Shtetl

ירחמיאל גרין ( 1910- 1943) סופר יידי וזמר. נולד בדליטין גליציה, פעל בוורשה בשנות השלושים של המאה העשרים, נמלט ללבוב עם פרוץ מלחמת העולם השנייה ונרצח במחנה המוות ינובסקה. הספר יהודי ההר, שעוסק בחיים באזור ההררי של אוקראינה של ימנו, בתקופה של טרום מלחמת העולם הראשונה. השפעות התיעוש, התחבורה והרעיונות הסוציאליסטיים שהחלו לבצבץ באותם ימים באות לביטוי בסיפור שמבוסס
על ארועים ש גרין נחשף אליהם בנעוריו, מתוך קטעי עיתונים שנשמרו במשפחתו, סיפורים שעברו מדור לדור, וחוויותיו האישיות. לפני פרסום הספר ביידיש, פרסם גרין בעתונות מספר רב של יצירות ספרותייות בהן ביטא את רעיונות הסוציאליזם באמצעות דמויותיהם של תושבי העיירות במזרח גליציה: יהודים וגויים, בעלי מלאכה ובעלי ממון, פועלים קשי-יום, חסידים, מתנגדים ומשכילים.
הספר פורסם בוורשה בשנת 1938 וזכה לבקורות אוהדות. גרין נחשב לסופר מבטיח, והיה מוכר לקוראים בעקבות סיפור בהמשכים שפורסם בעיתון הוורשאי "היינט" במחצית השניה של שנות השלושים. ספר זה,  "האורגים מקולומיאה" פורסם בשנת 1942 ברוסיה, קייב וגם תרגומו יעלה בקרוב לאתר זה.

The world that passed away on the pages of Jewish community memorials and their use in research and commemoration projects

The article is devoted to the Jewish memorial books (Yizkor Books) created from 1943 onwards. The first part of it describes the relations between Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe, and above all in Poland, and the centres of Jewish emigration, mainly in the United States of America, Palestine (Eretz Israel) and other countries. In these centres fraternal organisations (Landsmanshaftn) of Jews who came from the same city, town and neighbourhood were created. Initially, these organisations made it possible to accept new emigrants, mainly family members and friends, to find them places to live, work, and provide with social assistance when needed. However, the Landsmanshaftn also made it possible to maintain social ties among the exiles from the same town and to cultivate the traditions, customs and specific atmosphere of the homeland. During wars and crises, it was often these aid organisations which supported communities from which they came from. However, because of the Holocaust, when the Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe ceased to exist, the Holocaust Survivors, together with their Landsmanshaftn, undertook the great work of commemorating their devastated communities in the pages of memorial books in order to preserve what could not be destroyed, the memory of their loved ones. The article describes the difficult process of collecting scraps of information, reports, memories, photographs, and names of the Holocaust victims. For several years, special editorial committees collected materials, edited them, and published such memorial books. Most of them were published from the 1950s to the 1990s. Memorial books have become a great repository of knowledge and tradition. They were written in Hebrew and Yiddish, but in recent years digitization projects have been launched and work has been undertaken to translate them into English. Some of them were also published in Polish. The translations let the scholars who do not speak either Hebrew nor Yiddish to study these books. Memorial books serve as monuments to destroyed Jewish communities, symbolic tombstones (matzevot), but also remind us of the destruction that was done and that these communities will exist forever as long as we keep the memory of them.

Open or closed? Polish-Jewish contacts as a category in classification of exemplary ghettos in Warthegau

In 1939 Żychlin and Krośniewice were two small, multiethnic towns inhabited mostly by Poles and Jews, but also by a small German minority and a few Russians. During the Nazi occupation  they were annexed to Third Reich and its new province Warthegau. Ghettos emerged in these cities quite early, in spring 1940. In march 1942 ghettos in both Żychlin and Krośniewice were liquidated and Jews from these towns perished in a death camp in Kulmhof.
This essay focuses on the question of typology of ghettos and makes use of the category of Polish-Jewish contacts in this respect. “Was a ghetto open or closed?” – is an often asked question. We need to ask additional ones to get a final answer: where was it located?, in which ways was the entry restictred?, who was guarding it?, was it enclosed with walls or barbed-wire fences? My argument ist that one should also ask if it was possible for Jews living in ghetto to contact with Poles.
Before the outbreak of World War II the main place of contact between Poles and Jews was a market, as their relations were strongly connected with socio-economic needs. After the war started and then after the emergence of the ghettos, those needs were still valid: Polish people needed products from Jewish craftsmen and a black market existed in both cities. With limited food supplies in the ghettos, Jews were seeking employment on the “Aryan” side not only for money, but also in return for something to eat. As persecutions towards Jews were worsening over time, it was getting harder to get in or outside of the ghetto. Reasons for which one sought a contact with Poles changed too: during the last period before transportations to a death camp, when information about annihiliation of Jews was being spread from town to town, getting outside of a ghetto and saving one's life required a help from Poles, which was not always given.
By examining a nature and dynamics of Polish-Jewish relations we can learn how “effective” Nazi restrictions were. In cases of both Żychlin and Krośniewice one may came to a conclusion that although in the beginning those ghettos can be considered open, it didn't stay this way and a process of “closing” them was an ongoing one.

The Image of a Jewish Town in the Pre-War Writings of Adolf Rudnicki

The article constitutes an attempt at tracing the presence of Jewishness in the pre-war writings of Adolf Rudnicki. It does so through the analysis of the places in which Rudnicki sets his stories, tracing the changes in the manner in which Rudnicki describes the shtetlekh. Initially described by the author as a dirty, backwards, insular, unfriendly space (The Death of the Operator), those spaces become synonymous with a contagious disease, which infects the bodies of the characters and gradually destroys them from within (Rats). His writings from the second half of the 1930s come with a change of perspective, while the Jewish towns become more fascinating and exotically seductive. They become the bastions of traditional, orthodox Jewish faith, which should be safeguarded from oblivion (Summer). Moreover, the article attempts to define the shtetl as a concept as well as reconstruct the evolution of the shtetl motif in Polish literature, particularly in its new incarnation which appeared in the interwar period.

Dvora Baron is recognized as the first Modern Hebrew woman writer. Nevertheless, she is largely unknown in German-speaking countries. A Tel Aviv publisher included her short story Shavririm in a collection of the same name in 1949. Yet, this story did not appear in German until 40 years later, titled Lichtschimmer, translated by Mirjam Pressler. No German commentary or analysis of this short story exists. This lack of interest is surprising, given that current fiction from Hebrew women writers appears in German immediately after publication in Hebrew, and is widely discussed. Has this writer nothing to say to us? What is the message of Shavririm? Is it a short story of inferior quality? Alternatively, is Lichtschimmer a bad translation? In this article, I discuss Baron's biography and elucidate her historical and cultural background. I explain what she has in common with and what differentiates her from contemporaneous male Yiddish and Hebrew writers. To demonstrate the quality of the story and the translation, I analyze Shavririm and Lichtschimmer. Thus, I also show the challenges of translating her texts. The main goal is to identify Baron's possible messages to the original Hebrew-speaking, but also to today's German-speaking readers.

Celem niniejszego tekstu jest porównanie dwóch typów źródeł: gąbińskiej yizkor book (księga pamięci) i relacji zbieranych przez Oneg Szabat , a zwłaszcza informacji, jakich dostarczają one na temat losów ludności żydowskiej w Gąbinie od wybuchu II wojny światowej do wiosny 1940 r. Czas ten został bowiem omówiony w obydwu rodzajach źródeł (relacje, w przeciwieństwie do yizkor book, nie dotyczą całego okresu Holokaustu). Gąbin to jedno ze sztetli na Mazowszu zachodnim, które w październiku 1939 r. znalazło się w granicach nowo utworzonego niemieckiego Okręgu Poznań, czyli późniejszego Kraju Warty.

My research explores comparatively the case of two late nineteenth century intellectuals of Jewish origin born in cities located at the periphery of Romanian Kingdom, and of Austria-Hungary. Recent scholarship has dealt amply with these two personalities, on the account of their tragic lives (Blecher would die very young, of a rare illness, his intellectual pursuits being cut short, whereas Schulz would be killed by the Nazis in his home town, Drohobych), and, particularly, on the modernist stances of their literary and artistic inputs.
    In pure modernist fashion, the novels and short stories of Blecher and Schulz deal with the world of their birthplaces from a deeply subjective vantage point, marked by extravagant imagination, and loaded with symbols. The employed language is very personal, filled with local peculiarities and references, thus making the translation from Romanian and Polish a difficult enterprise, or at least, second-hand. Hardly any of the specialists working on Blecher or Schulz failed to notice the resemblance with Kafka and his well-known themes.
    Provided that the legacy of these two writers seems to be limited to their circumstantial biographies to some extent, and to their literary mastery, my aim in the present research is to go `against the grain` in underlying the importance of the markers of reality (people, places, associated names, events) in a type of literature, which is essentially considered as escaping reality. 
    Concretely, from a social-historical perspective, I am trying to re-construct the features of the border towns where Blecher and Schulz spent years of their lives, correlating elements of their identity, (conspicuously, their Jewish identity) with the environment. Moreover, I am emphasizing the interplay existing between an archaic Jewish society (the towns Blecher and Schulz were coming from were clusters of Hasidic Judaism) and an emancipated Jewish identity, by investigating how old religious and communitarian themes were reshaped to fit the contemporary outlook of the citizens of states found at the periphery of modernity.

The neglected-but-popular Yiddish humorist Tashrak (penname of Yisroel-Yoysef Zevin) offers not just an opportunity to discover understudied aspects of the Jewish urban experience and modern Yiddish culture, but also allows us to tap into a less refined level of beliefs, behavior, judgments and attitudes of Yiddish-speaking Jews in America. Tashrak wittily conveyed to his readers a comforting image of the New World: New York City was just an enlarged shtetl, where traditionalists and assimilationists, radicals and nationalists, employers and employees, and the rich and poor clashed over a host of issues, while encountering a number of stereotypical non-Jews. In his representation of internal Jewish divisions and disputes, relations with non-Jews, and the trials of modernity and assimilation, Tashrak followed, to some extent, the literary paths of earlier Yiddish and Hebrew writers. Yet critics often frowned upon  his politics as either conservative or apolitical, and considered his literary style as lowbrow, thus they disregarded his work altogether, or referred to it as worthless.

This article discusses an ambivalent portrayal of the shtetl presented in the prose works of five Yiddish writers who were creatively active in the communist Poland: Leyb Olitsky, The theme of the shtetl is of a particular importance in Yiddish literature of that time since it makes it possible to realize how difficult Yiddish writers' situation was under communism in the post-Holocaust era. The literary image of shtetl in their prose works is conditioned by two contrasting perspectives: ideological critique and a sense of loss. In comparison to the classic texts there is a substantial shift – the continuity of the shtetl life with the cycle of the holy history of the

The article analyses the religious topography of Słuck (today, Sluck in Belarus). Słuck was an important hub of Orthodoxy and Protestantism in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; moreover, 38 per cent of its population was Jewish. Detailed analysis of legal documents and urban inventories showed that there were areas within the town bounds which were reserved for the Christian communities active there. The spatial balance was upset in the former half of the eighteenth century, with Catholic orders brought into the town. The Jews were the only group that was legally barred from choosing a place to reside. The municipal authorities endeavoured to restrict the Jewish settlement to one street. Members of Jewish fi nancial elite were the only ones to succeed in crossing the legal boundaries and settle down at the 'Christian' streets of Słuck.

First published: Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung (ZfO), 64 (2015), 4 Dieser Beitrag kann vom Nutzer zu eigenen nicht-kommerziellen Zwecken heruntergeladen und/oder ausgedruckt werden. Darüber hinaus gehende Nutzungen sind ohne weitere Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber nur im Rahmen der gesetzlichen Schrankenbestimmungen ( § § 44a-63a UrhG) zulässig. Besprechungen und Anzeigen Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 64 (2015) H. 4 580 Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern: The Golden Age Shtetl. A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe. Princeton Univ. Press. Princeton u.a. 2014. 431 S., Ill. ISBN 978-0-691-16074-0 ($ 29.95.) Weit über die Hälfte aller Juden und Jüdinnen Osteuropas lebte vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg in Shtetls. Lange Zeit vernachlässigte die Geschichtsforschung jedoch diesen besonderen Religions-, Kultur-, Wirtschafts-und Sozialraum. Die große westwärts gerichtete Migrationsbewegung Ende des 19. Jh. führte zum unaufhaltsamen Ende dieser Siedlungsform und damit auch zum Ende einer distinkten Kultur, die fortan fast nur noch in Erinnerungen weiterlebte. Nach der Shoa entwickelte sich das Shtetl zu einem eigentlichen Mythos. Literarische Darstellungen des 19. Jh., populäre Filme wie Fiddler on the Roof (1964) (eine Adaption von Scholem Alejchems Roman Tewje der Milchmann) und die Bilder Marc Chagalls prägten fortan die Vorstellungen des Shtetls als ein Ort der Frömmigkeit und Rechtschaffenheit, aber auch der Armseligkeit und des Schmutzes.

Nel cortile fondato da reb Zelmele si susseguono le generazioni dei suoi discendenti, gli Zelmenyani. Sarti, orologiai, Luftmenschen solo apparentemente appartengono al “solito” shtetl, perché devono fare i conti con la più grande rivoluzione mai avvenuta (quella d'Ottobre) e con la realizzazione del comunismo. Mentre i “vecchi” sono tenacemente attaccati alle loro tradizioni, i giovani aderiscono entusiasticamente ma acriticamente al nuovo credo. Da questo contrasto nascono una serie di avventure e situazioni tragicomiche assolutamente nuove e originali all’interno della produzione in lingua yiddish del XX secolo.