Leon Weintraub. A survivor for reconciliation

The group of Auschwitz survivors is numerous and rapidly shrinking. However, the accounts (could use: biographies, memoirs, recollections, stories, etc.) of those who experienced it are remarkable and still worthy of study. Moreover, testimonies from the time of the Annihilation (or Holocaust) – a message with a great weight of emotion and a particular feature of the great history, make the material collected in this way can serve as an invaluable contribution to expanding knowledge and analysis for future generations. Naturally, the educational issue is also important, although the focus will be on the cognitive role. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the fate of the life of an outstanding physician, a Polish Jew from Lodz, Leon Weintraub, who “started” his life anew three times – at the time of his birth in 1926, his liberation from the Nazi camps, and his expulsion from the country as part of the anti-Semitic campaign of March 1968. It seems that the study of the fate of an individual’s life under totalitarian systems, using the oral history method and confronting other sources, makes it possible to create a biographical sketch that is not just a collection of dry facts but enriched with elements of personal emotions, sensitivities, and feelings.

Strangers (still?) at home. Online entries by Magdalena Ogórek and Rafał Ziemkiewicz as an example of hate speech and the strategy of exclusion

This article is devoted to the issue of the hate speech in Polish public discourse. One of the ways to become aware of the negative nature of hate speech can be intercultural education. In 2018, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw organized an exhibition “Strangers at Home”, dedicated to the events of March ’68. In addition to the memorabilia related to Jewish-rooted people’s leaving Poland, there were also records of contemporary hate and hate speech, juxtaposed with some examples from 1968. Among them, there were the entries of journalists Magdalena Ogórek and Rafał Ziemkiewicz, which have the character of contemporary anti-Semitism.

The childhood and youth of Marian Jurczyk and his political socialization

The article discusses the biography of Marian Jurczyk in the context of the „primary principle” formulated on the basis of research on political socialization. The author first analyses the biography of the title character during his childhood and youth. Then he discusses Jurczyk’s trade union and political activities during the period when he became a public figure and performed a number of important functions, including: chairman of the regional „Solidarity” in Szczecin, senator of the Republic of Poland and the president of Szczecin. He points out those of its elements that testified to the way he was shaped as a child and young person as part of his political socialization.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Disputes Over the Attitude of Poles toward Jews

One of Hitler’s important goals, as stated in “Mein Kampf”, was the destruction of the Jews. He began implementing this plan with the outbreak of World War II. In the occupied Polish territories and as his conquests in subsequent European countries progressed, he ordered first the concentration of Jews in ghettos and their annihilation through progressive starvation, and from the spring of 1942 through their mass annihilation in special extermination camps. Those in Warsaw, Poland – they constituted some 3 million – in 1943 made a desperate attempt, with no real chance of success to resist, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This resulted in the destruction by arson of some 50,000 Jews who remained there. This event and its aftermath provoke passionate disputes as to whether Poles provided, and to what extent, assistance to the murdered Jews. This sketch will show the disputes, and within the Poles, waged on the 80th anniversary of these events related to this. This is the aftermath of contemporary Polish “historical politics”.