What! Still Alive?!: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Israel Remember Homecoming

by Monika Rice

Overview

"What! Still Alive?!" offers a powerful and deeply affecting examination of the complex memories of Jewish survivors returning to their homes in Poland after the Holocaust. These survivors left unparalleled testimonies of their first impressions with the Jewish historical commissions from 1944 to 1950.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815635536
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	11/02/2017
Series:	Modern Jewish History
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Monika Rice teaches courses on the Holocaust, Jewish-Christian relations, and women's spirituality at Seton Hall University, as well as Gratz College. She has received a number of prestigious fellowships and grants, and published articles, book chapters, and reviews in edited volumes and academic journals. Her research focuses on the inner lives of Polish Jews.

Interviews

Rice's book is an extremely moving,well-written, path-breaking look at the fate of Polish Jews who survived the attempted Nazi genocide.

Editorial Reviews

A fascinating, often very moving study of how Jewish Holocaust survivors remembered coming home at war's end to find only traces of annihilated Jewish communities. Historian Rice focuses on how Jewish and Israeli popular historical memory was formed through the process of recollection in thousands of written survivor testimonies collected in Poland and Israel in the immediate aftermath of the German defeat, the rise of a communist Poland, and the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel. . . . Rice explores the processes of memory of traumatic events among survivors. Very highly recommended.

Choice

A serious, well-done study which makes an important contribution to the field of Holocaust studies. Even a bigger merit lies in the contribution it makes to the theoretical considerations of the extent to which the collective consciousness and the personal narrative affect, shape, and mold each other, and how the aspects of time and place impact the ways we are expected to remember.

Slavic Review

This carefully researched analytical study deserves the attention of scholars interested in the sensitive topic of memory and the forces impinging on its formation within the individual and among the collective. Its great merit lies in its critical focus and its sensitivity to the ways in which displacement affected the contours of memory as the traumatized struggled to give voice to a tragedy that pierced their hearts and despoiled the place they once knew as home.

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

A uniquely readable, remarkably affecting, and truly original text that is a must read for anyone interested in the history of Holocaust survivors, Polish-Jewish relations, and memory studies. It is certainly one of the best books on the subject in recent years.

AJS Review

Rice has delved deeply into the complex processes that shape human recollection over time. Her research sheds important light on how social experience and political context contribute to the shaping of memory.

David Engel

A fascinating, often very moving study of how Jewish Holocaust survivors remembered coming home at war's end to find only traces of annihilated Jewish communities. Historian Rice focuses on how Jewish and Israeli popular historical memory was formed through the process of recollection in thousands of written survivor testimonies collected in Poland and Israel in the immediate aftermath of the German defeat, the rise of a communist Poland, and the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel. . . . Rice explores the processes of memory of traumatic events among survivors. Very highly recommended.-- "Choice"

A serious, well-done study which makes an important contribution to the field of Holocaust studies. Even a bigger merit lies in the contribution it makes to the theoretical considerations of the extent to which the collective consciousness and the personal narrative affect, shape, and mold each other, and how the aspects of time and place impact the ways we are expected to remember.-- "Slavic Review"

A uniquely readable, remarkably affecting, and truly original text that is a must read for anyone interested in the history of Holocaust survivors, Polish-Jewish relations, and memory studies. It is certainly one of the best books on the subject in recent years.-- "AJS Review"

Rice has delved deeply into the complex processes that shape human recollection over time. Her research sheds important light on how social experience and political context contribute to the shaping of memory.-- "David Engel, Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies, New York University"

This carefully researched analytical study deserves the attention of scholars interested in the sensitive topic of memory and the forces impinging on its formation within the individual and among the collective. Its great merit lies in its critical focus and its sensitivity to the ways in which displacement affected the contours of memory as the traumatized struggled to give voice to a tragedy that pierced their hearts and despoiled the place they once knew as home.-- "Holocaust and Genocide Studies"

From the Publisher

A serious, well-done study which makes an important contribution to the field of Holocaust studies. Even a bigger merit lies in the contribution it makes to the theoretical considerations of the extent to which the collective consciousness and the personal narrative affect, shape, and mold each other, and how the aspects of time and place impact the ways we are expected to remember.

Slavic Review Rachel Feldhay Brenner

Monika Rice investigates a time period that till now has drawn little attention. Making it the focus of an entire book has, as far as this reviewer knows, never been done. Thankfully, Rice does so, conscientiously documenting that which surely needs to be part of the Holocaust record.

Martyrdom & Resistance - Diane Cypkin

Rice's original work deals with the trauma and memory of Polish Jewish survivors and engages with the scholarly literature pertaining to Polish-Jewish relations during and after the Holocaust. In the context of work that has already been published, this work raises questions that have not yet been explored.thought-provoking.

Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History at Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro College - Natalia Aleksiun

A fascinating, often very moving study of how Jewish Holocaust survivors remembered coming home at war's end to find only traces of annihilated Jewish communities. Historian Rice (Seton Hall Univ.) focuses on how Jewish and Israeli popular historical memory was formed through the process of recollection in thousands of written survivor testimonies collected in Poland and Israel in the immediate aftermath of the German defeat, the rise of a communist Poland, and the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel....Rice explores the processes of memory of traumatic events among survivors. Very highly recommended.

CHOICE - R. M. Shapiro

Monika Rice has written a well-researched and thoughtful book, a real contribution to Holocaust studies. Highly recommended.

Princeton University - Jan T. Gross

This extremely moving and path-breaking work seeks to investigate the creation of the Jewish collective memory of the Holocaust and of the fate of those in Poland who survived the attempted Nazi genocide of the Jews.. the author's understanding of and empathy with the survivors in the tragic dilemmas they faced shines through..a remarkable and sophisticated work.

author of Abraham Lewin's A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, winner of the Joseph and Edith Sunlight Literary - Antony Polonsky