340 pages.

The Ukrainian Cossacks were a complex and tenacious group, influential far beyond their numbers. This book offers an admiring, critical, and close examination of the unique cossack phenomenon. It reveals the sources of their surprising power by looking at them in action, in their sixteenth-century uprisings. The interpretation is organized around three themes, offering resolutions of three apparent contradictions in cossack activity: first, how the cossacks could act simultaneously as individualist mercenaries and yet also lead a collective, class-conscious social rebellion; second, how they could be simultaneously traditionalist and yet also provide leadership for the developing modern Ukrainian nationalism; and third, how the cossacks could be simultaneously unique, quintessentially Ukrainian, and yet form a part of a worldwide response to economic transformations that drew Eastern Europe into a position as exploited agricultural provider for Western Europe.

EAST OF TIME is a rendezvous of history and imagination, of realities and dreams, hopes and disenchantments. This extraordinary book, by turns stark and poetic, unfolds in a succession of short reminiscences that weave together into a shimmering tapestry depicting a lost world. The setting is Lodz, Poland, in the years of the author's childhood, when he witnessed the grand belief in a just new world overtaken by the cataclysmic events of the 1930s, imprisoned between the walls of ghettos, and finally silenced at Auschwitz. The book's touchstone is the determination of an entire community to remain human, even at the last frontier of life.

In European and Holocaust historiography, it is generally believed that neither the Zionist movement nor the Yishuv were mindful of the plight of European Jews in the face of the Nazi threat during the 1930s. Drawing on a wide variety of memoirs, letters, and institutional reports by people from all walks of life, this volume sheds new light on a troubled period in Jewish history. Jehuda Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit trace Jewish responses to developments in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as reactions to British policy on the question of a Jewish homeland, to show that Zionists in the Yishuv worked tirelessly on the international stage on behalf of their coreligionists in Europe. Nevertheless, their efforts were all too often shattered by the realities of their powerlessness and lack of resources. Piercing to the heart of conversations about how or whether to save Jews in an increasingly hostile Europe, this volume provides a nuanced assessment of what could and could not be achieved in the years just prior to World War II and Holocaust.

What has happened in Poland? Poland has erupted four times in the last twenty five years, but only the events of 1980 have had comprehensive media coverage. As a result, many questions have been raised in the minds of Western observers. How were such changes possible? What forces lay behind them? In what way did the workers' strike relate to the demands for political democracy? Although a colourful and vivid eye-witness account of the 1980 upheavals, it is to these questions that Neal Ascherson's brilliant and thoughtful analysis mainly addresses itself. Viewing the situation in perspective, he argues that the Polish working class has brought about a controlled revolution, but is not intent on taking power for itself: the real heirs to the gains of 1980 and 1981 are likely to be the intelligentsia, in or out of the Communist Party. It is this social and political ferment that poses fundamental questions about the future of the whole Soviet system in Eastern Europe.

Presents photographs of the Łódź ghetto taken by Grossman, with translation of selected texts from the "Kronika getta łódzkiego" (published in Łódź in 1965-66). The last 17 pp. contain an article by Arie Ben-Menachem on Grossman, who perished in the Holocaust.

A study of antisemitism in Poland in the 20th century. Describes the increase in antisemitism between 1918-39. Reflects on the question of the role of Polish antisemitism in the Holocaust. During the war, most Poles either collaborated with the Nazis or at least approved of the economic measures against the Jews. The rightist anti-German resistance (e.g. Narodowe Sily Zbrojne) regarded Jews as enemies of Poland and sometimes cooperated with the Nazis in the murders. The Armia Krajowa was also antisemitic, and sometimes killed Jews. Many Poles profited from the Holocaust. The Catholic Church was silent. Discusses, also, the Poles who rescued Jews and their motivations. At the end of the war there was a wave of murders of Jews who had survived the Holocaust or were repatriated from the USSR. Antisemitism remained a political factor in Poland both in the communist and post-communist periods.

"Flames from the Earth is an autobiographical novel by Isaiah Spiegel, one of the most revered Yiddish authors to survive the Holocaust, depicting the complex web of relationships in and around the Łódź Ghetto"--

Hasidism, a kabbalah-inspired movement founded by Israel Ba'al Shem Tov (c1700-1760), transformed Jewish communities across Eastern and East Central Europe. In Men of Silk, Glenn Dynner draws upon newly discovered Polish archival material and neglected Hebrew testimonies to illuminate Hasidism's dramatic ascendancy in the region of Central Poland during the early nineteenth century. Dynner presents Hasidism as a socioreligious phenomenon that was shaped in crucial ways by its Polish context. His social historical analysis dispels prevailing romantic notions about Hasidism. Despite their folksy image, the movement's charismatic leaders are revealed as astute populists who proved remarkably adept at securing elite patronage, neutralizing powerful opponents, and methodically co-opting Jewish institutions. The book also reveals the full spectrum of Hasidic devotees, from humble shtetl dwellers to influential Warsaw entrepreneurs.

Irena Koprowska's autobiography illuminates the struggles of a young immigrant woman to combine family responsibilities and a demanding medical career. Irena Koprowska's autobiography chronicles the life and struggles of an immigrant woman who successfully pursued a career while raising a family. In the process, she became an award-winning physician, professor, and research pioneer at a time in history when it was believed a woman's place was in the home. Born in Warsaw in 1917, Irena Koprowska was married, pregnant, and a physician by the age of twenty-two. Forced to flee the Nazis, first in Poland and then in France, she fled to Brazil in 1940. Four years later she immigrated to the United States. Unable to speak English, she started her academic career as a volunteer at the Department of Pathology at Cornell University Medical College. During the years of her subsequent Research Fellowships at Cornell University Medical College, she worked with George N. Papanicolaou, inventor of the Pap smear. The two co-authored a case report of the earliest diagnosis of lung cancer by a sputum smear. Eight years later, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Pathology at State University of New York Downstate Medical College and went on to become the first woman physician to become a full professor at Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital (now known as Hahnemann University) in Philadelphia. Later she joined the faculty of Temple University Medical School where, upon her retirement in 1987, she became Professor Emerita. She was recognized as "Woman Physician of the Year" by a Gold Medicus award of the Polish American Society in 1977 and received the Papanicolaou Award of the AmericanSociety of Cytology in 1985.

The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945 examines one of the central problems in the history of Polish-Jewish relations: the attitude and the behavior of the Polish Underground - the resistance organization loyal to the Polish government-in-exile - toward the Jews during World War II. Using a variety of archival documents, testimonies, and memoirs, Zimmerman offers a careful, dispassionate narrative, arguing that the reaction of the Polish Underground to the catastrophe that befell European Jewry was immensely varied, ranging from aggressive aid to acts of murder. By analyzing the military, civilian, and political wings of the Polish Underground and offering portraits of the organization's main leaders, this book is the first full-length scholarly monograph in any language to provide a thorough examination of the Polish Underground's attitude and behavior towards the Jews during the entire period of World War II.

In this wide-ranging exploration of the economic roots of antisemitism, Hillel Levine trace the position of Jews from the end of the sixteenth century to the demise of the Polish state in 1795. Levine explains why Poland was not able to to modernize its backward social, economic, and political system at a time when Western European countries were rapidly evolving, and he shows that Jews were blames for this failure to modernize, furling an economic antisemitism that contributed to the Holocaust and is with us still.

Ca. 28,000 Jews went into hiding in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation - some refused to move into the ghetto in 1940, while others fled from the ghetto at various stages or came to Warsaw from other towns. Ca. 70,000-90,000 Poles were involved in their rescue. In this way, a secret city which consisted of hidden Jews, their helpers, and those who preyed on them on the "Aryan side" (blackmailers, "blue police", etc.) came into being. Describes escapes of Jews from the ghetto, the network of rescue and accommodation on the "Aryan side", and the problems and dangers which the fugitives encountered. Jewish-Polish relationships on the "Aryan side" were complex and multifaceted, and the line between Polish helpers and enemies was not always clear. The Warsaw uprising of 1944 marked the end of the "secret city". 5,400 Jews perished in the uprising and its aftermath, some of them killed by the insurgents - fighters of the Armia Krajowa. Contends that flight and life in hiding presented the best chances for survival for the Jews; despite all odds, more than 60% of the Jewish fugitives in Warsaw survived the war.

In nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, the Jewish-run tavern was often the center of leisure, hospitality, business, and even religious festivities. This unusual situation came about because the nobles who owned taverns throughout the formerly Polish lands believed that only Jews were sober enough to run taverns profitably, a belief so ingrained as to endure even the rise of Hasidisms robust drinking culture. As liquor became the regions boom industry, Jewish tavernkeepers became integral to both local economies and local social life, presiding over Christian celebrations and dispensing advice, medical remedies and loans. Nevertheless, reformers and government officials, blaming Jewish tavernkeepers for epidemic peasant drunkenness, sought to drive Jews out of the liquor trade. Their efforts were particularly intense and sustained in the Kingdom of Poland, a semi-autonomous province of the Russian empire that was often treated as a laboratory for social and political change. Historians have assumed that this spelled the end of the Polish Jewish liquor trade. However, newly discovered archival sources demonstrate that many nobles helped their Jewish tavernkeepers evade fees, bans and expulsions by installing Christians as fronts for their taverns. The resulta vast underground Jewish liquor tradereflects an impressive level of local Polish-Jewish co-existence that contrasts with the more familiar story of anti-Semitism and violence. By tapping into sources that reveal the lives of everyday Jews and Christians in the Kingdom of Poland, Yankels Tavern transforms our understanding of the region during the tumultuous period of Polish uprisings and Jewish mystical revival.

"Focuses on the history of the Jewish Order Service (known as the Jewish Police) in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940-1943 and its perception among ghetto inhabitants"--

Memoirs of a Jew who was born in 1927 in Borisław, Poland. Pp. 31-132 deal with the Holocaust period, based on information found in a diary she kept at the time. Wolanski survived in hiding, at first with a Christian family and then in a bunker in the forest, until the liberation.

"An authoritative biography of Jozef Pilsudski, a key figure in interwar Europe regarded as the founding hero of a pluralistic and democratic modern Poland. After the first elected president was assassinated, Pilsudski lost faith in Poles' commitment to democracy, led a military coup, and ruled as a strongman, leaving a complicated legacy"--