzik Józef, Wstęp [w:] Księga Psalmów, tłum. Czesław Miłosz, Paryż: Éditions du Dialogue, 1979.
Google Scholar
Tigay Jeffrey, Lamentations, Book of [w:] Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem: Keter, 1972.
Google Scholar
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Author&"Holocaust Studies and Materials"
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The journal is published under the Diamond Open Access Standard, CC-BY-4.0 Deed - Attribution 4.0 International - Creative Commons
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Jacek Leociak, Marta Tomczok, Affective Holocaust Kitsch – Introduction , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 17 (2021)
- Dariusz Libionka, Jacek Leociak, 75th Anniversary of Operation Reinhardt , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 13 (2017)
- Jacek Leociak, Understanding the Holocaust. A Task for Generations , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: 2008: Holocaust Studies and Materials
- Jacek Leociak, Literature of the Personal Document as a Source in Holocaust Research (a Methodological Reconnaissance) , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 1 (2005)
- Karolina Sulej, Jacek Leociak, “He Smiled at Me and Sent Kisses with His Hand”. On Dora Sztatman’s testimony , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 5 (2009)
- Jacek Leociak, Literature of the Personal Document as a Source in Holocaust Research (a Methodological Reconnaissance). , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: 2008: Holocaust Studies and Materials
- Jacek Leociak, I don’t want to expose myself to people’s laughter for hiding Jews in my place . . . the case of Zdzisław and Halina Krzyczkowski) , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 4 (2008)
- Jacek Leociak, Stanislaw Sreniowski, From a Book of Madness And Atrocity , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 1 (2005)
- Jacek Leociak, “I Did not Demand any Payment for the Aforementioned Memoirs.” How Władysław Wójcik Rescued Chaim Aron Kapłan’s Diary and the Ringelblum Archive , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 13 (2017)
- Jacek Leociak, On the Abuses in Research of the Holocaust Experience , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: 2010: Holocaust Studies and Materials
Similar Articles
- Marta Janczewska, Research on Starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto – Ethical Problems , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: 2010: Holocaust Studies and Materials
- Gabriel Finder, The Trial of Shepsl Rotholc and the Politics of Retribution in the Aftermath of the Holocaust , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 2 (2006)
- Krystyna Radziszewska, Department for the “Insettled” (Abteilung für die Eingesiedelte) in the Łódź Ghetto in Light of Archival Documents and Autobiographical Texts , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 16 (2020)
- Jacek Leociak, Anniversaries of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in public discourse (with special reference to the years 1943–1944, 1968 and 2023) , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 19 (2023)
- Justyna Kowalska-Leder, “Ever New Demands, Ever New Grimaces” – the Power and Subordination Relation between Poles and Jews Hiding on the ‘Aryan’ Side , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 12 (2016)
- Barbara Engelking, Memoir of Doctor Chaim Einhorn , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 11 (2015)
- Nawojka Cieślińska-Lobkowicz, Death of the Antiquarian on Chłodna Street , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 12 (2016)
- Barbara Engelking, Rut's Diary , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 21 (2025)
- Tomasz Grząślewicz, A manuscript never found anywhere before. Narratives in memory of the ghetto in Sosnowiec-Środula , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 21 (2025)
- Monika Polit, Between Propaganda and Collaboration: the Case of Geto-Cajtung , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 2 (2006)
<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 > >>
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
