Cursed : : A Social Portrait of the Kielce Pogrom / / Joanna Tokarska-Bakir.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Tokarska-Bakir, Joanna,
• MitwirkendeR: Wampuszyc, Ewa,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (592 p.) :; 50 b&w halftones

In Cursed, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir investigates the Kielce Pogrom of 4th July, 1946, a milestone in the periodization of the Jewish diaspora. This massacre led Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust to realize that there was nothing left for them in post-war Poland. Panic-stricken, they fled to the West in droves. The Kielce Pogrom remains a negative reference point in the Polish historical narrative, representing a lack of recognition of antisemitism as a deep-rooted, ubiquitous element of Polish identity. Tokarska-Bakir takes a fresh look at both predicaments, weighing the evidence and conflicting arguments to revise the perception of Poland as a country groaning under the Soviet boot that did not prevent the spread of antisemitism but instead attempted to turn a blind eye to it.The resulting analysis is filled with revelations from the archives, previously classified sources of the communist Ministry of Public Security, the Citizens' Militia, and the Polish Army, and oral testimonies by Jewish survivors. Drawing on archival research pertaining to every single Kielce militiaman and functionary of the Office of Public Security whose details were possible to find, Tokarska-Bakir examines the dominant hypotheses about the Kielce Pogrom, step by step. Cursed reveals a vivid portrait of society by detailing the wartime pasts of the militia and army as murderers of Jews and dispelling the comfortable generalization about Polish history being black and white. The result is an engaging narrative presented with scholarly exactitude revealing the fate of people whose descendants are today scattered across several continents.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS -- PART I Movement -- CHAPTER 1 Voices -- CHAPTER 2 Physical Evidence -- CHAPTER 3 Henio and Others -- PART II Framing -- CHAPTER 4 The Authorities -- CHAPTER 5 The People’s Authorities and the Jews -- CHAPTER 6 Rashōmon -- CHAPTER 7 Dog Days -- CHAPTER 8 A Moveable Feast -- CHAPTER 9 The Custodians of Freedom Square -- CHAPTER 10 Trains -- PART III Tremors -- CHAPTER 11 The Office of Public Security (UB) -- CHAPTER 12 The Kielce Police (MO) -- CHAPTER 13 Provincial Governor Wiślicz-Iwańczyk and His People -- CHAPTER 14 The Military Men -- CHAPTER 15 The Boogeyman -- ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTATIONS USED IN THE APPENDIXES -- APPENDIX A List of Victims -- APPENDIX B Kielce Survivors and Witnesses -- SOURCE LIST (SL) -- INDEX OF NAMES