From the Middle Ages until World War II, Poland was host to Europe's largest and most vibrant Jewish population. By 1970, the combination of Nazi genocide, postwar pogroms, mass emigration, and communist repression had virtually destroyed Poland's Jewish community. Although the Poles themselves were subjected to enormous cruelties in the twentieth century, questions about the extent of their antisemitism and its role in the fate of Polish Jewry are today hotly disputed.Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland serves as an effective guide to some of the most complex and controversial issues of Poland's troubled past. Fourteen original essays by a team of distinguished Polish and American scholars explore the different meanings, forms of expression, content, and social range of antisemitism in modern Poland from the late nineteenth century to the present. The contributors focus on both the variations in antisemitic sentiment and those Poles who opposed such prejudices. Central themes of this significant, balanced, and timely contribution to a contentious and often emotional debate include the deterioration of Polish-Jewish relations in the era of national awakening for both the Poles and the Jews, the meaning of the various forms of violence against the Jews, intellectual movements in opposition to antisemitism, the role of the Catholic Church in promoting antisemitism, and the prospects for the Church to atone for this shameful chapter in its recent history.

Contributors: Robert Blobaum, West Virginia University; Steven D. Corrsin, New York Public Research Libraries; William W. Hagen, University of California, Davis; Janine P. Holc, Loyola College in Maryland; Jerzy Jedlicki, Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences; Katherine R. Jolluck, Stanford University; Dariusz Libionka, Institute of National Remembrance, Lublin and Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences; Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Brian Porter, University of Michigan; Szymon Rudnicki, Warsaw University; Konrad Sadkowski, University of Northern Iowa; Keely Stauter-Halsted, Michigan State University; Dariusz Stola, Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences and Collegium Civitas, Warsaw; Bozena Szaynok, Wroclaw University; Theodore R. Weeks, Southern Illinois University

About the Author

Robert Blobaum is Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of History and Chair, Department of History, at West Virginia University. He is the author of Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904'1907 and Feliks Dzierzynski and the SDKPiL: A Study of the Origins of Polish Communism.

Reviews
"Historians who would integrate Polish history into the history of Europe must come to terms with the enormously complex topic of antisemitism. This book meets that challenge admirably, and is simply indispensable. The team of scholars that Robert Blobaum has assembled includes some of the very best writers on modern Polish history. The result is an unusually coherent volume, seamlessly uniting American and Polish perspectives to ask us to examine the very meaning of Polishness. Antisemitism appears here in all its nationalist, political, ideological, and religious complexity. Antisemitism and its Opponents is essential reading for scholars of Poland and of Jewish history. Any student of European history, too, will find that this book significantly advances our understanding of one of the central problems of modernity."-Padraic Kenney, University of Colorado, Boulder
"This state-of-the-art book about modern Polish antisemitism tackles some of the most difficult questions in the still highly sensitive history of Polish-Jewish relations. Robert Blobaum has assembled an impressive team of authors from Poland and the West. Their scholarship is dispassionate, learned, and takes advantage of newly accessible sources. This important volume marks a new stage in the post-Jedwabne debate."-Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University



Book Information
ISBN 9780801489693
Author Robert E. Blobaum
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 155mm * 21mm