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This volume is a paperback edition of a 2007 publication to which new elements have been added. Its subject is the experiences of a Jewish family from Kraków following German occupation in 1939, with well over half of the text devoted to letters sent by various members to Joseph (Józia) Hollander, the one person to escape the Nazis and find a new home in the United States. As a primary source, these letters are clearly a valuable research tool for anyone working in the area of Holocaust Studies, whilst having a much wider relevance, not least in an era marked by persecution and flight caused by war. The remainder of the book puts the family's experiences into wider contexts.
A decade after 1989, Poland began experiencing a "memory boom." This explosion in cultural productions dealing with the past inspired scholarly research on collective memory in fields as diverse as Anthropology, Archeology, Art History, Communications, Cultural Studies, History, Film, Languages and Linguistics, Literature, Journalism, Media Studies, Museum Studies, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. While this intellectual surge drew inspiration from classical works produced earlier in Western Europe and the United States, it also produced a plethora of new concepts, theories, and perspectives rooted in the Central European experience and drew on classical Polish authors. This incredibly rich field of inquiry presents an intellectual labyrinth that can be difficult to navigate. Novices may have trouble finding their bearings, while seasoned scholars may talk past each other, each using terms native to their disciplines for lack of a common language.
The German historian Markus Krzoska, who is an expert on Central European history, presents his postdoctoral thesis with the publication "Ein Land unterwegs: Kulturgeschichte Polens seit 1945" ("A Country on its Way: Cultural History of Poland since 1945"). The book changes the typical focus from confirmed knowledge (p. 13f) in the field of political and economic history towards Polish everyday life, in order to describe therein the "Normal" and the "European" (p. 21). Although research into contemporary history does link the micro and macro perspectives more often, this everyday-life approach has hardly been used in the case of Poland before. The author rightly maintains, that the functioning of a political system can only be understood by also taking into account everyday phenomena (p. 27). For this reason, he directs his attention to transnational-political frames and to small-scale and regional structures. He does so by analyzing "big events", like the accession of Poland to the European Union, but also through questions of lifestyle within village communities. With this broad research approach, Krzoska does not only support the idea of a paradigm shift within the historiography of Central and Eastern Europe, but he himself successfully places another type of "Cultural and Social History" (orig. "andere Kultur- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte", p. 25) in the forefront of his research.
Beth Holmgren's book is a monograph of Helena Modrzejewska/Modjeska (1840-1909), the famous Polish-American stage star. The author's purpose was "to introduce a little-remembered actress to a new American audience" (p. 15). This plan was successfully completed. "Starring Madame Modjeska" is not just a popularized biography but a result of meticulous research and intellectual elaboration. It can be extremely useful for Polish readers (scholars) as it makes use of American resources and a large bibliography inaccessible in Poland. It also presents an analytical rather than simply apologetic attitude, showing a spectrum of roles Modjeska played on- and offstage.
The Polish historian Maciej Górny has set his sights on describing the involvement of Central-Eastern European and Balkan intellectuals in the First World War. His book, entitled Wielka Wojna profesorów (The Great War of the Professors), is devoted to this issue. As it turns out, historians have already given much attention to this so-called "war of spirit" („Krieg der Geister"); however, they have so far concentrated on the involvement of Western European scientists. Górny claims that there is a significant gap in this scope and the possibility to compare successfully intellectuals from the Balkans, Central Europe, and Eastern Europe makes this gap even greater. The scientific as well as social status of such intellectuals, related mainly to public respect, allows for such a comparative analysis.
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning is dense. You will probably put it down a couple of times yet pick it up again and again, trying to refocus on the entirety of a colossal tapestry rather than lose yourself in the infinite fine threads that make up the fabric. The interpretative patterns woven are no less complex: multi-layered across local and international settings, with many shades of grey, not white or black. All the same, Snyder's book on the Holocaust remains very readable: it is written with clarity, style, and an inquisitive readership in mind.
The book, based on Marciniak's dissertation in American Studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, wants to 'explore the story of how a subculture emerged and evolved over time through the communication of ideas across space' (p. xiii). Her 'two main research questions' (p. xviii) are the depth of US-American influence in Poland, their local 'adjustments' (ibid.), and the 'cultural diffusion' (p. xix) involved. As the title of her work suggests, the perspective is transnational; the author focuses on the exchange of people, concepts, and ideas from the late 1970s to the early 2010s, mainly (but not exclusively) between Poland and the United States. The main part of the book concentrates on developments after 1989; earlier developments are bundled up in shorter introductions of the respective chapters.
In times of 'big choices' to be made (again) in European politics, framed by the manifold challenges– from financial and migration to 'Brexit' and security crises, the policymaker and expert community's attention is drawn 'back to Europe and the EU's neighbourhood'. Tulmets' (2014) richly sourced and thoroughly researched comparative account of East Central European foreign policy identity may well facilitate understanding of CEE countries' past and future choices, particularly with regard to the EU's turbulent neighbourhoods.
Of the myriad ways in which the Soviet Union attempted to exert control over its new vassal states in Eastern Europe after the Second World War, the use of 'soft power' – which US political scientist Joseph Nye described as 'the power of attraction'[1] – is undoubtedly the least studied. It is this topic that Texas-based historian Patryk Babiracki turns his attention to in his first book-length study, which forms part of 'The New Cold War History' series published by the University of North Carolina Press.
Anna Laudau-Czajka's "Polska to nie oni. Polska i Polacy w polskojęzycznej prasie żydowskiej II Rzeczypospolitej" presents a very interesting approach to Jewish-Polish relations in interwar Poland. The book looks at the issues of Polish antisemitism, Jewish patriotism and assimilation by analysing Jewish newspapers published in Polish, making the issue of language the most important element of the study. Landau-Czajka is fully aware of the nuances of Jewish interwar press, understanding the difficulties of her own work and presenting a collection of different case studies that should be treated more as a catalogue of questions than as a list of clear answers (p. 11). She is also aware of the tricky issue of public opinion and the fact that Jewish press published in Polish, though read mostly by acculturated (not assimilated) Jews, cannot be considered as an expression of any universal Jewish perceptions of Poles and Poland (pp. 42-3). It cannot even be considered as an expression of acculturated Jews' opinions, partly because different newspapers presented different opinions, partly because these opinions changed over time.