Synopses & Reviews
This volume sheds light on two brilliant but lesser known ghetto journalists: Josef Zelkowicz and Peretz Opoczynski. An ordained rabbi, Zelkowicz became a key member of the archive in the Lodz ghetto. Opoczynski was a journalist and mailman who contributed to the Warsaw ghetto’s secret Oyneg Shabes archive. While other ghetto writers sought to create an objective record of their circumstances, Zelkowicz and Opoczynski chronicled daily life and Jewish responses to ghettoization by the Nazis with powerful immediacy. Expertly translated by David Suchoff, with an elegant introduction by Samuel Kassow, these profound writings are at last accessible to contemporary readers.
Synopsis
In 1922, voters in the newly created Republic of Poland democratically elected their first president, Gabriel Narutowicz. Because his supporters included a Jewish political party, an opposing faction of antisemites demanded his resignation. Within hours, bloody riots erupted in Warsaw, and within a week the president was assassinated. In the wake of these events, the radical right asserted that only "ethnic Poles" should rule the country, while the left silently capitulated to this demand.
As Paul Brykczynski tells this gripping story, he explores the complex role of antisemitism, nationalism, and violence in Polish politics between the two World Wars. Though focusing on Poland, the book sheds light on the rise of the antisemitic right in Europe and beyond, and on the impact of violence on political culture and discourse.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-215) and index.
About the Author
Josef Zelkowicz (1897–1944), an ethnographer and professional Yiddish journalist before the war, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, when he perished.
Peretz Opoczynski (1892–1943), a journalist by profession, found work as a mailman in the Warsaw ghetto after the war started, and wrote many pieces for the secret archive until he was most likely rounded up in January 1943. Josef Zelkowicz (1897–1944), an ethnographer and professional journalist writing in Yiddish before the war, was deported in 1944 to Auschwitz, where he perished.
Samuel D. Kassow is Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College.
David Suchoff is professor of English at Colby College.