Cultural translation and knowledge transfer on alternative routes of escape from Nazi Terror

Abstract

efforts by Polish historians to emancipate from Habsburg historiography in the 19 century, and with the establishment of state historiography from the 1920s. Another question could be whether Ukrainian historians could have been strategic allies in the 1900s, when Mykhailo Hrushevsky challenged Polish dominance at L’viv University, or after 1918, as Ukrainian historians fought against their marginalization in Polish academia. Even if the answer would most likely be negative (examples of momentary cooperation Aleksiun mentions seem to confirm the rule, e.g., on p. 134), questions like this would tell us much about the possibilities of alliance-building between marginalized academic groups in nationalizing landscapes. Yet, the history of Ukrainian historiography in Poland is similarly underexplored (although it has received more attention in recent years). This should not in any way lessen the importance of Aleksiun’s book, but rather point toward possible extensions into an integrated history of Central European historians or scholarship in general. Aleksiun’s history is a very important step in this direction, going beyond descriptions of parallel histories. Its strength is exactly where it deals with the richness of Jewish history in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew, bringing to life a largely forgotten community. It also shows that the richness of this community and especially its place outside of academia is partially caused by the lack of possibilities to get academic jobs, thus telling a story which confirms mechanisms also present in Vienna and Berlin around 1900. Acribic and yet not overwhelming with detail, it is a must-read both for those interested in the Jewish history of Central Europe and historians of scholarship from and of the region.