Warsaw. the Jewish Metropolis: Essays in Honor of the 75th Birthday of Professor Antony Polonsky

640 Pages·2015·3.72 MB·English

by  Glenn Dynner

Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis

Frontispiece Bernardo Belotto, known as
Canaletto, Bridgettine Church and
the Arsenal, 1775. Detail presenting
Jews standing in front of a small
manor house on the corner of Długa
and Bielańska streets, Royal Castle
in Warsaw (fot. Andrzej Ring).
IJS STUDIES IN JUDAICA
Conference Proceedings of the
Institute of Jewish Studies,
University College London
Series Editors
Mark Geller
François Guesnet
Ada Rapoport-Albert
VOLUME 15
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ijs
Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis
Essays in Honor of the 75th Birthday
of Professor Antony Polonsky
Edited by
Glenn Dynner and François Guesnet
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Warsaw. the Jewish metropolis : essays in honor of the 75th birthday of professor Antony Polonsky /
edited by Glenn Dynner and François Guesnet.
  pages cm. — (IJS studies in Judaica ; volume 15)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-29180-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29181-2 (e-book) 1. Jews—Poland—
Warsaw—History. 2. Jews—Poland—Warsaw—Social conditions—History. 3. Jews—Poland—
Warsaw—Economic conditions—History 4. Jews—Poland—Warsaw—Intellectual life. 5. Warsaw
(Poland)—Ethnic relations. I. Dynner, Glenn, 1969- editor. II. Guesnet, François, editor. III. Polonsky,
Antony, honoree. IV. Title: Jewish metropolis.
 DS134.64.W36 2015
 305.892’4043841—dc23
2015005127
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isbn 978-90-04-29180-5 (hardback)
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
List of Illustrations and Maps xiv
Introduction 1
PART 1
The Rise of the Metropolis
1 Illegal Immigrants: The Jews of Warsaw, 1527–1792 19
Hanna Węgrzynek
2 Merchants, Army Suppliers, Bankers: Transnational Connections and the
Rise of Warsaw’s Jewish Mercantile Elite (1770–1820) 42
Cornelia Aust
3 In Warsaw and Beyond: The Contribution of Hayim Zelig Slonimski to
Jewish Modernization 70
Ela Bauer
4 The Garment of Torah: Clothing Decrees and the Warsaw Career of the
First Gerer Rebbe 91
Glenn Dynner
5 From Community to Metropolis: The Jews of Warsaw, 1850–1880 128
François Guesnet
6 An Unhappy Community and an Even Unhappier Rabbi 154
Shaul Stampfer
7 Distributing Knowledge: Warsaw as a Center of Jewish Publishing,
1850–1914 180
Nathan Cohen
vi contents
8 In Kotik’s Corner: Urban Culture, Bourgeois Politics and the Struggle
for Jewish Civility in Turn of the Century Eastern Europe 207
Scott Ury
9 Hope and Fear: Y.L. Peretz and the Dialectics of Diaspora Nationalism,
1905–12 227
Michael C. Steinlauf
10 “Di Haynt-mishpokhe”: Study for a Group Picture 252
Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov
11 A Warsaw Story: Polish-Jewish Relations during the First World
War 271
Robert Blobaum
12 The Capital of “Yiddishland”? 298
Kalman Weiser
13 The Kultur-Lige in Warsaw: A Stopover in the Yiddishists’ Journey
between Kiev and Paris 323
Gennady Estraikh
14 Enduring Prestige, Eroded Authority: The Warsaw Rabbinate in the
Interwar Period 347
Gershon Bacon
15 From Galicia to Warsaw: Interwar Historians of Polish Jewry 370
Natalia Aleksiun
16 Negotiating Jewish Nationalism in Interwar Warsaw 390
Kenneth B. Moss
PART 2
Destruction of the Metropolis and Its Aftermath
17 The Polish Underground Press and the Jews: The Holocaust in the
Pages of the Home Army’s Biuletyn Informacyjny, 1940–1943 437
Joshua D. Zimmerman
contents vii
18 “The Work of My Hands is Drowning in the Sea, and You Would Offer
Me Song?!”: Orthodox Behaviour and Leadership in Warsaw during
the Holocaust 467
Havi Dreifuss
19 The Warsaw Ghetto in the Writings of Rachel Auerbach 496
Samuel Kassow
20 Stories of Rescue Activities in the Letters of Jewish Survivors about
Christian Polish Rescuers, 1944–1949 515
Joanna B. Michlic
21 The Politics of Retribution in Postwar Warsaw: In the Honor Court
of the Central Committee of Polish Jews 539
Gabriel N. Finder
22 The End of a Jewish Metropolis? The Ambivalence of Reconstruction
in the Aftermath of the Holocaust 562
David Engel
23 The Reconstruction of Jewish Life in Warsaw after the Holocaust:
A Case Study of a Building and Its Residents 570
Karen Auerbach
24 In Search of Meaning after Marxism: The Komandosi, March 1968,
and the Ideas that Followed 590
Marci Shore
25 “Context is Everything.” Reflections on Studying with Antony
Polonsky 613
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Name Index 617
Acknowledgements
The current volume is an outgrowth of a conference held at University College
London on June 22–25, 2010, at the Institute of Jewish Studies at University
College, London. We would like to thank the initial sponsors and support-
ers of that conference, including the Embassy of the Republic of Poland;
Dr. Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, President of the City of Warsaw; The American
Association for Polish-Jewish Studies, Cambridge, MA; Fondation pour la
Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris; The Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw; The
Department of Culture, City of Warsaw; The Polish Cultural Institute, London;
The Littauer Foundation, New York; The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization;
The Institute for Polish Jewish Studies, Oxford; The Jewish Historical Institute,
Warsaw; and The Polin Museum for the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw. The
conference would scarcely have been possible without their support. We also
would like to acknowledge the diligence of the staff at the UCL Institute of
Jewish Studies, particularly Sara Ben-Isaac. We are grateful to all speakers,
chairs and commentators at the conference, notably to Professor Norman
Davies for his opening keynote, and to all contributors to the present volume.
In addition, we thank Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz for her careful translation of
Havi Dreifuss’ article, Jim Dingley for his contribution to copy-editing this vol-
ume, and Anastasiya Novatorskaya who, with the support of the office of the
Dean of Studies at Sarah Lawrence College, compiled the Name Index. We are
grateful to the staff at Brill Academic Publishers for their exemplary support in
putting together this large volume—Jennifer Pavelko assisted us at the begin-
ning, with Katelyn Chin, Meghan Connolly and Paige Sammartino taking good
care to complete the task. Finally, we would like to thank Professor Antony
Polonsky, who has inspired this volume with his decades-long devotion to the
field of Polish Jewish Studies. It is to him that we dedicate this volume.