Assimilated Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940-1943

by Katarzyna Person

Overview

Jews in Nazi-occupied Warsaw during the 1940s were under increasing threat as they were stripped of their rights and forced to live in a guarded ghetto away from the non-Jewish Polish population. Within the ghettos, a small but distinct group existed: the assimilated, acculturated, and baptized Jews. Unwilling to integrate into the Jewish community and unable to merge with the Polish one, they formed a group of their own, remaining in a state of suspension throughout the interwar period. In 1940, with the closure of the Jewish residential quarter in Warsaw, their identity was chosen for them.

Person looks at what it meant for assimilated Jews to leave their prewar neighborhoods, understood as both a physical environment and a mixed Polish Jewish cultural community, and to enter a new, Jewish neighborhood. She reveals the diversity of this group and how its members’ identity shaped their involvement in and contribution to ghetto life. In the first English-language study of this small but influential group, Person illuminates the important role of the acculturated and assimilated Jews in the history and memory of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815652458
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2014
Series:	Modern Jewish History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	550 KB

About the Author

Katarzyna Person is a researcher at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Timeline xi

1 Introduction 1

2 In the Warsaw Ghetto 24

3 The Judenrat, Self-Help, and the Fight for the Soul of the Ghetto 58

4 Polish-Language Cultural Life in the Warsaw Ghetto 100

5 Assimilated Inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto after the Gross Aktion 134

6 Holocaust Survivors in Post-War Poland: Conclusion 155

Abbreviations 167

Notes 169

Glossary 207

Bibliography 213

Index 231

What People are Saying About This

New York Journal of Books

Assimilated Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is an excellent analysis of assimilated groups of Polish Jews who were forced to live together in the Warsaw ghetto from 1940—1943 with all other types of Jews.

Editorial Reviews

An excellent analysis of assimilated groups of Polish Jews who were forced to live together in the Warsaw ghetto from 1940-1943 with all other types of Jews.

New York Journal of Books

Person, in this informative, readable, and original work, adds to our understanding of the complexity of the social reality of Warsaw ghetto life and death.

Jewish Book World

Prewar Poland witnessed the secularization of thousands, including Jews who assimilated, intermarried, or converted to Christianity, as well as those of Jewish descent. In 1940 all were lumped together under Nazi racial laws and forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. Based on diaries, memoirs, and interviews, the author describes the tragedy of those adrift in two worlds.

Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews

A very important study of the complex nature of those groups of persons who were forced to live (and die) in the Warsaw Ghetto and the history of the fate of European Jews. Clear, readable, original and sound, highly recommended.

SirReadaLot.org - Peter Dembowski

Assimilated Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is an excellent analysis of assimilated groups of Polish Jews who were forced to live together in the Warsaw ghetto from 1940-1943 with all other types of Jews.

New York Journal of Books - Charles S. Weinblatt

Prewar Poland witnessed the secularization of thousands, including Jews who assimilated,
intermarried, or converted to Christianity, as well as those of Jewish descent. In 1940 all were lumped together under Nazi racial laws and forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. Based on diaries,
memoirs, and interviews, the author describes the tragedy of those adrift in two worlds.

Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews - Hallie Cantor

Person, in this informative, readable, and original work, adds to our understanding of the complexity of the social reality of Warsaw ghetto life and death.

Jewish Book World - Michael N. Dobkowski