Born in Odessa, V. Z. Jabotinsky (1880–1940) was one of the most colourful and controversial Zionist activists of the inter-war period. Fluent in half a dozen languages, he was first of all a man of letters. From a career in journalism he moved on to become a celebrated translator as well as a poet and novelist. In 1903 Jabotinsky brought his very considerable literary and rhetorical skills into the camp of Russian Zionism, and in the tumultuous period of 1903–6 he took an active leading role in that movement. He then moved onto the larger stage of Zionist politics in both Europe and the Middle East, delineating and energetically championing an activist and confrontational Zionist ideology. In 1935, after a decade of criticizing the established leadership and its policy orientations, Jabotinsky broke with the World Zionist Organization to found the New Zionist Organization in order to appeal directly to the Jewish masses and to pursue an independent Zionist agenda in international affairs.

In this monograph Israel Kleiner focuses our attention on Jabotinsky's views of Ukrainian nationalism both in the period before the First World War and in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution and the ensuing civil war. Kleiner examines Jabotinsky's writings and actions at three critical moments: in 1911–14, when Ukrainians were celebrating the life and work of the Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko; in September 1921, when Jabotinsky reached an agreement with Maksym Slavinsky, a representative of Symon Petlyura's Ukrainian People's Republic, to create a Jewish police force in Ukraine to protect the community against possible assaults should there be renewed hostilities between Ukrainian and Bolshevik forces; and in 1926, when Shalom Schwartzbard was placed on trial for the assassination of Petlyura, who was widely blamed by Jews for the wave of pogroms suffered by Jewish communities in Ukraine during the civil war.

After establishing Jabotinsky's general views on nationalism and cultural identity, Kleiner examines closely what he identifies as the courageous positions adopted by Jabotinsky in these three instances. In Kleiner's view, Jabotinsky's support for Ukrainian nationalism was fully consistent with his fierce opposition to Jewish cultural assimilation. Jabotinsky not only condemned the Polish policies of active Polonization in Austrian Galicia, but also rejected tsarism's efforts to Russify the ethnic communities of the western borderlands of the empire.

The Editors

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry

Dear Sirs,

In Polin volume 13 Joanna Rostropowicz Clark published an article, ‘Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński: A Poet-Hero’. The theses of the article and the material used to exemplify them are well known and came from my work on Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński. I published them in Aneks (London), volume 22 (1979), and discussed them at more length in my Szkło bolesne, obraz dni (Uppsala, 1991). I dealt there with the taboo on the discussion of the Jewish origins of the most outstanding poet of the Polish underground and, in particular, his feelings of solidarity with the murdered Jews.

It is on these topics that Joanna Rostropowicz Clark has written. I should have been happy that she has taken up this theme and made use of my work, but I am not, since she failed to provide the source of her knowledge and quotations. It is difficult to imagine that without my work Ms Rostropowicz Clark would have turned her attention to the Jewish motifs in Baczyński's work. Moreover, her article does not add anything significant to what I had already set out.

The author had already written on this subject in Teksty drugie (Warsaw), when she also failed to mention my name. I pointed this out to her. She wrote that she had been in the wrong, that she regretted this, and that she would correct this in the reprint. As is evident from the present case, she has not done so.

My work on Baczyński was the product of many years’ work, and its publication encountered strong resistance from people who were important in the Polish opposition of those days, who could not swallow the idea that the poet of the underground should have shown solidarity with the murdered Jews. It has been the subject of unrestrained attacks, which have continued until today. For this reason, the appropriation of the results of my work is clearly something that I resent.

The Editors

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry

Dear Sirs,

In volume 13 of Polin, on the Holocaust and its aftermath, you published a series of book reviews by Alina Cała, under the title ‘Analyses of World Antisemitism Published between 1991 and 1997’. In her article Dr Cała included two paragraphs about Antisemitism Worldwide 1994, published by Tel Aviv University (the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism). These outrageous passages raise serious doubts not only about Dr Cała's professionalism but also about her integrity as a scholar.

The author focused in her review on the chapter about Poland, from which she concluded that the whole book was ‘superficial, and contains … errors and stereotypical oversimplifications’. Moreover, in the first paragraph she charged that the information in Antisemitism Worldwide was derived from a similar report published by the Institute of Jewish Affairs (IJA). This accusation is not supported by any evidence whatsoever, and it is unclear why the editor agreed to publish such passages, which defame serious scholars.

Since the end of 1991 the Stephen Roth Institute has monitored antisemitic manifestations and the activities of extremist movements worldwide, and operated a unique computerized database based on information collected from throughout the world. The chapters in Antisemitism Worldwide are based on this information, and also include special reports written by experts from various countries. In 1994 the part on eastern Europe was written by Professor Raphael Vago, a distinguished scholar known for his professionalism and integrity.

Dr Cała did not inform her readers that Antisemitism Worldwide 1994 was not a one-time publication, but the first volume of a yearly review. It has continued to appear years after the IJA ceased updating its review annually. Each yearly edition of Antisemitism Worldwide contains updated information on the chapters reviewed in the previous years. Had Dr Cała been a serious and unbiased scholar, she would have reviewed the 1997 volume, instead of the first one (her article reviewed publications appearing from 1994 to 1997). It is uncommon, to say the least, to publish a review on a book that appeared several years previously when new editions have appeared since.

This volume consists of three short monographs by Polish graduate students in the early stages of their professional development. Two were originally written as MA theses: one by Maciej Pisarski on Jewish emigration from Poland from 1945 to 1951, and the other by Albert Stankowski on Jewish emigration from western Pomerania from 1945 to 1960. The third, by August Grabski, on the organization of Jewish religious life in Poland during the communist and (primarily) post-communist eras, originated as a seminar paper.

On the whole, postgraduate writing of this type, if it is published at all, appears in limited-circulation journals for an audience of academics. The fact that these studies were published in book form, especially in paperback with the aid of a subsidy from the Polish Ministry of Culture, offers further testimony of the keen interest in the history of Jews in Poland evident among the Polish public in recent years. The conviction appears to be growing, as Jerzy Tomaszewski puts it in his introduction to the volume, that ‘it is difficult to understand Polish culture without knowledge of Jewish culture’ (p. 10). Those in Poland seeking to acquire such knowledge, however, have been limited by a dearth of reliable literature on the subject in the Polish language. According to Tomaszewski, ‘until recently studies on the history and culture of the Jews in Poland after 1944 have been especially neglected’ (p. 8). That neglect provides the ostensible justification for publishing this collection of papers in their present form.

Such a rationale prompts the question: precisely what sort of knowledge of the history and culture of Jews in Poland after 1944 is needed to raise the level of understanding of Polish culture? A brief book review is not the place to undertake a general discussion of this issue, but the point has to be made, unfortunately, that whatever sort of knowledge may be required, the studies in the present volume seem unlikely to provide it.

It is not that they fail to bring to light much hitherto unknown data. Indeed, all three researchers have examined formerly inaccessible or unexploited archives and report extensively on their contents.

IN the vast, charged array of post-Holocaust representations of pre-war Jewish life in eastern Europe, photographs seem to hold out a distinct promise of stability. Works of mechanical reproduction, they appear to offer an actuality that could rectify what personal recollections, communal lore, published memoirs, literary works, artistic renderings, songs, dramas, and even historical writings may have ‘manipulated’ or even ‘distorted’. But, as scholars of photography have discussed at great length, the verisimilitude of photography proves to be a false friend, as deceptive as it is engaging. Like any other art form, photography has its conventions, and the meaning of photographs is as contingent as that of any other works of art—perhaps even more so, in that photographs demand some kind of commentary or narration, title or inventory label, in order to be ‘read’.

No more telling illustration of this larger issue exists than the post-Holocaust presentation—in publications, films, or exhibitions—of photographs depicting east European Jews in the decades before their annihilation at the hands of Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Indeed, the post-war relationship with these photographs is rife with contradictory impulses: though highly selective and fragmentary by their very nature, they are prized as reanimating an entire ‘lost world’; routine, quotidian images now often loom large as archetypal. Frequently offering glimpses of east European Jewish life as seen from without, these photographs are approached as points of entry into these Jews’ inner life. Documents of actuality, they can—and now, almost inevitably, do—acquire mythic meanings. However, these contradictions do not compromise the value of these pre-war photographs and their post-war re-presentations. Rather, the contradictions provide a guide to understanding the larger cultural agendas at work in the many projects of remembrance that make use of these images.

In the century before the Second World War photography came to play an increasingly prominent role in representing east European Jews, both to themselves and to others. While the preponderance of photographs of this community were ones they either commissioned from local studio photographers or took themselves, there were also a wide variety taken by photographers from outside their communities. Especially important are the work of various professional photographers, both Jews and non-Jews, who took pictures as photo-journalists; as documentarians working for philanthropies, political parties, and other organizations; as government employees (taking photographs for identity cards, school records, etc.); or to provide images published on postcards.

Jewish literature is a fascinating phenomenon. It has developed as three branches of one tree: in Hebrew, in the Jewish languages of the Diaspora (mainly Yiddish), and in the national languages of the countries where Jews lived. No wonder that it is often difficult to grasp cross-references and connections between various works. To understand Jewish literature in all its complexity one should be able to read Hebrew, Yiddish, and at least a dozen European languages. Of course, one should not only have a thorough knowledge of the Jewish culture and tradition but also of the traditions and the ways of life of other nations. Not surprisingly, the culture of the people among whom the Jews of the Diaspora have lived has influenced Jewish authors, often very profoundly.

Among winners of the Nobel Prize for literature two wrote in Jewish languages: Samuel Joseph Agnon, who wrote in Hebrew and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1966, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, who wrote in Yiddish and received the award in 1978. But many other Jewish winners of the prize wrote in national languages; for example, Henri Louis Bergson (French, 1927), Nelly Sachs (German, 1966), Saul Bellow (English, 1976), Elias Canetti (German, 1981), Yosif Brodski (Russian, 1987), and Nadine Gordimer (English, 1991).

To understand them better, to grasp the roots and connections between various works and writers, one needs a broad overview of the full phenomenon. This is the idea behind the series Jewish Writing in the Contemporary World, which aims at presenting authors and their works, as well as the influences and historical events that shaped them in a particular homeland.

Austrian Jews and Austrian Jewish writing has always been an intriguing subject. The once powerful country in the heart of Europe has attracted attention with its tolerance and multiculturalism dating back to the period of the empire and with the charm of Vienna, the unquestionable cultural capital of the region throughout the centuries; but also with its many difficult political problems. The Jewish community in Austria can be traced back to the ninth century. Its history is tragically similar to that of many others in Europe, with a series of immigrations and expulsions, such as those in 1421 and 1670. In 1782 Emperor Joseph II issued his Edict of Tolerance, which revoked many anti-Jewish laws, but on the other hand promoted complete assimilation.

FROM about the middle of the nineteenth century Jewish life in the Polish lands began to undergo an extraordinary transformation that accelerated during the latter part of the century and the first decades of the twentieth. Our journal has examined many aspects of the Jewish engagement with modernity: the creation of new Jewish demographic centres in the largest Polish cities; the development of Jewish political parties and ideologies; changes in Jewish religious life; the multifaceted relations, in the realms of politics, culture, and society, between Jews and their co-territorial neighbours.

This issue of Polin is devoted to another aspect of this transformation, one that has hitherto received little attention in our journal, or, indeed, anywhere else. The Jewish engagement with modernity in the Polish lands brought masses of Jews out of their small-town communities and conceptions and into the tumult of urban life. A Jewish mass culture resulted that shaped Jewish life in Poland until its end. This culture was constructed above all around the possibilities of Yiddish, the vernacular language of Polish Jews. But the culture far transcended literature and included a diverse array of phenomena including mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, music, theatre, and material artefacts of various kinds. For several generations of Polish Jews, this culture defined the texture of everyday life.

These were Jews who lived in two worlds. On one hand, they could take for granted Jewish law and custom, folklore and legend, as these had developed for centuries in the Polish lands. Regardless of their degree of practice or even belief, they were intimately acquainted with this cultural storehouse; its contents were still instantly recognizable and—more or less ambiguously—still attractive. On the other hand, these were also Jews accustomed to trains, telegraphs, newspapers, and later radios, telephones, automobiles, ballot boxes, and public schools. By the inter-war period they were citizens of Poland; many felt themselves to be citizens of the world as well. They expected an equal share of the rights and comforts of modern societies.

Yet the popular culture these Polish Jews created to serve their daily needs is largely unknown. This is a consequence, first of all, of a well-known bias at the origin of modern Jewish scholarship.