Notes on East European Jewish Studies thirty years after 1989

“Reflections on the Polish Experience” was written in the aftermath of the mass exodus of Poland’s remaining Jewish population. In the months following the anti-Jewish campaign of March 1968, nearly half of Poland’s 25-30,000 remaining Jews emigrated; organized Jewish life took a huge hit. L. Hirszowicz and D. L. Price’s notes consider the effects of domestic politics, foreign affairs, and diplomatic developments on the relationship between the Polish state and the Polish Jewish community, and on individuals from Jewish backgrounds living in Poland. The authors’ perspective reflects the general disillusionment that followed intellectuals’ realization that the antifascist, internationalist, utopian vision of the communist movement in postwar East-Central Europe could potentially create a new, more welcoming society for Jews was a fantasy. For most Jews who remained in the East, this early promise faded fast, and by the late 1960s, optimism had become hard to sustain for even the most ardent theoretical Marxists living in the West. The national turn in communism across much of Eastern Europe had led to a suspicion of international organizations and anything else extending beyond the nation. Zionism and Zionists (often used as code words for Jew) became political enemies seen as subversive and dangerous to communism and national unity. The Six-Day War intensified anti-Zionist policies and rhetoric by East European socialist governments. In Poland, shifting relations between Germany and Poland further decreased the party leadership’s commitment to anti-fascist rhetoric. After 1968, it was clear that communist Poland had failed to integrate or accept the Jews. Hirszowicz and Price pondered what this meant about the place and nature of antisemitism in twentieth century Polish society, and for the future of the Jewish community in Poland. The first part of that question, which focuses on the effects that political and diplomatic changes and antisemitism has on the Jewish community, were the dominant features of research on Jews in Poland until the 1990s. It was there that historians and sociologists of Polish Jews emphasized mostly postwar assimilation and nationalization. The second part of the question, which concerns the post-1968 possibilities for Polish Jewish life, has been the focus of scholars only recently. Since 2000, there has been a shift from favoring political and diplomatic history, towards one emphasizing the importance and relevance of social history and alltagsgeschichte (the history of everyday life). This has brought more attention to the mundane and to lived, bottom-up experiences of the Jewish community itself. By looking at the daily experience of rebuilding Jewish communities and living Jewish lives in communist Poland, Jewish strategies and adaptations in both religious and secular practices, a more nuanced picture emerges on the continuities and