Precarious Muse: Holocaust Studies and Polish Jewish Studies

Abstract

“ W H AT W E N E E D is a history of the Jewish people during the period of Nazi rule, in which the central role is to be played by the Jewish People, not only as the victim of a tragedy, but also as the bearer of a communal existence with all the manifold and numerous aspects involved,” argued in 1959 historian and Holocaust survivor Philip Friedman.1 With his background as a scholar interested in the social and economic history of the Jews in Polish lands, emancipation, and local history, he now advocated for a “Judeocentric” study of the Holocaust.2 His approach echoed the practices of scholars and community activists who, already during the Holocaust, had strug gled to document the individual, familial, and communal responses to the German genocidal proj ect as part of the modern Jewish experience.3 After the war, this mission was reinstated and carried forward by survivorscholars such as Friedman, Szymon Datner, Rachela Auerbach, Michał Borwicz, and others. Although the Jewish experience was at the center of their attention, they sought to contextualize it with questions about the role of the local population, the attitudes of neighbors, and the scope of collaboration and assistance.4 Polish Jewish Holocaust scholars continued these efforts under the umbrella of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and on the pages of its journals, in Polish and in Yiddish. This was a vision that— for a limited audience in Poland and