Autobiografia Literatura Kultura Media


ISSN: 2353-8694     eISSN: 2719-4361    OAI    DOI: 10.18276/au.2020.1.14-03
CC BY-SA   Open Access   DOAJ  ERIH PLUS

Issue archive / nr 1 (14) 2020
Letters to the JDC as Autobiographical Sources of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

Authors: JOANNA ŚLIWA ORCID
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference)
Keywords: Jewish survivors Holocaust postwar correspondence JDC ego-documents
Data publikacji całości:2020
Page range:12 (35-46)
Cited-by (Crossref) ?:

Abstract

After the Holocaust, Jewish survivors in Poland relied on external help, including that of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint, JDC). They wrote letters to JDC both to request and to thank the American-based Jewish organization for i.a. food, clothes, medicine, and assistance with emigration from Poland. Many of those letters also contain autobiographical information about the authors, themselves Holocaust survivors and their families. The descriptions of wartime experiences and survival strategies as well as of immediate postwar life (1945–1949) entail details and snippets of historical and genealogical value. Therefore, the letters examined in this article offer both individual histories and a collective portrait of the Jewish population in postwar Poland. The epistolary material also captures JDC’s activities and their importance for reviving and sustaining Jewish life after the Holocaust.
Download file

Article file

Bibliography

1.Aleksiun, Natalia. Dokąd dalej? Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce (1944–1950). Warsaw: Trio, 2002.
2.Bażanowska, Noemi. To był mój dom. Żydowski Dom Dziecka w Krakowie 1945–1957. Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka–Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2011.
3.Edelstein, Jeffrey. “Reconnecting with a fugitive collection: a case study of the records of JDC’s Warsaw Office, 1945–1949.” Jewish Culture and History 18 (2017), 1: 109–117.
4.Jockusch, Laura. Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
5.Nachmany Gafny, Emunah. Dividing Hearts: The Removal of Jewish Children from Gentile Families in Poland in the Immediate Post-Holocaust Years. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009.
6.Patt, Avinoam J. Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2009.
7.Rosner, Anna M. Obraz społeczności ocalałych w Centralnej Kartotece Wydziału Ewidencji i Statystyki CKŻP. Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2018.
8.Sommer Schneider, Anna. Sze’erit hapleta. Ocaleni z Zagłady. Działalność American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee w Polsce w latach 1945–1989. Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2014.
9.Żółkiewska, Agnieszka. Inwentarz Żydowskiego Towarzystwa Krzewienia Sztuk Pięknych 1946–1950. Sygn. 361. Warszawa: Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego im. E. Ringelbluma, 2009.