Synopses & Reviews
This sweeping work is the first comprehensive English-language study of Jewish resistance in the Netherlands during World War II.
Adopting a comparative approach, Ben Braber explores the situation of Jews in the Netherlands against the backdrop of their experiences in other Western European countries. Charting the occurrences of Jewish resistance, he pays particular attention to the ways in which the integration of Jews into Dutch society influenced their responses to German persecution. Brabers incisive analyses shed new light on Dutch and Jewish history, pointing the way toward future paths of inquiry.
Synopsis
From the first Jewish settlements in the medieval duchies of Gelderland, Brabant, and Limburg to the Jewish community of today, the interaction between Dutch Jews and Dutch Christians has mostly been one of fruitful collaboration which only the period of German occupation from 1940 to 1945 was seriously able to disrupt. The contribution that Dutch Jews have made, and continue to make, to cultural life, to the economy, and to science is recognized as being of central importance to the Netherlands as a whole. The ten eminent scholars contributing to this book each describe Jewish life in a particular period, from the Middle Ages to the present. In doing so they consider the strains caused within the Jewish community by the effort to play a full part in Dutch society while maintaining Jewish culture, setting the discussion in the~context of trends and tensions within Dutch society in the period in question. The circumstances of the Jews under German occupation and in the immediate post-wa
Synopsis
Scholarship on the civilization of Polish Jews has tended to focus on elite culture and canonical literature; even modern Yiddish culture has generally been approached from the perspective of 'great works'. This volume of Polin focuses on the less explored but historically vital theme of Jewish popular culture and shows how, confronted by the challenges and opportunities of modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it blossomed into a complex expression of Jewish life. In addition to a range of articles on the period before the Second World War there are studies of the traces of this culture in the contemporary world. The volume as a whole aims to develop a fresh understanding of Polish Jewish civilization in all its richness and variety.
Subjects discussed in depth include klezmorim and Jewish recorded music; the development of Jewish theatre in Poland, theatrical parody, and the popular poet and performer Mordechai Gebirtig; Jewish postcards in Poland and Germany; the early Yiddish popular press in Galicia and cartoons in the Yiddish press; working-class libraries in inter-war Poland; the impact of the photographs of Roman Vishniac; contemporary Polish wooden figures of Jews; and the Krakow Jewish culture festival. In addition, a Polish Jewish popular song is traced to Sachsenhausen, the badkhn (wedding jester) is rediscovered in present-day Jerusalem, and Yiddish cabaret turns up in blues, rock 'n' roll, and reggae garb. There are also translations from the work of two writers previously unavailable in English: excerpts from the ethnographer A. Litvin's pioneering five-volume work Yidishe neshomes (Jewish Souls) and several chapters from the autobiography, notorious in inter-war Poland, of the writer and thief Urke Nachalnik. As in earlier volumes of Polin substantial space is also given to new research into a variety of topics in Polish Jewish studies.
These include the origins of antisemitism in Poland; what is known about the presence of German forces in the vicinity of Jedwabne in the summer of 1941; and the vexed question of Jews in the communist security apparatus in Poland after 1944. The review section includes an important discussion of what should be done about the paintings in Sandomierz cathedral which represent an alleged ritual murder in the seventeenth century, and an examination of the 'anti-Zionist' campaign of 1968.
Synopsis
This history of the Jews of the Netherlands and the role they have played in Dutch society was originally published in Dutch and widely acclaimed for the breadth of its coverage. It covers both the internal evolution of the Jewish community and its social, cultural, and economic interaction with the wider population. From the first Jewish settlements in the medieval duchies of Gelderland, Brabant, and Limburg to the Jewish community of today, the interaction between Dutch Jews and Dutch Christians has mostly been one of fruitful collaboration which only the period of German occupation from 1940 to 1945 was seriously able to disrupt. The contribution that Dutch Jews have made, and continue to make, to cultural life, to the economy, and to science is recognized as being of central importance to the Netherlands as a whole. The ten eminent scholars contributing to this book each describe Jewish life in a particular period, from the Middle Ages to the present.
In doing so they consider the strains caused within the Jewish community by the effort to play a full part in Dutch society while maintaining Jewish culture, setting the discussion in the context of trends and tensions within Dutch society in the period in question. The circumstances of the Jews under German occupation and in the immediate post-war period are also discussed. The History of the Jews in the Netherlands is a definitive, indispensable work for the study of both European Jewish and Dutch history.
About the Author
Ben Braber is an honorary research fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Glasgow.