During the occupation, Germans re-organized the Polish police forces. The regular police, henceforth known as “Dark-blue police”, resumed its duties under the supervision of the German Order Police [Orpo – Ordnungspolizei], while the secret police, now called Polish Criminal Police, was incorporated into the German Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo. Although there have been no historical studies of the Polish Kripo, it seems that this organization played an essential role in tracking down and killing the Jews in hiding. This article, which largely draws on previously unknown archival material, focuses on the Warsaw section of the Polish Criminal Police. More specifically, it discusses the creation and the role of several specialized units, created for the sole reason of hunting down the Jews in hiding, in Warsaw, during the 1943–1944 period. The units have been responsible, among others, for the detection and arrest of Emanuel Ringelbum, the founder of “Oneg Shabbat”, the underground archive of the Warsaw ghetto.

The text talks about the reaction of the Polish government in London to the outbreak of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and Szmul Zygielbojm’s suicide. The author analyses stenographic records of the sessions of the Polish government in exile, daily logs of the president’s and PM’s activity, stenographic records of the National Council sessions, correspondence sent by the government to Warsaw, the content of official declarations of the government, and the Polish press between April and June 1943. The author reconstructs the government’s state of knowledge regarding the situation in Warsaw and presents the chronology of its popularisation. He also wonders what influence the-then political crisis (the German propaganda’s revelation of the massacre of Polish officers in Katyń and Stalin’s severance of diplomatic relations with the Polish government) had on the government’s approach to the situation in the occupied country, particularly with regard to the fighting in the Warsaw ghetto.

Much has been said and written about Jan Karski, especially in 2014, his centennial year. The Karski story tells us about a hero of the Polish wartime resistance who risked his life to bring the terrible news about the Holocaust to Western leaders who remained indifferent. An essential part of the Karski story is an account of the ‘report’ which he brought to the West, the ‘Karski report’. However, when we examine archival evidence and follow a chain of events in November 1942, we see that the report is a two-page summary in English which the Polish Government issued on November 24 when it made an official announcement about the Warsaw ghetto deportations. Over the years, historians began to refer to this as the ‘Karski report’, but on the day it was issued, Karski had not yet arrived in London. The materials which Karski took with him from Warsaw were passed to a Polish agent in Paris on October 4th who then placed them on a separate route to London where we think they arrived just before November 14th. We know which documents the ‘Karski report’ was based on so if these were among the materials which arrived by November 14th and if that was the ‘post’ which Karski delivered to Paris, then it would be correct to say that these documents were carried through occupied Europe by Karski. But there is no reliable list of the contents of this ‘post’ and since there were a number of couriers carrying materials which were duplicated in order to increase their chances of reaching London, it is possible that the documents on which the ‘Karski report’ was based were brought to London by a courier other than Karski.

The article bases mostly on the official documents produced by the Warsaw Jewish Council (Judenrat) during 1939–1942 which have survived in the Underground Warsaw Ghetto Archive (Ringelblum’s Archive, ARG). The materials collected by Ringelblum’s collaborators, who obtained them from the Jewish Council’s offices and stored them (mostly in the form of duplicates), do not show the Council only as an institution “caught” red-handed shaping its policy together with the Germans. For the materials also illustrate the Council’s contacts with the ghetto residents and present the internal life of the Council as an institution. The articles focuses only on the documents produced prior to 22 July 1942 (before the deportation campaign) which make it possible to reconstruct the organisation and the policy of that pseudo Jewish local government. Some of the documents provide deep insight into the important spheres of the Council’s activity, so far insufficiently described in literature. The article focuses on only four selected aspects: the Council as an instrument of terror, its charitable activity, its registration of the residents as an example of everyday official-bureaucratic activity, and the internal image of the Council as an institution. Particular attention should be paid to the Council’s documents which demonstrate how the Germans incorporated it into their terror apparatus and how the Council was forced to act as an intermediary in the fiscal oppression of the Jews, in the collection of social insurance fees, in requisitions (particularly in the “Fur Campaign”), in the organisation of popular compulsory labour, and in the establishment of handicraft workshops operating for the occupier. The said issues, illustrated with documents selected by the ARG, show the Warsaw Judenrat’s Janus-like countenance: on the one hand an instrument of German terror, on the other hand a shield doing its best to protect the Jewish community against the German authorities’ ruthlessness.

The text analyses various forms of love in the Warsaw ghetto – caritas (agape), filia (dilectio), eros (amor), and asylum (refugium) – all of which are characteristic of peak experiences. Basing on the example of personal notes and post-war testimonies, the author describes various examples of these four types of love.

In pre-war Warsaw Jewish collectors and art dealers played an important role in the rather small milieu of art merchants and enthusiasts. Private collections of the more affluent art merchants, who ran professional art galleries on the most posh streets of the city, were regarded as excellent. The brothers Bernard and Abe Guntajer enjoyed the most esteem in that group. The rather large group of petty antiquaries and junk dealers held an adequately more modest position. Often speaking only Yiddish, they squeezed in tiny shops located not far away from the posh downtown. Almost all Warsaw Jewish art dealers, be they rich or poor, assimilated or Orthodox, died with their families, often anonymously, in the Warsaw ghetto or Treblinka. Only a handful survived on the “Aryan” side. What happened with the objects collected in the Jewish art galleries and antique shops and with the private collections of their murdered owners? Who took their vacated place? Or in a broader sense: how did the antique market change in the occupied Warsaw? To what extent was that occupation-period trade based on works of art, valuables, and precious crafted objects which had belonged to Jews until the outbreak of the war? When, where, and by whom were those objects sold to aid or save the persons who were in hiding or locked in the ghetto? How often were such objects obtained by means of theft or blackmail only to be then bought by unscrupulous “Aryan” antique merchants, who knew about those objects’ origin or were intentionally suppressing that knowledge? The author is trying to answer these questions using the surviving – unfortunately, sparse – archival documents, fragmentary recollections, and source materials comparing them with these ones from occupied Cracow and Lwów, which she is familiar with, and cautiously using an analogy with the art market mechanisms in other countries of occupied Europe. The interpretation difficulties also result from the mysteriousness of the sources, which was necessary due to the confidential character of art dealing, particularly during the occupation. For in the light of the German law it was illegal to trade objects of Jewish origin. Moreover, with survival of or aid to their owners at stake, one had to maintain utmost secrecy. Yet keeping the origin of the offered objects a secret or covering it up was equally often a means to conceal the dishonest way of taking possession of them or/and one’s illegal disposing of them. The line between such disparate reasons for heightened confidentiality was sometimes completely blurred. That occupation-period pathology of the antique market persisted, causing its lasting corruption, which is acutely felt even today, for the actual provenance of the offered paintings and antiques which had been Jewish property until 1939 remains vague.

A comparative analysis of the two monuments erected on one of the streets in the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto — the Umschlagplatz monument (1988) and the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East (Pomnik Poległym i Pomordowanym na Wschodzie) (1995) — shows how the equation of Nazism with Stalinism, if not with communism, has become inscribed in the symbolic topography of that place. The stake in this operation is the holocaustisation of the “Polish fate,” epitomised by deportations into the interior of the USSR and the massacre in Katyń. The anticommunist discourse with a still undefused anti-Semitic potential (the myth of Judeo-communism, the double genocide theory) constitutes the overall narrative framework. The result is the rationalisation (presentation as a well deserved punishment or self-defence) of the stances of the majority of the Polish society and its behaviour toward Jews during the Holocaust. Instead of upsetting the heroic-martyrologic narratives about the dominant group’s past, the increasing knowledge about the facts leads only to their mutation and strengthening. The context of this phenomenon is the politics of memory adopted by Poland and the Baltic states on the European forum. Its dynamic consists in shifting the limits of the European memory compromise, that is, in rationalisation of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in an attempt to preserve one’s image as the hero and victim.

The article if devoted to Prof. Israel Gutman, one of the most eminent Holocaust scholars. Dreifuss reconstructs Gutman’s life from the pre-war period, through his stay in the Warsaw ghetto and concentration camps, to his emigration to Palestine and the building of the state of Israel, where the novice kibbutz worker became a scholar who shaped the direction of Holocaust research at the Yad Vashem Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Gutman’s scientific methodology postulated a focus on the life of Jews during the Holocaust, its reconstruction on the basis of Jewish sources, and explanation of personal dilemmas and complex social relations.

The historian Ruta Sakowska was one of the outstanding employees of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, ŻIH), whose research worker she was from 1958 to 2011. Her main interest was in the history of the Jewish population in Warsaw during the Holocaust. While collecting materials for her doctoral thesis about the Warsaw ghetto, she came across Ringelblum’s Archive (ARG) in the ŻIH and then devoted the later years of her life to its editing. During my work on the new ARG inventory the author had the opportunity to cooperate with Doctor Ruta Sakowska and avail himself of her help. Last but not least, she is also to thank for the 1997 commencement of full editing of the ARG documents.

This article discusses the life of Hersch Wasser (1910–1980), secretary of the “Oneg Shabbat” and the closest collaborator of Emmanuel Ringelblum. Wasser, an economist from Łódź, who was a key personality in the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. He was the one who coordinated its activities and recorded both its collaborators and incoming documents. He was one of the creators of the press department of the “Oneg Shabbat”, which provided information on the Holocaust to the Polish and Jewish underground press. As a secretary of the Central Refugee Commission, he interviewed refugees arriving in the ghetto and supplied the Archive with information on the persecution of Jews outside Warsaw. After the end of the war, Wasser played a key role in unearthing the first part of the Underground Archive in September 1946 and in preparing their first catalogue. Simultaneously, between April and September 1947, Wasser took out about 140 documents from the collection and together with other documents relating to the Holocaust (altogether 244) sent them to YIVO in New York, seeing it as a way of safekeeping them in the face of a dif????icult situation in post-war Poland. He emigrated to Israel in 1950.

 Józef Kermisz (1907–2005) was a historian and an archivist who helped lay the foundations for Shoah research in Poland and Israel. In 1944 joined the Central Jewish Historical Commission where became the chief archivist. Since then his life has been devoted to retrieving wartime archival material. As archive director (in the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland and at Yad Vashem in Israel) he sought to develop an archive both for future historical research and for trials of suspected war criminal. He played a major role in discovering and preserving important documentation on the Shoah in Poland. Among his major professional achievements were preparing documentation for the prosecution in the Eichmann trial, and publishing Czerniakow’s diary and the full edition of the underground press of the Warsaw ghetto. He was one of the world’s leading experts on the Ringelblum Archive and other hidden Jewish documentation from the Holocaust. Kermisz left behind a legacy of a vast research infrastructure that he created and that will occupy scholars for generations.

Bartov describes the annihilation of the Jews of Buczacz during 1941–1944. Using various sources, the author reconstructs the evolution of the cultural and social structure of that small town located on the Polish eastern frontier, and then reconstructs the process of the annihilation of its Jewish population. Almost half of the Buczacz Jews were deported to the death centre in Bełżec, while the remaining ones were executed on the spot by functionaries of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) aided by the Ukrainian functionaries of auxiliary police, local German and Ukrainian gendarmes, and Polish policemen. The classic division into victims, perpetrators, and witnesses was fluid in Buczacz, as some of those who sheltered the persecuted Jews later denounced them, some murderers provided shelter to potential victims, and some collaborators with time joined the resistance movement. In 1944 the Soviet authorities led to an exchange of the population of Buczacz. Few of the present inhabitants of Buczacz know their town’s history.

The article aims at presentation, analysis, and evaluation of the achievements of Jenő Lévai, the precursor of the research on the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews. Modern cross-section works regarding Hungarian Jews are to a large extent based on his works, which at the same time are gradually losing their reputation as their value is being increasingly questioned, and that contrasts with the scale of his past achievements at the beginning of the post-war period. Laczó analyses Lévai’s key publications: Endre László. A háborús bűnösök magyar listavezetője (1945), which talks about the main Hungarian planner and executor of the Holocaust, Black Book of the Suffering of Hungarian Jewry (1946), which was the first study on the Holocaust in Hungary, A pesti gettó csodálatos megmenekülésének hiteles története [true history of a miraculous escape from the Pest ghetto] (1947) about the ghetto in Pest, and Lévai’s main synthesis Zsidósors Magyarországon [history of Jews in Hungary] (1948). The author concludes most controversy over Lévai’s studies is caused by the ideological interpretation they offer and Lévai’s tuning to the communists’ political goals.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands between 1940 and 1945, around 75% of the country’s Jewish population were deported and killed, primarily in the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor. Much attention has been paid to the factors which explain this, but this article questions how any Jews managed to survive in an increasingly hostile environment where there were no ‘favorable factors’ to aid them. The analysis centers on the attitudes of the Jews towards acting illegally, their relationships with the rest of Dutch society, and the possible opportunities for escape and hiding. It also looks at the myriad problems associated with the day-to-day experiences of surviving underground

This article talks about telephone communication in the life of the Warsaw ghetto society. My aim was to present – mostly using autobiographical sources – in what situations the residents of the “closed district” used telephones and what they talked about. I analyse how their activity in that field changed during the various periods of their compulsory isolation, from its beginning until the outbreak of the uprising in the ghetto. I also wonder how the possibility to communicate via telephone influenced the everyday existence of that group of Warsaw inhabitants.

A group of more than 30 Jews was hiding in a dugout in a forest near Strzegom, a small village on the edge of a forest in the Świętokrzyskie Province. Attacked and robbed by the villagers who were members of the Home Army and Peasants’ Battalions, the Jews continued to hide in the forest in smaller groups. The same group of partisans that had attacked the Jews in the dugout continued to capture and murder them, including women and children. There were eight survivors: children and adolescents plus one adult. The article reconstructs the six-month period of hiding basing on a touching testimony of one of the surviving girls, Dora Zoberman, who gave it at the age of eleven, materials from the post war August Decree trials, and recent conversations with the survivors and Strzegom inhabitants. It also reconstructs the actions of the judiciary with regard to the crimes committed against the Jews. Sentenced to death, the murderers were pardoned and released after 1956. One of them received compensation in the 1990s for having been repressed because of his pro-independence activity.

The area around Krzesiny, located near the city of Poznań, Poland, witnessed several dark events during World War II: Germans oppressed the local population, culminating in a terrorizing action dubbed “akcja krzesińska;” also, a forced labor camp, named “Kreising,” was built near the township, housing mainly Jews. After the war, the suffering in Krzesiny was remembered, but selectively – “akcja” and other forms of Polish suffering were commemorated, while the camp was not. By exploring the “lieux de mémoire” in Krzesiny – dynamics of memory in a small township in Poland – this paper uses localized research to address the issue of gaps in collective memory and commemoration. We briefly look at the relevant history, Polish memory regarding wartime events in Krzesiny, and the postwar dynamics of collective memory. Discussing the latter, we identify a new phenomenon at work, one which we dub “collective disregard” – group neglect of the past of the “Other” that occurs without clear intent. We argue that “collective disregard” is an issue that naturally occurs in the dynamics of memory. By making a deliberate investment in balanced remembrance and commemoration, societies can counter the tendencies of “disregard” and curb the controversies of competitive victimization claims, also called “competitive martyrdom”.

Published in 1955 in Argentina, the Warsaw memory book titled Pinkes Warsze [Warsaw chronicle] was written on the initiative of the Argentinean Association of Warsaw and its Vicinity Compatriots (Landslajt-Farajn fun Warsze un Umgegnt in Argentine), established a decade earlier. The book was published in cooperation with the Argentinean branch of the left-wing Jewish Culture League (Yidisher Kultur Farband), with the writer and journalist Pinie Kac as the editor-in-chief. The chronicle is entirely in Yiddish. Divided into seven parts, the book contains texts devoted to the history of Jews in Warsaw until 1939, their culture (literature, theatre, music, painting, folklore), the occupation and post-war period, and the history of Warsaw compatriots’ associations in Argentina, the USA, and Brazil. The last part contains obituaries. Similarly to other publications of this type, the Warsaw memory book contains materials diverse both in terms of genre and origin. Aside from historical studies there are also literary texts, poetry, memories, testimonies, biographic entries, and source materials. The materials also vary in terms of content and style – from reliable studies with back matter written by professional scholars to more or less successful, and at times completely amateur, journalism. From the point of view of a modern scholar of the Holocaust the Warsaw memory book published in 1955 in Buenos Aires has little informative value. Most of the studies and testimonies it contains were taken from works published earlier or from the ŻIH Archive. Undoubtedly being a peculiar testimony to that period, the book bears a clear, excessively leftist ideological mark. The chapter devoted to the occupation period lays apparent and disproportional stress on the threads connected with the resistance movement and the uprising in the ghetto (while also stressing the communists’ special role in those events) at the expense of the subject matter of martyrdom, particularly the issue of the everyday life and living conditions in the closed district in Warsaw.

This article is an attempt to analyse the historical memory of Witold Pilecki functioning in the reference literature and collective consciousness. The author concentrates on their idealising and simplistic elements, which lead to mythologization of Pilecki, and asks about the genesis and purpose of creation of myths about the Captain. Basing on an analysis of the sources, Cuber-Strutyńska questions the legitimacy of the two popular expressions used with regard to Pilecki, that is, “volunteer to Auschwitz” and “the author of the first report about the Holocaust.” In this way the author points out the necessity to correct and supplement Pilecki’s biography by means of a careful and cautious analysis of all the available sources.

Basing on previously unknown archival documents, the author discusses the Polish Police functionaries’ participation in deportations of the Jewish population from the Radomsko county to the ghetto in Radomsko or to death centres. The blue policemen participated in the “Jewish campaigns” not only as guards, but they also took a direct part in both the loading of Jews and Jewish possessions and in the stamping of Jewish property. The policemen delegated from the local police stations to assist at the deportations were paid stipends from the budget of the Union of Communes in Radomsko.

The article presents a series of excerpts from various diaries written by Polish writers, who either visited the Warsaw Ghetto, or had a chance to observe the tragedy of Warsaw’s Jews from behind the ghetto walls.

This article presents fragments of “police chronicles” edited by members of the Polish underground in Warsaw during 1942–1944. Nowadays stored in the Central Archive of Modern Records in Warsaw, these unique records were produced on the basis of daily reports submitted by informers to the blue police and Kripo. They contain detailed information mostly regarding common crime in Warsaw and the activity of the Polish and German police. The article presents a selection of all entries with a Jewish context which could be found in those documents. The topics include: murders of Jews, their apprehension by the police, denunciations, extortion, robberies, arrests of Polish helpers, etc. The figures regarding apprehension of Jews in April 1943 by Polish police are of particular importance.

The article presents a selection of documents from the files of several precincts of the Warsaw “blue” police, which illustrate the involvement of Polish officers in the search for the Jews in hiding, during the 1942–1944 period.

The article presents several documents from the files of the war-time mayor of Warsaw, which concern the incarceration of Irena Sendler, the well-known rescuer of the Jews.

The author is trying to find out how corpses of murdered Jews were hidden in towns during the occupation. She uses the example of the case of Edward Toniakiewicz and three Jews he was hiding in his cellar and whom he then murdered. Afterwards the murderer tried to dump their bodies into a nearby pond. His crime came to light thanks to his neighbour’s curiosity. The investigation was conducted by the Polish blue police, while after the war the documentation was used during Toniakiewicz’s trial. This informative text allows the reader to acquaint himself with various aspects of the fate of Jews hiding on the “Aryan side.”

The Home Army intelligence intercepted letters written by German officers and clerks to their families as well as those sent from Germany to friends and relatives on the front line. On the basis of that correspondence the Polish underground drafted special intelligence reports which were sent to London. The selection of letters devoted to the Holocaust presented in this article can make it easier to describe and understand the stances and opinions of “ordinary Germans” regarding the “final solution.”

Hitler's Political Testament in German and Polish languages analyzed in the following article by Katarzyna Kuczyńska-Koschany

This article is an attempt to comment on Adolf Hitler’s “Last Political Testament” – a text without a precedent in the history and culture of the last century. Initially debating whether the document should be classified as a testament, Kuczyńska-Koschany suggests (just like Saul Friedländer) putting this genre category in inverted commas because of Hitler’s total lack of civil courage and because the style is characteristic not so much of a last will as of final orders. Hitler’s document is contrasted with Janusz Korczak’s autobiography, which he wrote six months before his death and which could be treated as his testament. After reading these two documents, in a way incomparable, it becomes clear, that they confirm their authors’ life, testifying to the emptiness and aimlessness of the former and to the authenticity and decency of the latter. Finally, a detailed analysis of the language and style of Hitler’s “testament,” which lacks neither mistakes nor dangerous euphemisms, reveals the truth about the author and the ideology which he served and whose “lackey” he was.

Celebrated in April 2013, the 70th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto became a very important discursive event. The statements about the uprising made by representatives of the Polish symbolic elites clearly showed which narration about that uprising is nowadays dominant. Some of the discussions going on during that special time did not directly regard the uprising but they still co-created the anniversary-time public discourse because of their going on in April 2013. They had been occasioned by the conversation with Krzysztof Jasiewicz published in the Focus Historia Ekstra magazine, the broadcast of the German series Our Mothers, Our Fathers, the declaration of erection of a monument commemorating the Polish Righteous near the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the content of the interview Elżbieta Janicka gave to the Polish Press Agency. All those discussions not only revealed the rules of public talking about the Polish stances toward the Jews during the Holocaust, but they also showed which topics are still a taboo and outlined the map of places sacred in the Polish collective memory.

The article recalls and briefly characterises publications regarding the Łódź ghetto, beginning with the earliest ones. The author focuses predominantly on works by German historians published during the last decade. The author demonstrates that after years of looking at the subject matter of Holocaust from the perpetrators’ perspective the researchers are becoming increasingly interested in the perspective of the victim and the everyday life in ghettoes in occupied Polish territories. The longest functioning ghetto and the place where Jews from many Western European countries were deported to, the ghetto in Łódź remains in the centre of attention, which results in continuous publication of works presenting its history.

The author discusses the most important phenomena in Polish historiography and the selected publications about the Holocaust released during 2003–2013. Similarly to narrativists, Krupa is interested in the shape, the language, the storytelling manner, and the metaphors used. Having indicated the most important scholarly centres and publications of sources, the author concentrates on the camp monographs, syntheses and regional studies produced during that period and then concludes that most of them are written in a very traditional way. The year 2000, when [the Polish edition] of Jan Tomasz Gross’ book Neighbors was released, turned out a breakthrough year for [Polish] historiography. Before analyzing the far-reaching consequences of this publication Krupa briefly discusses the polemics surrounding the other books by that author. On the one hand, they led to the birth of the historiographical “shadow cabinet” – a mobilisation of the milieu concentrated mostly around the IPN and aimed at disparaging the significance of Gross’ publications. On the other hand, the most important consequence of Gross’ critical thinking about the Polish stances was the birth of the “peasant trend” in [Polish] historiography. The books by Andrzej Żbikowski, Barbara Engelking, Jan Grabowski, as well as the collective works such as Prowincja noc and Zarys krajobrazu described, in a committed and interdisciplinary way, the shameful stances of the rural community – the denunciations, rapes, and even murders of Jews, with Tadeusz Markiel’s shocking testimony holding a special place among these publications. The works that heroise the Polish stances and stress the Polish engagement in the rescuing of Jews (particularly those published within the framework of the IPN project „INDEX – In memory of Poles murdered or prosecuted by the Nazis because of their assistance to Jews”) are to constitute a counteroffer to the critical “peasant trend” within the framework of the “shadow cabinet.” At the end of the article Krupa discusses the books that regard the unknown pages of the Holocaust history in Warsaw written by Agnieszka Haska, Barbara Engelking, Dariusz Libionka, or Libionka’s collaboration with Laurence Weinbaum, which are not revolutionary in the sphere of language but nonetheless broaden our knowledge on the Holocaust. The author ends his discussion with a reference to the monumental work Jewish Presence in Absence. The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944–2010, without which, just like without reflecting on the consequences of the Holocaust in general, it is impossible to understand Poles and the situation in Poland.

New topics and formal solutions have been emerging during the last decade in the Polish literature which takes up the subject matter of the Holocaust. First of all, these texts echo the discussions triggered by Jan Tomasz Gross’ well-known publications, particularly by his book Neighbours. The voice of the “second generation,” whose representatives give testimony to growing up “in the shadow of Auschwitz,” can be clearly heard in the literary statements of that period. Interestingly enough, there have also been many publications addressed to children and young readers, who were told about the Holocaust in a mature way and with avoidance of simplifications or childishness. The subject matter of the Holocaust tends to be more and more boldly taken up by the popular literature genres, such as, legal fiction, crime novels, thrillers, some of which draw from the poetics of horror or psychological thriller. Not all of them can be deemed successful for some clearly border on kitsch. Nonetheless, they show the direction of the development of the literature that takes up the subject matter of the Holocaust in the context of the passing of the last witnesses and survivors.

The introduction of the programs on Holocaust education in Poland and a broader debate on the transgressions of Poles against the Jews have not led to desired improvement in public knowledge on these historical events. A comparison of survey results from the last two decades (Bilewicz, Winiewski, Radzik, 2012) illustrates mounting ignorance: the number of Poles who acknowledge that the highest number of victims of the Nazi occupation period was Jewish systematically decreases, while the number of those who think that the highest number of victims of the wartime period was ethnically Polish, increases. Insights from the social psychological research allow to explain the psychological foundations of this resistance to acknowledge the facts about the Holocaust, and indicate the need for positive group identity as a crucial factor preventing people from recognizing such a threatening historical information. In this paper we will provide knowledge about the ways to overcome this resistance-through-denial. Implementation of such measures could allow people to accept responsibility for the misdeeds committed by their ancestors.

The article is a critique of Gunnar S. Paulsson’s book Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945. After an in-depth analysis of the data and calculations contained in the book, Dreifuss accuses Paulsson of mistakes in his calculations regarding: (1) the number of Jews who survived on the “Aryan” side of Warsaw until the eve of the 1944 Polish Warsaw Uprising; (2) the total number of Jews who spent the war in hiding on the “Aryan” side and those among them who survived the Holocaust years; and (3) the (enormous!) number of Poles who acted to rescue Jews in occupied Warsaw. Paulsson’s calculations, which he made on the basis of erroneous statistical and methodological assumptions, led him to questionable historical conclusions, which should be rejected. Paulsson uses sources in a selective way as he quotes fragments which confirm his numerical estimates, at the same time ignoring other sources and often blaming the Jews for their own tragedy. He has also proved his unfamiliarity with both the available sources and the-then reality. The author dismisses Paulsson’s contribution to the debate on the number of Jews in hiding as worthless or even harmless as it invokes a language of allegedly fixed data.

The article regards broadly defined literature about the Holocaust as a testimony to the attitude of the Polish society toward the Jews, for even when it uses fiction it remains close to personal document literature. The knowledge these sources provide, both those produced during the occupation and afterwards, is usually dismissed by professional historians even though it says a lot about this topic. Speaking in the most general terms, it is anticipates the historians’ theses and reports. One of the phenomena it reflects is the anti-Semitism, which did not vanish with the advent of the Holocaust and could be seen in the dealings of blackmailers, informers, and szmalcowniks.

 A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz is a work devoid of revanchism or desire of revenge. In his book Goran Rosenberg is a son who is trying to understand his father’s suicide, a son who is concerned about his father’s honour, and finally a son who bids farewell to his father. Grynberg had been waiting for a long time for a publication where historical knowledge would go “hand in hand” with an emotional account, and where all that would be done for the sake of improving the understanding of the world.

As a child Otto Kulka was in the “family camp” (Familienlager) in Auschwitz. Now, many years later Kulka recalls those times. The camp was the place where he matured, got to know the world, had his first contact with great literature, and experienced the happiest moments of his childhood. Kulka discovers that he is still in a way living in Auschwitz, that he had never left that “metropolis of death.” Regularly returning there in his dreams, he reflects on his attitude toward the ubiquitous death, which he perceived as something irremovable, a kind of perpetual, imperative law being fulfilled before his eyes. Knowing no other world, paradoxically Kulka saw death as a manifestation of the operation of justice.

The article presents – basing on a review of Sławomir Buryła’s book Tematy (nie)opisane – a polemic with the approach to the Holocaust as an element of the historical process, an element which can be isolated from modernity and to which loftiness can be assigned. Czapliński contrasts it with the conception of the “Auschwitz virus,” according to which morality, economy, and science after the Holocaust will never be able to separate themselves from it.

Given the extent of violence meted out during the Holocaust and a cultural obligation to counter violence the author argues that a disengaged attitude of a „bystander” is inconceivable. The third term characterizing people’s attitudes during the Holocaust – in addition to victims and perpetrators – should rather be beneficiaries or facilitators.

The article examines the state of the Holocaust historiography in Ukraine for the period of 2010 – beginning of 2014. The review analyzes activities of major research and educational organizations in Ukraine which have significant part of projects devoted to the Holocaust; main publications and discussions on the Holocaust in Ukraine, including publications of Ukrainian authors in academic European and American journals. The article illustrates contemporary tendencies and conditions of the Holocaust Studies in Ukraine, defines major problems and shows perspectives of the future development of the Holocaust historiography in Ukraine.

2013 marked the 80th anniversary of the Nazi takeover of power and the 75th anniversary of the pogrom night known as the Kristallnacht. In Berlin many projects were organised in connection with those anniversaries, aimed at exact and multifaceted presentation of the city during the period of National Socialism. The author focuses on publications which entered the scientific circulation on that very occasion and examines to what extent their authors modify the existing findings and draw new conclusions. The article begins with a presentation of the works which show the historical panorama of everyday, social, and cultural life during 1933–1945, followed by a detailed discussion of the recent publications regarding deportation of Berlin Jews through the collection camp on Große Hamburger Strasse to the ghettoes in Minsk, Theresienstadt, Łódź, or directly to Auschwitz. An important aspect of those publications is that they aim at identification of those responsible for the anti-Jewish actions.

The article is devoted to the influence of Czech literature and film about the Holocaust on the shaping of the Czech historical culture and Czech identity. The author distinguishes two important periods. Lasting from 1945 to 1948, the first one was a time when survivors produced works to tell others their true story. The second period, from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, was a time of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Often made by non-Jewish artists the-then films about the Holocaust, which were that movement’s pillar, individualised the Holocaust and did not offer clear-cut answers. Holocaust memory has not found a distinct place in Czech literature and film between 2000–2014, partly because of modern artists’ distance toward the old generation, their loose approach to the topic, and predominantly because of their ongoing search for their own values.

The text presents four volumes of the series containing materials from the Ringelblum Archive that concern Warsaw Jews: vol. 5: Getto warszawskie. Życie codzienne [The Warsaw Ghetoo. Everyday Life], ed. Katarzyna Person (2011); vol. 7: Spuścizny [The Legacies], ed. Katarzyna Person (2012); vol. 11: Ludzie i prace „Oneg Szabat” [People and Works of the “Oneg Shabbat”], ed. Aleksandra Bańkowska and Tadeusz Epsztein (2013); vol. 12: Rada Żydowska w Warszawie (1939–1943) [The Jewish Council in Warsaw, 1939–1943], ed. Marta Janczewska (2014).

The article talks about the most important historical, sociological, and political science publications of the last couple of years on the subject matter of genocide in the 20th century. Buryła discusses the complex issues connected with a definition of genocide, the existing theories of the genesis of genocide, and the factors conducive to mass extermination or nations or social groups. These issues are presented against the background of the history of European colonialism and imperialism as well as the processes that gave rise to Western modernism.