Contrary to the common notion that news regarding the unfolding Holocaust was unavailable or unreliable, news from Europe was often communicated to North American Poles through the Polish-language press. This work engages with the origins debate and demonstrates that the Polish-language press covered seminal issues during the interwar years, the war, and the Holocaust extensively on their front and main story pages, and were extremely responsive, professional, and vocal in their journalism. From Polish-Jewish relations, to the cause of the Second World War and subsequently the development of genocide-related policy, North American Poles, had a different perspective from mainstream society on the causes and effects of what was happening. New research for this book examines attitudes toward Jews prior to and during the Holocaust, and how information on such attitudes was disseminated. It utilizes selected Polish newspapers of the period 1926-1945, predominantly the Republika-Gornik, as well as survivor testimony.

Zimmerman examines the attitude and behavior of the Polish Underground towards the Jews during the Holocaust.

When reality becomes fantastic, what literary effects will render it credible or comprehensible? To respond meaningfully to the surreality of the Holocaust, writers must produce works of moral and emotional complexity. One way they have achieved this is through elements of fantasy. Covering a range of theoretical perspectives, this collection of essays explores the use of fantastic story-telling in Holocaust literature and film. Writers such as Jane Yolen and Art Spiegelman are discussed, as well as the sci-fi television series V (1983), Stephen King's novella Apt Pupil (1982), Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and Martin Scorsese's dark thriller Shutter Island (2010).

The story of the enigmatic Jozef Pilsudski, the founding father of modern Poland: a brilliant military leader and high-minded statesman who betrayed his own democratic vision by seizing power in a military coup. In the story of modern Poland, no one stands taller than Jozef Pilsudski. From the age of sixteen he devoted his life to reestablishing the Polish state that had ceased to exist in 1795. Ahead of World War I, he created a clandestine military corps to fight Russia, which held most Polish territory. After the war, his dream of an independent Poland realized, he took the helm of its newly democratic political order. When he died in 1935, he was buried alongside Polish kings. Yet Pilsudski was a complicated figure. Passionately devoted to the idea of democracy, he ceded power on constitutional terms, only to retake it a few years later in a coup when he believed his opponents aimed to dismantle the democratic system. Joshua Zimmerman’s authoritative biography examines a national hero in the thick of a changing Europe, and the legacy that still divides supporters and detractors. The Poland that Pilsudski envisioned was modern, democratic, and pluralistic. Domestically, he championed equality for Jews. Internationally, he positioned Poland as a bulwark against Bolshevism. But in 1926 he seized power violently, then ruled as a strongman for nearly a decade, imprisoning opponents and eroding legislative power. In Zimmerman’s telling, Pilsudski’s faith in the young democracy was shattered after its first elected president was assassinated. Unnerved by Poles brutally turning on one another, the father of the nation came to doubt his fellow citizens’ democratic commitments and thereby betrayed his own. It is a legacy that dogs today’s Poland, caught on the tortured edge between self-government and authoritarianism.

Based on extensive range of Polish, British, German, Jewish and Ukranian primary and secondary sources, this work provides an objective appraisal of the inter-war period. Peter Stachura demonstrates how the Republic overcame giant obstacles at home and abroad to achieve consolidation as an independent state in the early 1920s, made relative economic progress, created a coherent social order, produced an outstanding cultural scene, advanced educational opportunity, and adopted constructive and even-handed policies towards its ethnic minorities. Without denying the defeats suffered by the Republic, Peter Stachura demonstrates that the fate of Poland after 1945, with the imposition of an unwanted, Soviet-dominated Communist system, was thoroughly undeserved.

YIVO, founded in 1925 in Wilno (Vilnius), is a center for scholarship on East European Jewish history, language, and culture. During the 1920s and early 1930s a network of YIVO affiliates was established across Europe and the Americas including one in New York, which became the institute's new home when YIVO was reestablished in 1940 by members of its board who had escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe. This is the first repository-level finding aid to the archives (over 1,400 collections) of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. It includes a brief history of the institute and archives, descriptive entries on each collection, a detailed index of key words and subject headings, and information on the archive's basic services.

This landmark collection of primary sources provides unique first-hand insights into the persecution and murder of the Jews of Europe under Nazi rule. The documents, all translated from the language of the original source, range from the police orders and administrative decrees issued by the Nazi apparatus across Germany and occupied Europe to the diaries and letters of Jewish men, women, and children facing discrimination, impoverishment, violent assaults, incarceration, deportation, and death. The observations and reactions of bystanders not directly involved in the crimes – some shocked, some indifferent, some approving - also come across vividly. Substantial introductions, scholarly footnotes, and an extensive thematic index help guide the reader through the rich documentary material and add to the value of the series as a resource for teaching and learning about the Second World War and the Holocaust. Series edited on behalf of the German Federal Archives, the Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin, and the Chair for Modern History at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. In cooperation with Yad Vashem. Explore the documents! Search in categories like "Nuremberg Laws 1938", "Eviction and Disposession" or "November Pogroms 1938" to read and download documents from the published PMJ volumes for free. See also the corresponding German series Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945. For more information on the edition, please visit the project website. Follow us on Twitter @PMJ_documents.