The text attempts to reconstruct the circumstances of the death of a few dozen escapees – Polish Army soldiers in September 1939 of Jewish origin – from the camp in Lipowa Street in Lublin at the end of 1942. The case was the subject of heated discussion among historians, who, informed by political considerations, blamed different Polish underground groups. The reconstruction is based mostly on materials of postwar investigations and trials of the persons connected with the nationalist underground in the Kraśnik district. Even though those trials were partly political (hence, the sources required particular criticism) it was possible to establish that the perpetrators were from a detachment of National Military Organization-National Army (Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa-Armia Narodowa) set up near Kraśnik, which was then incorporated into the National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, NSZ). The author also takes up the issue of the general attitude of the NSZ on that area toward hiding Jews

The article demonstrates hitherto undescribed events from the history of the Home Army partisan detachment “Wybraniecki”, which was famous in the Kielce region. It was under command of the legendary Marian Sołtysiak (nom de guerre “Barabasz”), who was at the same time the commanding officer of the Kielce Home Army Sabotage Directorate [Kedyw]. Initially, the detachment was a seven-person strong sabotage group. In June 1943 it already had a few dozen members and was quartered in a forest camp. In spring 1944 it was transformed into a partisan detachment, which belonged to the 4th Infantry Regiment of the Home Army Legions and which participated in the Tempest Operation. The events described in the article took place between the fall of 1943 and spring of 1944, when the detachment’s squads quartered in a few separate places and met from time to time during the concentrations ordered by the commandant. At that time some Jews in hiding were murdered. Among those shot were: the group kept in hiding by the Pole Stefan Sawa (posthumously decorated with the Righteous among the Nations medal) in a cottage near Daleszyce, Michał Ferenc – Zajączków commune clerk, Roman Olizarowski “Pomsta” – a “Wybraniecki” detachment soldier, who was liquidated after the discovery of his Jewish origin, Izaak Grynbaum from Chęciny and about three Jews hiding in bunkers near Mosty. After the war the following people stood trial: Edward Skrobot, Józef Molenda, Władysław Dziewiór, Mieczysław Szumielewicz and Marian Sołtysiak. The authors reconstruct the facts of those executions, discuss the motivations of the perpetrators and analyze them against the background of the functioning of the underground judiciary, and call into question the validity of some of its sentences. They also discuss the methods and line of defense of the accused ex-partisans.

The article shows the phenomenon of the denunciation of the Jews in France during World War II. Based on the data from the archives of the Commissariat général aux questions juives (CGQJ), i.e. the anti-Semitic institution of the Vichy government, it is estimated that the authorities received from 3 up to 5 million denouncements during 1940–1944. Special police units operated in the Paris region. They systematically verified the denunciations sent to the authorities, German army and anti-Semitic newspapers. The Jews were a group most often attacked in the denunciations. The propaganda and political activity as well as the number of bans put on them contributed to such frequent denunciations. The article described the specificity of the denunciations, their characteristics and the response of the authorities and the institutions they were sent to.

The article discusses Holocaust memory in Ukrainian Galicia (using the example of Żółkiew near Lvov). Qualitative research – biographical and in-depth interviews – allowed for an analysis of that memory on various levels and in relation to such factors as: official Soviet memory, family accounts, sovereign Ukraine’ historical policy and the Jewish Diaspora’s initiatives to commemorate the Holocaust. The analysis revealed the existence of highly varied memory groups, whose major determinants are: family’s origins and its lot during the war as well as the respondent’s age group.

Tadeusz Maj – one of the major commanding officers of the partisan units of the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, AL) in Poland during World War II – was arrested in 1951. He was charged with murders on Jews in the forests near Iłża committed in the period from June/July 1944 to December that year. The victims of the People’s Army “Świt” detachment under Maj’s command were Jewish escapees from the labor camp in Starachowice, who decided to escape to the forest after they had found out that they would be deported to Birkenau at the end of June 1944. The article reconstructs the history of Tadeusz Maj’s trial and of other investigations on the murders on the Jews, which were never brought to an end. It documents the tensions at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s visible within the communist party apparatus, which was reluctant to investigate the truth about the Holocaust.

A biographical sketch about Tatiana Brustin-Berenstein – a historian, long-standing employee of the Jewish Historical Institute, pioneer of historical research on the Holocaust in Poland, editor of Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego and Bleter far Geszichte, editor of historical sources for German occupation history.

The article tells the story of three neighboring families domiciled on Łowicka Street in Warsaw during the war – the Palesters, the Proners and the Grundgands. Henryk Palester lived in his own flat throughout the war even though he was of Jewish origin. His wife Maria cooperated with “Żegota” (Council for Aid of Jews) including Irena Sendler. She helped save, among others, her neighbor and friend Maria Proner. Janina Grundgand organized a whole network of flats and helpers. The article features fragments of the accounts and diaries of a few people she saved. The image that emerges is that of an extraordinarily brave, energetic and good woman, who not only helped to obtain papers, provided shelter and organized means of support, but also offered psychical support, self-confidence, feeling of security and hope. In turn, the neighbors, who remember Janina Grundgand (then Kulwieć) from the post-war period, recall her as an unfriendly, arrogant and selfish person and one with which they could not live under the same roof.

Przebaczenie jako kategoria współczesnego dyskursu pamięci na przykładzie Kinderszenen Jarosława Marka Rymkiewicza i Słonecznika Szymona Wiesenthala Forgiveness as a Category of Modern Memory Discourse as Seen in Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz’s Kinderszenen and Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower:On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness The text attempts to describe forgiveness as one of the key categories of modern memory discourse. To this end the authors analyzed two texts: Kinderszenen by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz and Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. Even though the two texts talk explicitly about forgiveness, the unexpressed discourse rules they are based on turn out to be equally interesting. Among them, following Jacques Derrida’s suggestion, it is possible to attribute the biggest importance to the definition of the “unforgivable,” towards which the question about the act of forgiveness occurs to be secondary. Paralleled reading of the two texts allows us then to see that it is not an act of forgiveness or lack of forgiveness, but a call for forgiveness (or for no forgiveness) which constitutes the basic practice of memory today. The attitude toward this call is the basis on which memory communities constitute themselves.

The articles discusses Polish reception of Kazimierz Moczarski’s book. The story’s outline refers to the three main editions of the Conversations with an Executioner. Each of those editions features a meaningful introduction setting certain senses of the reading of the book and simultaneously being its testimonies: – Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy edition with Franciszek Ryszka’s introduction (five editions during 1977–1985), – Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe edition with Andrzej Szczypiorski’s introduction (ten editions during 1992–2002) and – the Znak edition with Norman Davies’s introduction (three editions since 2004). Adam Michnik’s essay is a certain culmination of those introductions – it is another introduction but this time to an Italian edition. Analyzing the statements of the reviewers and introductions’ authors, the author investigates the social reception of the book. Here, he devotes particular attention to the social image of an execution and the images (or actually their absence) of the Holocaust, which emerged as a result of the reception of the book.

In the 1950s NBC regularly broadcast This Is Your Life! – a 30-minute talk show. The guests included well-known persons as well as unknown heroes of everyday life. A few times the invited guests were the so-called witnesses to history, including Holocaust survivor Czech Jewess Hanna Bloch Kohner. The episode of This Is Your Life! with Hanna Bloch Kohner is perhaps the first time that the Holocaust was used in a TV entertainment show after the war. The structural requirements of a new popular show genre forced the heroine to play a highly specific role, and the need to provide entertainment to the viewers significantly influenced the construction of her story. In that narration post-war American optimism clearly triumphed over the dramatic past of the European Jewish immigrant. This Is Your Life! broadcast Hanna’s story into a social context still insensitive to the historical dimension of the Holocaust. Hence, how does the not yet developed medium deal with such close and still unspecified history in the period of no fixed cultural references? To answer this question the author refers to the theory of collective memory and the notion of trauma on the one hand and to the theory of TV genres on the other.

The article deals with the phenomenon of “children without identity,” i.e. children rescued from the Holocaust born in Poland during 1936–1945 who lost both their parents. They can be divided into two groups: the saved ones who lost their identity during the war or right afterwards (of whose past we know nothing; sometimes the only piece of information is the name given to them by the Poles during the war) and the saved ones whose identity was lost during the process of emigration (children who remembered their names and could talk about their parents and their past at the end of the war, but who forgot everything later on). The author discusses the condition of the archive materials about “children without identity” and about their lot: about the ways of adaptation in Israel and Poland, traumas, reasons for not speaking about their identity loss and the search for their past.

The essay analyzes the main exhibition of Yad Vashem New Holocaust Museum (opened in 2005) as a historical narrative, with particular criticism directed at the forms of narration used. According to the author, the main problem is that the museum’s narration excludes all otherness – it lacks context (only fragmentary historical background of World War II was presented), historical genesis (with the exception of anti-Semitism), real perpetrators, real victims experiencing trauma, discussion of the life of the post-war Diaspora and the topic of non-Jewish victims.

A polemic text toward Amos Goldberg’s Is there an “Other” in this (Yad Vashem New Holocaust) Museum?

A polemic text toward Amos Goldberg’s Is there an “Other” in this (Yad Vashem New Holocaust) Museum?

The text attempts to reconstruct Mordechaj Chaim Rumkowski’s image emerging from texts written after the war in different languages. In most cases the authors, though clearly fascinated with Rumkowski, could not or would not strive to get under the layer of what is stereotypical in the perception of the Chief of the Elders of the Jews in the Łódź ghetto.

 In the spring of 1943, in the village of Kosowice (region of Opatów), in the house of Józef Machula, 5 members of the AK (Home Army) murdered 5 Jews (personal details unknown), among the others a woman and a child. In 1956 the case was taken to the Voivodship Court of Kielce (Court Branch in Radom); in consequence the accused were punished.

The soldiers of “Barwy Białe” Home Army partisan detachment created at the end of 1943 in the Opatów district participated in at least a few murders of Jews – the murders in Goździelin, Lisów and Siekierzyn forests are documented. The last crime, committed on 16 or 17 August 1944 when the detachment (at that time a part of the 2nd Infantry Division) was marching to aid warring Warsaw (as part of Operation Tempest). While quartered in Siekierno, the detachment’s commanding officer Kazimierz Olchowik “Zawisza” issued an order to execute a big group of Jews (30–58 people) living in the nearby forests after their escape from the labor camp in Skarżysko-Kamienna. After World War II most participants of the murders were tried and punished. No punishment, however, was administered to the detachment’s commanding officer Kazimierz Olchowik and to the sergeant by the pseudonym “Bolrok” – the two chiefly responsible for the murder in the Siekierzyn forests.

“Why, There Was No Need to Burn the House, It Was Enough to Escort the Jews out and Kill Them.” Postscript to Jerzy Mazurek and Alina Skibińska’s „Nie trzeba było domu palić, tylko Żydów wyprowadzić i pozabijać”. Postscriptum do tekstu Jerzego Mazurka i Aliny Skibińskiej „Barwy Białe” w drodze The author visited the villages and towns where the murders of Jews hiding in the Kielce region after the liquidation of the ghettos took place (the acts were described in Jerzy Mazurek and Alina Skibińska’s text published in this volume). Only a small number of inhabitants, who were there during the war, remains, but the memory of the murdered Jews is still present. Both the memory of those killed by the passing Home Army detachment (and who were buried by the locals who were ordered to do so) and the memory of those denounced by the locals, killed on the spot or escorted to a German police station. Memory does not always entail compassion. The article proves that field research, even one conducted so many years after the Holocaust, can introduce additional knowledge into historical research.

A testimony written in Lublin in December 1945 by a wife of Leon Feldhendler – one of the two leaders of the uprising in the Sobibor death camp. It describes his lot during the war and right afterwards – from his being the head of the Żółkiewka Judenrat, through the horror of the Sobibor camp, the uprising, the hiding on the Aryan side and being in a partisan unit, to his being killed by an unknown person in the post-war Lublin.

Memoir written in 1946 by the-then 11 year old Batja (Basia) Klig, who was in the Warsaw ghetto during the war, and then was kept in hiding in the provinces near Lublin

Conversation with Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Jan Tomasz Gross

Jacek Leociak talks with Ewa Domańska

Nie bardzo potrafię nadążyć za tym, co dzieje się dziś w kwestii odkrywania ciemnych stron historii Polski – publikacje Jana Tomasza Grossa, Barbary Engelking, Jana Grabowskiego, Dariusza Libionki, Jacka Leociaka i innych. Nadmiar koszmaru, zaszczucie, zwłaszcza małych dzieci… Trudno jest o tym wszystkim myśleć spokojnie. Przeczytałem jakieś dwa lata temu malutką książeczkę Irit Amiel Podwójny krajobraz. Pośród rozmaitych historii obraz dwunastoletniej dziewczynki, autentyczna historia autorki, ocalałej z częstochowskiego getta, uciekającej w 1947 r. przez kibuc w Gdyni do Izraela

W niemieckich badaniach historycznych nad ludobójstwem Żydów europejskich, będących z kolei częścią badań poświęconych narodowemu socjalizmowi, można wyróżnić obecnie dwa – w dużym stopniu oddzielne – aspekty: przede wszystkim to „zadośćuczynienie” za nazistowskie bezprawie, ściganie zbrodni hitlerowskich, jak również podejście do zagadnienia prześladowania Żydów przez pryzmat polityki pamięci, które to analizy cieszą się niezmienną popularnością i rozwijają się często wokół coraz nowszych metodologicznie i ambitniej formułowanych problemów badawczych. Odnośnie do wydarzeń sprzed roku 1945 uwaga historyków ponownie dzieli się na dwa, geograficznie i czasowo zwykle wyraźnie oddzielne obszary; ustalenia faktograficzne odgrywają w obydwu kierunkach ważną rolę. Z jednej strony są to badania nad losem niemieckich Żydów, przedstawianym obecnie głównie na przykładzie wywłaszczeń i deportacji do 1941 r. Z drugiej strony przede wszystkim młodzi naukowcy skupiają się w swoich dysertacjach na wydarzeniach wojennych i okupacyjnych w Europie Wschodniej: szeroko korzystając z lokalnych badań i archiwów, analizują w szczególności postępowanie sprawców, o wiele rzadziej zajmując się natomiast losem ofiar.

Čivutana to niewielka, malownicza dzielnica Skopja, a zarazem jedno z wielu osiedli Sefardyjczyków na Półwyspie Bałkańskim, powstałych po wypędzeniu ich przez króla Ferdynanda z Hiszpanii pod koniec XV w. Ponieważ osiedlanie się żydowskich przybyszy w miastach imperium osmańskiego, w tym również w Sołuniu (nazwanym z uwagi na dużą liczebność i aktywność dispory „bałkańską Jerozolimą”), Sarajewie, Bitoli i Skopju, miało charakter grupowy, zdołali oni zachować w nowym środowisku podstawowe cechy etniczne i specyfikę kulturową (język, ubiór, zwyczaje). Jednocześnie w czasie długotrwałego panowania tureckiego osadzona w miastach kultura bałkańskich Sefardyjczyków podlegała silnej orientalizacji, a także – choć zdecydowanie w dużo mniejszym stopniu – slawizacji.