Writing about the history of the Holocaust in Poland, and in Polish, carries with it a very peculiar set of duties, obligations and challenges. There are few issues in Polish history that reverberate through the nation with such force and whose ongoing discussion is able to have an immediate and profound impact on the national self-perception. The recent discussions surrounding the publication of Jan T. Gross’s books are convincing proof of that. On the other hand, the issues related to the destruction of the Polish Jewry have been among the most forgotten, falsified and manipulated events of the recent past. As discussed in recent decades, the Holocaust became an addition to, rather than an essential and defining part of, Polish historical writing. And these were the reasons why the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research was created in the first place. The members of the Centre set out to return the history of the Holocaust to the centre of the historical focus while, at the same time, trying to make it an integral and inalienable part of mainstream Polish history.

The Holocaust destroyed virtually the entire Jewish community in Poland. Zusman Segałowicz, the pre-war chairman of the Jewish Union of Writers and Journalists of 13 Tłomackie Street, Warsaw, managed to leave Warsaw in 1939 and via Vilna, Kaunas, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Syria reached Palestine, where, under the beating Tel-Aviv sun, he pondered on the burning ruins of the ghetto. His memoirs, published in 1946 in Argentina (the author died in New York in 1949), contain the following passage: I pass conflagration sites. I dig in the ashes. For the time being, these are the ashes of 13 Tłomackie St. All that is left of the entire Jewish world in Poland is a cemetery. Sometimes our pain leads us to divide this great cemetery into individual, smaller cemeteries: the cemetery of the Hassidic world, the cemetery of Jewish workers, merchants, entrepreneurs and industrialists, the cemetery of Jewish children who were to be our future. Finally, our thoughts run toward the cemetery of the Jewish spirit: the theatre, music, art, journalism and literature. We cannot depart from any of these cemeteries, but, at the same time, we should not come too close, for it could drag one into its endless abyss. What are we to do then? Shout? The dead won't hear us, and the world of the living is more dead than the world of the dead.
The Holocaust happened on our soil, in full view of Polish society, and it is an integral part – whether one wants it or not – of Polish history. For the Poles, the experience of the Holocaust remains a unique event and carries extraordinary responsibilities. Nevertheless, in terms of social awareness, the Shoah seems to belong to Jewish rather than to Polish history. Even today many Poles feel ill at ease, threatened or outright disappointed by the Jewish perceptions of the Holocaust and oftentimes the Jews are seen as rivals in the martyrology competition. Despite the recent historical research and public debates, culminating with the discussion around the Jedwabne crime, Polish society largely ignores the issues related to the Holocaust. Still too many myths and lies find their way to the public sphere and enter public circulation. This state of affairs is related, to a certain extent, to the sad legacy of decades of censorship and neglect under the communist rule. We believe that this should change. This is why we shall link research with educational activities in order to foster the knowledge of issues related to the Holocaust.

The author reflects upon Jan Błoński’s essay “Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto” (Poor Poles look at the ghetto) nearly twenty years of its publication by Tygodnik Powszechny. He points at the innovative character of the depiction of Polish-Jewish issues in the moral context, outside of all the political embroilments. Błoński’s voice is unique, because it acknowledges, in the spirit of the Gospels, that analysis of Polish- -Jewish relations is a fundamental issue for the Polish society, a “homework” that needs to be done. This essay, Głowiński claims, is free from the embroilment in the dualism of the negative and positive myths regarding these relations. The author writes about reactions to this text, the letters to the editor and notes one particular voice, which he reads as an internalised nationalist ideology and the dangerous continuation of the nationalist discourse. Głowiński’s sketch concludes the post scriptum, in which the author refers to another article, published in 2006 by Gazeta Wyborcza, regarding the current historical policy, whose proponents see Błoński’s essay as a negative reference
point. The author notes that this essay constantly evokes strong emotions, and, as an expression of critical patriotism, still has its ardent opponents.

In this article I focus on two areas: first – the genre typology of texts that belong to the sphere of the so-called personal document, their specific character as a historical source for Holocaust studies; second –the methodological challenge this type of sources posits for the historiography (not only) of the Holocaust. I raise the following questions: what is the value of personal documents for Holocaust historians, being a formally diverse record of experiences; how are they used in their research; how do they read those personal narratives? A more general context for these considerations is the debate on the conditions for Holocaust historiography going on among contemporary theoreticians of history. One one form of this debate could be described as a conflict between “historical discourse” and ”memory discourse”.

The past can be described in different ways by historians and sociologists. They differ in their attitudes toward sources for their studies, and in terms of research sensitivity, which directs their analyses towards given aspects of the past. This text focuses on selected sociological studies of the Holocaust and issues of Polish–Jewish relations (before and during World War II as well as during the immediate postwar years). First I shall refer to sociological works using the historical prospective in their description of Polish–Jewish relations and/or the Holocaust, and, second, to studies (both historical and sociological) which employ categories of sociological analysis in their description. By referring to Nechama Tec's works, I shall present the methodological problems of sociological studies.

This article contains an analysis and extensive quotations from accounts of two Jewish women, the only survivors of prisoners' execution at the Poniatowa compulsory labour camp. This execution was part of a large-scale operation to physically liquidate Jewish prisoners, the so-called “Operation Harvest” (Erntefest), carried out in the first week of November 1943 at the camps in Trawniki, Poniatowa and Majdanek (in Lublin). Both women survivors,. Due to a number of coincidences, managed to get to Warsaw and, helped by the “˚egota” – Council to Aid the Jews, lived to see the liberation. In this article I also analyse the circumstances of both accounts, reasons for withholding their publication as early as war time, and the importance , for our knowledge, not only of the executions, but also for the nature of complicated Polish–Jewish relations during World War II, because it was the Poles' help that the fate of escaped prisoners hinged upon.

This article aims to present the picture of Polish partisans in the accounts of Jewish survivors, based on materials from the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute. This texts discusses the following Polish underground military formations: the Home Army, Peasants' Battalions, socialist armed groups, the National Armed Forces and the People's Guard /Army (GL/AL). In her discussion of pro-independence armed formations, the author emphasises. the feeling of danger still present in those accounts, fear of death even from the partisans. The accounts mention a number of murders as well as difficulties Jews encountered when they wanted to join partisan outfits, not to mention refusals of co-operation from Poles. Testimonies about GL/AL differ from previous ones by their “insider” perspective, as most of them come from Jews, GL partisans. Perhaps that is why they are dominated by a favourable picture of communist partisans, even though several accounts mention conflicts between the commanders and the Jewish GL partisan outfits

This article analyses unpublished memoirs of Adam Żurawin, a Gestapo informer, believed to have been involved in the so-called “Hotel Polski Affair”. Żurawin wrote them shortly before his death. They offer a rare opportunity to look at a German collaborator through his own eyes. The analysis is carried out from a few complementary points of view: historical (comparison with other sources), literary criticism (the poetics of personal document and self-creation), and psychological (motivations, feelings). Indeed, in his memoirs, Żurawin portrays himself as a knight-hero figure, who had never tarnished his hands with collaboration, but played a game with the Germans (and with the Poles), aimed only at saving his own family. The author tries to find what factors are involved in this self-creation

This article is an attempt at a critical analysis of the history of the Jewish Fighting Union (JFU) and a presentation of their authors based on documents kept in the archives of the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw. The author believes that an uncritical approach and such a treatment of these materials, which were generated under the communist regime and used for political purposes resulted in a perverted and lasting picture of the history of this fighting organisation of Zionists-revisionists both in Poland and Israel. The author has focused on a deconstruction of the most important and best known “testimonies regarding the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising”, the development and JFU participation in this struggle, given by Henryk Iwański, Władysław Zajdler, Tadeusz Bednarczyk and Janusz Ketling–Szemley.
A comparative analysis of these materials, supplemented by important details of their war-time and postwar biographies, leaves no doubt as to the fact that they should not be analysed in terms of their historical credibility and leads one to conclude that a profound revision of research approach to JFU history is necessary.
A comparative analysis of these materials, supplemented by important details of their war-time and postwar biographies, leaves no doubt as to the fact that they should not be analysed in terms of their historical credibility and leads one to conclude that a profound revision of research approach to JFU history is necessary.

In the early years following World War II, the Lublin region was one of the most important centres of Jewish life. At the same time, during 1944-1946 it was the scene of anti-Jewish incidents: from anti-Semitic propaganda, accusation of ritual murder, economic boycott, to cases of individual or collective murder. The wave of anti-Jewish that lasted until autumn of 1946 resulted in a lengthy and, no doubt incomplete, list of 118 murdered Jews. Escalating anti-Jewish violence in the immediate post-war years was one of the main factors, albeit not the only one, to affect the demography (mass emigration) and the socio-political condition of the Jewish population in the Lublin region

This is a fragment of the diary of Hinda and Chanina Malachi, written in hiding on the “Aryan side” in Warsaw. The diary of the Malachi couple was written in Polish in a squared-paper arithmetic notebook. It covers the period between 9 October 1942 and 30 August 1944. The first part of the diary published here (until 3 August 1943), was written by Hinda and describes the fate of both spouses since they left their home in Ostrowiec and moved to Warsaw. Hinda and Chinina Malachi survived the war and in 1947 emigrated to Israel.

The article presents a selection of documents from a 1949 trial, which concluded with the sentence of three ZWZ-AK members, Opatów district, by the Court of Appeals in Kielce – Józef Mularski, Leon Nowak and Edward Perzyński – for complicity in the murder of 12 Jews from the Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski ghetto in a forest near Kunów. Two of them, severely wounded, returned to the ghetto; one of them survived the war (Szloma Icek Zweigman), and after emigration submitted a detailed and extensive testimony regarding the incident. Zweigman’s testimony was the foundation of the investigation and the indictment. Mularski and Nowak, sentenced to death, were subsequently pardoned and released from prison after 1956, as was the third convict. The case was closed as follows: sentence of 1957 to pardon Józef Mularski, followed by another verdict of 2000 that provided for a high compensation. The presented materials are not only proof that members of the Polish underground committed crimes against Jews, but also demonstrate how the Polish judiciary and the Main Commission to Investigate Nazi Crimes in Poland operated. The latter clearly conducted a policy of papering over those criminal cases in which Poles were the perpetrators. The issues raised in the article are inadequately researched, not only in Polish historiography.
The presented trial materials come from the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance

On 2 January 1943, the president of the Republic of Poland, Władysław Raczkiewicz, sent a telegram to Pius XII via the Polish Embassy at the Holy See. In dramatic words he described the intensifying German terror in occupied Poland and appealed for moral support: “The last weeks of the previous year brought new shocking information from Poland. The terror that afflicted all strata and segments of Polish society has taken on terrifying forms, not only in the refined cruelty of methods applied, but also in its sheer scale. The extermination of the Jews, including many Christian Semites, turned out to be the first attempt at a systematic and veritably scientific mass murder.” The fate of Polish Jews was to herald the physical extermination of the Polish nation, as proved by the deportations from the Zamość region ...

The text called Szmul Rozensztajn’s Diary, catalogue number 302/115, can be found in the Memoirs collection of the Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute. This is a typewritten text in Yiddish, 161 pages long, compiled on the basis of a manuscript written in the Łódź Ghetto. Daily entries cover the period from 20 February 1941 to 21 November 1941. This is no doubt part of a larger whole. Both the immediate post-war scholars of Jewish literature from the Łódź Ghetto – Ber Mark and Iszaja Trunk – and the contemporary editors of fragments of Szmul Rozensztajn’s Diary translated into English – Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides – say that the original of the Diary is kept at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, while the typewritten text is in Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem. But the inventory of the Jewish Memoirs collection of the Jewish Historical Institute published in 1994 mentions only a typewritten copy. The whereabouts of the original are unknown. We do not know which part of the copy is available to us.

Presented below is a fragment of Józef Górski’s diaries regarding the situation in Podlasie in the first years of the German occupation. It illustrates the author’s view on “the final solution of the Jewish question”. Górski himself says that he looked at the Holocaust as a Christian, who feels compassion for the victims, and at the same time as a Pole and a faithful follower of Roman Dmowski. From the latter point of view, he clearly welcomed the Holocaust. Józef Górski’s diaries could certainly be classified as an “oddity”, and as one reads them a number of painful questions arise, primarily about the scale of (silent) consent to the murder. In other words, to what extent did Górski’s clear (although frightening) views fit the framework of the “ordinary people” of occupied Podlasie?

The title of this text, From the Book of Madness and Atrocity, published here for the first time, indicates its generic and stylistic specificity, its fragmentary, incomplete character. It suggests that this text is part of a greater whole, still incomplete, or one that cannot be grasped. In this sense Śreniowski refers to the topos of inexpressibility of the Holocaust experience. The text is reflective in character, full of metaphor, and its modernist style does not shun pathos. Thus we have here meditations emanating a poetic aura, not a report or an account of events. The author emphasises the desperate loneliness of the dying, their solitude, the incommensurability of the ghetto experience and that of the occupation, and the lack of a common fate of the Jews and the Poles (“A Deserted Town in a Living Capital”; “A Town within a Town”; “And the Capital? A Capital, in which the town of a death is dying . . . ? Well, the Capital is living a normal life. Under the occupation, indeed . . . .”).

Jerzy Lewiński was born at the beginning of the previous century (in 1911) in a family of assimilated Jews. Not only did he witness the most important events of that century, but he participated in a number of them as well. The youngest of five siblings, he had two step-sisters and a step-brother, from his father’s (Kopel–Kacper) first marriage and brother Adolf (mother Frajndla–Franciszka). Initially, he lived in the city of Turek, from where he moved to Warsaw in 1922, after the tragic death of his father (murdered in 1920 by his business partner). Here, in 1933, he graduated from law school of Warsaw University. During his studies, he left for several months for a scholarship at the École Superieure Politique in Paris. After completing his studies in September 1934, he was referred to the Cadet School in Częstochowa and completed it a year later as a reserve officer cadet. He passed his final exam before the military commission headed by Stanisław Władysław Maczek (the certified colonel). Following his release from military service, Lewiński moved to Łódź, where he completed judge’s training in the Łódź District Court. He also started his advocate’s training there in 1937.

I met this priest only twice. On the second occasion, we had a longer conversation: for over an hour we strolled round the gardens of the Jesuits in Cracow, in Kopernika St., where Father Stanisław lived. It was July 2003. That conversation was very important for me; we were supposed to return  to it. Unfortunately, we did not. On 15 March 2004 I attended his funeral. The mass, in a full basilica of the Heart of Jesus, was concelebrated by 87 priests led by Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, the then archbishop-metropolitan of Cracow; in attendance were also the bishop of the Evangelical Reformed Church and a Lutheran minister. The main celebrant also led the funeral ceremony at the cemetery, where Father Musiał drew even bigger crowds. The presence of a sizeable group of Jews was something extraordinary, and they had come not only from Poland but also from Israel. Among the Jewish celebrities were three rabbis: the chief rabbi of Poland, the rabbi of Cracow and the Hasidic rabbi of Jerusalem; the latter sang kaddish over the Father's grave. The Jews of Cracow were represented by the chairman of the local community. Israeli ambassador in Poland David Peleg was also present.

After the defeat in the Polish-German war of 1939, many people made plans to escape from the territories occupied by the Germans. As a rule, people escaped to the East, and among “castaways”, travelling the “Eastern route”, the percentage of Jews was exceptionally high, for quite obvious reasons. Some managed to leave the Soviet Union for Sweden, Palestine or even Japan. This, however, is another story.