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A critical examination of the category of "Polishness" - that is,
the formation, redefinition, and performance of various kinds of
Polish identities - from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives.
Inspired by new research in the humanities and social sciences as
well as recent scholarship on national identities, this volume
offers a rigorous examination of the idea of Polishness. Offering a
diversity of case studies and methodological-theoretical
approaches, it demonstrates a profound connection between national
and transnational processes and places the Polish case in a broader
context. This broader context stretches from a larger Eastern
European one, a usual frame of comparison, to the overseas
immigrant communities. The authors, renowned scholars from Europe
and the United States, thus demonstrate that an understanding of
modern Polish identity means crossing not only historical but also
geographical boundaries. Consequently, the narrative on Polish
identity that unfolds in the volume is a personalized and
multivocal one that presents the perspectives of a wide range of
subjects: peasants, workers, migrants, ethnic and sexual
minorities-that is, all those actors who have been absent in grand
national narratives. As such, the examination of Polishness sheds
light on the identity question more broadly, emphasizing the
interplay of pluralizing and homogenizing tendencies, and fostering
a reflection on national identity as encompassing both sameness and
difference.
In this new collection of essays, Adam Michnik - one of Europe's
leading dissidents - traces the post-cold-war transformation of
Eastern Europe. He writes again in opposition, this time to
post-communist elites and European Union bureaucrats. Composed of
history, memoir, and political critique, "In Search of Lost
Meaning" shines a spotlight on the changes in Poland and the
Eastern Bloc in the post-1989 years. Michnik asks what mistakes
were made and what we can learn from climactic events in Poland's
past, in its literature, and the histories of Central and Eastern
Europe. He calls attention to pivotal moments in which central
figures like Lech Walesa and political movements like Solidarity
came into being, how these movements attempted to uproot the past,
and how subsequent events have ultimately challenged Poland's
enduring ethical legacy of morality and liberalism. Reflecting on
the most recent efforts to grapple with Poland's Jewish history and
residual guilt, this profoundly important book throws light not
only on recent events, but also on the thinking of one of their
most important protagonists.
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Golden Harvest (Hardcover)
Jan T. Gross, Irena Grudzinska Gross
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It seems at first commonplace: a photograph of peasants at harvest
time, after work well done, resting contentedly with their tools,
behind the fruits of their labor. But when one finally notices that
what seemed innocent on first view becomes horrific: the crops
scattered in front of the group are skulls and bones. Where are we?
Who are the people in the photograph, and what are they doing?
The starting point of Jan Gross's A Golden Harvest, this haunting
photograph in fact depicts a group of peasants--"diggers" atop a
mountain of ashes at Treblinka, where some 800,000 Jews were gassed
and cremated. The diggers are hoping to find gold and precious
stones that Nazi executioners may have overlooked. The story
captured in this grainy black-and-white photograph symbolizes the
vast, continent-wide plunder of Jewish wealth.
The seizure of Jewish assets during World War II occasionally
generates widespread attention when Swiss banks are challenged to
produce lists of dormant accounts, or national museums are forced
to return stolen paintings. The theft of this wealth was not
limited to conquering armies, leading banks, and museums, but to
local populations such as those pictured in the photograph. Based
upon a simple group shot, this moving book evokes the depth and
range, as well as the intimacy, of the final solution.
A hero to many, Polish writer Adam Michnik ranks among today's most
fearless and persuasive public figures. His imprisonment by
Poland's military regime in the 1980s did nothing to quench his
outpouring of writings, many of which were published in English as
"Letters from Prison," Beginning where that volume ended, "Letters
from Freedom" finds Michnik briefly in prison at the height of the
"cold civil war" between authorities and citizens in Poland, then
released. Through his continuing essays, articles, and interviews,
the reader can follow all the momentous changes of the last decade
in Poland and East-Central Europe. Some of the writings have
appeared in English in various publications; most are translated
here for the first time.
Michnik is never detached. His belief that people can get what they
want without hatred and violence has always translated into action,
and his actions, particularly the activity of writing, have
required his contemporaries to think seriously about what it is
they want. His commitment to freedom is absolute, but neither
wild-eyed nor humorless; with a characteristic combination of
idealism and pragmatism, Michnik says, "In the end, politics is the
art of foreseeing and implementing the possible."
Michnik's blend of conviction and political acumen is perhaps most
vividly revealed in the interviews transcribed in the book, whether
he is the subject of the interview or is conducting a conversation
with Czeslaw Milosz, Vaclav Havel, or Wojciech Jaruzelski. These
face-to-face exchanges tell more about the forces at work in
contemporary Eastern Europe than could any textbook. Sharing
Michnik's intellectual journey through a tumultuous era, we touch
on allthe subjects important to him in this wide-ranging collection
and find they have importance for everyone who values conscience
and responsibility. In the words of Jonathan Schell, "Michnik is
one of those who bring honor to the last two decades of the
twentieth century."
The book on the history of Russian philosophical thought of the
nineteenth century deals with six important representatives in the
sharply present context of the ideological dispute between East and
West. The author has chosen for analysis such Russian concrete
worldviews which either advocated dialogue between Russia and the
West, or particularly sharply proclaimed the conflict between them.
Agreement should be made either in the name of universal-humanist
Christian principles, with a special emphasis on Catholicism, or in
the name of Enlightenment principles. None of these thinkers are
popular in Putin's Russia today, unlike Dostoevsky and Leontiev,
the prophets of the fundamental conflict between Russia and Europe,
also discussed in this work.
The volume contains some of the most incisive texts of the New
School of Polish Jewish studies. The chapters present new ways of
thinking about modern Polish-Jewish history and the Holocaust. The
authors are reformulating the terms of current discourses in
various fields of research. Introduced by Jan T. Gross, the book
includes chapters by several important scholars and an
extraordinary poem by Jacek Podsiad(3)o, translated and commented
upon by Alissa Valles.
This powerful memoir traces the life of Karol Modzelewski, one of
the preeminent Polish dissidents of the twentieth century. With
humor and perception, Modzelewski describes his formative years.
Born in 1937 to a Polish-born mother and Russian-Jewish father in
Moscow, he spent his early schooling and underwent deep
indoctrination in the Soviet Union. In 1945 he moved with his
mother and stepfather, a prominent communist, to Poland when his
stepfather was appointed as foreign minister in Warsaw. In the
relatively "liberal" Polish atmosphere, Modzelewski gradually awoke
to the realities of the party system during his university years.
Modzelewski discusses the experiences and realizations that led him
in 1964 to coauthor with Jacek Kuron the famous "Open Letter to the
Party," for which he and Kuron were imprisoned. With keen critical
insight, Modzelewski describes his role as one of the leading
intellectuals of the Solidarity movement. Much more than mere
autobiography, this nuanced book is a profound and highly critical
analysis of Polish politics over the last fifty years.
Characteristically, Modzelewski refuses to portray events in black
and white terms, providing a frank assessment of the country's
evolution from communism to democracy, the genesis of Polish
dissidence and its success in dismantling communism, and the causes
of the current crisis of democracy in Poland.
It seems at first commonplace: a group photograph of peasants at
harvest time, after hard work well done, resting contentedly with
their tools behind the fruits of their labor. But when one finally
notices the "crops" scattered in front of the group, what seemed
innocent on first view become horrific skulls and bones. Where are
we? Who are the people in the photograph, and what are they doing?
The starting point of Jan Tomasz and Irena Grudzinska Gross's
Golden Harvest, this haunting photograph in fact depicts a group of
peasants-"diggers"-atop a mountain of ashes at Treblinka, where
some 800,000 Jews were gassed and cremated. The diggers are
searching for gold and precious stones that Nazi executioners may
have overlooked. The story captured in this grainy black-and-white
photograph symbolizes the vast, continent-wide plunder of Jewish
wealth that went hand-in-hand with the Holocaust. The seizure of
Jewish assets during World War II occasionally generates widespread
attention when Swiss banks are challenged to produce lists of
dormant accounts, or national museums are forced to return stolen
paintings. But the theft of Europe's Jewish population was not
limited to conquering armies, leading banks, or museums. It was
perpetrated also by local people, such as those pictured in the
photograph. Lyrical and often heartbreaking, A Golden Harvest takes
readers across Europe as it exposes the economic ravaging of an
entire society. Beginning with a simple group shot, the authors
have written a moving book that evokes the depth and range, as well
as the intimacy, of the Final Solution.
The contributions in this volume reflect discussions and
controversies during the Princeton University Conference on
Polish-Jewish Studies (April 18-19, 2015). The debates examined the
politics of history in Poland, as well as the scholarly and
pedagogical need to move beyond national and diasporic narratives
in researching and teaching Polish-Jewish subjects. They focused on
the role and meaning of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish
Jews.
A brilliant meditation on politics, morality, and history from one
of the most courageous and controversial authors of our age
Renowned Eastern European author Adam Michnik was jailed for more
than six years by the communist regime in Poland for his dissident
activities. He was an outspoken voice for democracy in the world
divided by the Iron Curtain and has remained so to the present day.
In this thoughtful and provocative work, the man the Financial
Times named "one of the 20 most influential journalists in the
world" strips fundamentalism of its religious component and
examines it purely as a secular political phenomenon. Comparing
modern-day Poland with postrevolutionary France, Michnik offers a
stinging critique of the ideological "virus of fundamentalism"
often shared by emerging democracies: the belief that, by using
techniques of intimidating public opinion, a state governed by
"sinless individuals" armed with a doctrine of the only correct
means of organizing human relations can build a world without sin.
Michnik employs deep historical analysis and keen political
observation in his insightful five-point philosophical meditation
on morality in public life, ingeniously expounding on history,
religion, moral thought, and the present political climate in his
native country and throughout Europe.
The volume is a selection of the most incisive analyses related to
the issues of gender and social transition that appeared in the
pages of the quarterly East European Politics and Societies. The
articles look at what was happening to women in the changing East
European societies and propose new perspectives on the history of
the region. Articles cover many countries and come from a period of
twelve years - 1994 to 2006 - when the efforts of introducing
gender into East European studies were most intense. The volume
shows the trajectory leading from the introduction of the lens of
gender into the East European studies to the moment at which the
tools of gender analysis were applied without apology to the
research on East European politics, law, history, culture and
economy.
This intimate portrayal of the friendship between two icons of
twentieth-century poetry, Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky,
highlights the parallel lives of the poets as exiles living in
America and Nobel Prize laureates in literature. To create this
truly original work, Irena Grudzinska Gross draws from poems,
essays, letters, interviews, speeches, lectures, and her own
personal memories as a confidant of both Milosz and Brodsky. The
dual portrait of these poets and the elucidation of their attitudes
toward religion, history, memory, and language throw a new light on
the upheavals of the twentieth-century. Gross also incorporates
notes on both poets' relationships to other key literary figures,
such as W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag, Seamus Heaney, Mark Strand,
Robert Haas, and Derek Walcott.
Dieses Buch ist die erste umfangreiche Zusammenstellung der
Prosawerke von zwei Schlusselautoren der polnischen Moderne,
Stanislaw Brzozowski (1878-1911) und Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969).
"Konarzewskas Arbeit verdient es [...], als innovativ bezeichnet zu
werden und zwar auf edelste Weise innovativ: Der Polonist fragt
sich hinsichtlich der Rolle von Brzozowski und Gombrowicz fur die
polnische Kultur und die zentrale Stelle des Themas 'Reife' in
ihrem Schaffen: Warum bin ich bloss selbst nicht auf die Idee
gekommen?" Prof. Dr. Michal Mrugalski, Humboldt Universitat zu
Berlin
Der Autor analysiert Tagebucher, Erinnerungen, Memoiren, Chroniken,
Berichte und Briefe, die wahrend der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs
und der deutschen Besatzung im und um das Warschauer Ghetto
entstanden. Er untersucht die Gattungsspezifik und den speziellen
Status dieser Texte, die das in Worte zu fassen versuchen, was
gemeinhin als unbeschreibbar gilt. Der Autor widerspricht der
verbreiteten These von der Unausdruckbarkeit. Er betont die
Notwendigkeit des Ausdrucks jener Erfahrung und die Notwendigkeit
des Versuchs zu verstehen.
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