LibGuides: Polish-Jewish Studies: Primary Sources

Published Primary Sources

Jewish Privileges in the Polish Commonwealth: Charters of Rights Granted to Jewish Communities in Poland-Lithuania in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries by Jacob Goldberg
ISBN: 9652080721
Publication Date: 1985
Although somewhat dated, this book consolidates sixty-three archival documents relating to Jewish privileges, or charters of rights, granted to Jews who lived in the common wealth of Poland between the 16th and 18th centuries. The text provides individuals with transcriptions from the original Latin and Polish Documents, but provides English Introductions and Notes. A comprehensive Introduction is also in English. “To understand fully the importance of this edition one should recall that in early modern times the Polish Jews constituted, at various period and in various regions, up to 20 per cent of Polish society, and at the same time, up to three-quarters of world Jewry.” (review by Jakub Basista from The English Historical Review).
Documents on the Holocaust by Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Abraham Margaliot, editors
ISBN: 0803210507
Publication Date: 1999
This is the eighth edition of a collection originally published in 1981 by the University of Nebraska Press. A review in Slavonic and East European Review writes that, despite a few “quibbles, Documents on the Holocaust remains essential to students and scholars for making accessible the lion’s share of significant evidence concerning the Nazi annihilation of European Jewry” (79.3, 2001). Although its scope is not specifically Polish, it contains nearly 200 pages of documents reflecting the perspectives of Nazis, Jews, and Poles.
The Golden Tradition; Jewish life and thought in Eastern Europe by Lucy S. Dawidowicz. Editor
Publication Date: 1967
This anthology collects 57 excerpts from autobiographical writings by prominent Jewish figures since the eighteenth century, focusing on their responses to European modernity and the Enlightenment. Davidowicz has written an extensive (80+ pp) introduction on Eastern European Jewish culture and short biographical headnotes for each excerpt. Organized topically, with sections on Hasidism, Haskala, Education, Tradition, Philosophers, Literature, Arts, Zionism, and Revolution
Awakening Lives: autobiographies of Jewish youth in Poland before the Holocaust by Jeffrey Shandler (Editor)
ISBN: 0300092776
Publication Date: 2002
These 17 autobiographical essays were written in the 1930s for essay contests conducted by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (then located in Vilna).
The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 1941-1944 by Lucjan Dobroszycki (Editor)
ISBN: 9780300032086
Publication Date: 1984-09-10
From review in the Journal of Religion (67.3, 1987): “Written by intellectuals close to the Jewish Council, this is the account of the conversion of the Lodz Ghetto into a massive factory death shop. The Eldest, Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski, put forth the false promise that, by dint of textile productivity, the community would survive even if many succumbed. Fearing detection, the writers of this account omitted description of Nazis and fascists, evaluation of Rumkowski and the council's work, philosophic musings, and any hint of an underground. Public prayer and religious schools having been banned, religious subjects were therefore hardly ever dealt with.” Includes introduction and notes.
Portraits in Literature: The Jews of Poland by Hava Bromberg Ben-Zvi (Editor)
ISBN: 9780853038733
Publication Date: 2011
This anthology contains excerpts of literature produced by and about Polish Jews, much of it appearing in English for the first time. The first section contains older material on Jewish customs and folk tales, the second focuses on the two world wars, and the third documents the aftermath, as well as the persistence of Jewish culture in Poland. “Entries include excerpts from novels, memoirs, essays, poetry and short stories and a small collection of black and white plates is provide.” (Syndetics)
Twelve Who Survived: an oral history of the Jews of Lodz, Poland, 1930-1954 by Lillian Kranitz-Sanders
ISBN: 082900968X
Publication Date: 1983
“The survivor’s stories are the book’s strength, for what we hear from them provides a tiny window into the teeming, bustling life of prewar Lodz, the struggles of life in the ghetto and concentration camps, and the feelings toward life in America” However, “personal information about the survivors is very limited and half a book away from their stories; the interviews themselves, as presented, seem truncated” (review by Helene Gerard from Oral History Review) This book composes twelve oral histories from Polish-Jewish survivors who had immigrated to Kansas City. The book has its limitations; however, the excerpts of interviews provide good access to oral history accounts.

Guides to Archival Collections of Primary Sources

Guide to the YIVO Archives (1998) - Compiled and edited by Fruma Mohrer and Marek Web
ISBN: 0765601303
A finding aid to the YIVO Archives, focusing on Eastern European Jews and Judaism. The archive was founded in 1925 in Vilna, Poland (now Lithuania) and is now headquartered in New York. It contains 23,000,000 items, including manuscripts, documents, photographs, sound recordings, art works, films, posters, sheet music, and other artifacts. This guide is organized alphabetically by collection name and includes a brief description of each collection.

Guide to the Sources for the History of the Jews in Poland in the Central Archives (1988) - Compiled by A. Teller.
This guide to primary sources held by the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is organized geographically. It includes material collected by the Archives in Europe since the 1940s, as well as microfilmed material (primarily from Polish state archives). The Archives’ website also allows one to search holdings, but warns that the listings are partial. 149pp.

Memorial Volumes to Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust: A Bibliography of British Library Holdings (2004) - Ilana Tahan
Call Number: 016.9405318 T13m
ISBN: 0712348204
Syndetics: “This fully indexed bibliography brings together for the very first time some 300 memorial books drawn mainly from the wide ranging Hebrew collection of the British Library. In the main sequence of the work, entries are arranged in place name order and each includes a copious bibliographic description and references to relevant sources. The titles of individual books appear both in Hebrew script and Roman transliteration. An essential reference aid to research libraries and students concerned with Jewish history and genealogy.”

Jewish Roots in Poland: Pages From the Past and Archival Inventories (1997) - Miriam Weiner
Call Number: 943.8004924 W431j
ISBN: 9780965650809
This guide is aimed at those interested in genealogical research and local history. Published by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in cooperation with the Polish State Archives, it provides overviews of the collections of major archives in Poland, including the Polish State Archives, Urzad Stanu Cywilnego Offices, the Jewish Historical Institute, and the Concentration Camp Archives, as well as a lengthy listing of archives by town and useful entries on 28 cities with information about local sites and selected sources. Nicely designed with many color photographs, it would be especially useful for anyone interested in doing archival research in Poland. [Would this and the next actually go under an archives/primary sources tab?]

Ringelblum Archive

The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive by Tadeusz Epsztein (Editor); Robert Moses Shapiro (Editor, Translator); Samuel D. Kassow (Introduction by)
ISBN: 0253353270
Publication Date: 2010
The unusual history of the Oyneg Shabes archive began when Emanuel Ringelblum buried thousands of documents from the Warsaw ghetto in milk cans. After World War II was over, the survivors returned to the destroyed ghetto to recover the archive. This volume, published in English by Indiana University Press in association with the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (which now houses the archive), is a comprehensive, document-by-document catalog of the archive’s contents, organized by topic. Called one of the world’s most precious archives by UNESCO, it includes personal accounts, letters, monographs, underground publications, and literary works from 1902-1943.
To live with honor and die with honor! Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto by Joseph Kermish
Publication Date: 1986
Contains over 700 pages of documents from the Ringelblum Archive. Each one is translated into English and includes a brief explanatory headnote. They are grouped into categories on the establishment of the archives, diaries, scholarly studies, Jewish communities, forced labor, religious life, resistance, and Nazi policies.
Who Will Write Our History? by Samuel D. Kassow
ISBN: 9780253349088
Publication Date: 2007
This “masterful biography of Ringelblum [...] weaves together the history of Jewry in Poland and the life of a man who preserved its memory and shared its fate” (Holocaust and Genocide Studies review). It draws on the contents of the Oyneg Shabes Archive to tell the story of Ringelblum and the others who collected and preserved this archive of Jewish life by burying it under the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. Includes photos and reproductions of materials from the archive.
Kto napisze naszą historię? : ukryte Archiwum Emanuela Ringelbluma by Samuel D. Kassow ; przekł. Grażyna Waluga, Olga Zienkiewicz
ISBN: 8324136339
Publication Date: 2010
This is a Polish translation of the history by Kassow listed above. From the new preface: “Z polskiego punktu widzenia najważniejszy jest jednak temat książki. Dotyczy ona losόw grupy zaprzyjaźnionych ze sobą historykόw I szeroko rozumianych humanistόw, ktόrzy w latach II wojny światowej wspόłpracowali w getcie warszawskim w podziemnej nielegalnej organizacji społecznej kierowanej przez polityka I historyka doktora Emanuela Ringelbluma. Grupa ta nosiła nazwę Onej Szabat (Radość Sobotnia) I stawiała sobie za cel zgromadzenie dokumentacji dotyczącej niemieckich prześladowan ludności żydowskiej, ktόre od wiosny 1942 roku przybrały formę systematycznej, całkowitej eksterminacji polskich, a nasteępnie europejskich Żydόw.” “Książka Kassowa składa się z dziewięciu obszernych, ułożonych w porządku chronologiczno-rzeczowym rozdziałόw, kilkuset przypisόw źrόdłowych, trzech niewielkich aneksόw źrόdłowych i potężnej bibliografii. Jest to książka de facto naukowa, z solidnym aparatem – każdy cytat ma swόj źrόdłowy odnośnik, napisana jednak wartkim językiem i zdecydowanym tonem” (review by doktor hab. Andrzej Żbikowski)
Archiwum Ringelbluma: getto warszawskie: lipiec 1942 – styczen 1943 by Ruta Sakowska
ISBN: 8301003413
Publication Date: 1980
An extensive Polish language resource of primary archival sources that comes from the infamous Ringelblum Archive collection. In its time the archive collected inquiries, reports, chronicles, diaries, letters, literary productions, proclamations, statements, and minutes from public institutions ghetto meetings. The collection also contains numerous conspiratorial materials, among other items of Poland’s underground press. Important not should be made to the fact that this volume reproduces documents from July 1942 to January 1943. From the English language introduction: This book is “one of the first coherent publications of materials from the archive-documental centre of conspiracy in the Varsovian ghetto. The centre was founded and managed by Emanuel Ringelblum. The publication is composed of documents which show the history of Jewish society in Warsaw during two of Hitler’s exterminatory actions up until the first armed self-defense of the ghetto.” (Ruta Sakowska)
Archiwum Ringelbluma : konspiracyjne archiwum getta warszawy by Ruta Sakowska
ISBN: 8301124377
Publication Date: 1997
A three volume Polish language compilation of transcribed archival documents, accounts, and images from the Ringelblum Archive. The UIUC library owns volumes 2 and 3. The book is also available in e-book format via the Hathi Trust Digital Library.

Jewish Memorial Books

From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (1998) - Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin
Call Number: 305.8924 F925:E1998
ISBN: 0253333946
This second edition updates the 1983 edition, which “cause[d] an entirely new genre of studies to open up” by collecting and translating excerpts from over 70 Jewish memorial (yizkor) books from Poland, most of them originally in Yiddish or Hebrew, which capture everyday Jewish life before the war. In addition to an extensive and revised introduction, “The 1998 edition contains four new chapters and a revised bibliography by Zachary Baker, the head librarian at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. [...] This extensive bibliography, along with the geographical index and gazetteer, make this book an indispensable source of information on Eastern European communities.” (Shofar vol. 18, issue 2)

Memorial Books of Eastern European Jewry: Essays on the History and Meanings of Yizker Volumes (2011) - edited by Rosemary Horowitz
Call Number: 940.5318 M51941
ISBN: 9780786441990
This edited collection includes useful overviews of Yizker books and their history, as well as eight analytical essays that either take Yizker books as their subject or draw on them as evidence. Perhaps most useful for the researcher are the five reprinted review essays (some translated from Yiddish) that provide a valuable guide to other Yizker books, as well a bibliography of Yizker-focused reference books and a survey of library collections of Yizker books.

Tam był kiedyś mój dom-- : księgi pamięci gmin żydowskich / My home used to be there-- : memorial books of Jewish communities - Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Adam Kopciowski, Andrzej Trzciński
Call Number: 305.89240438 T15
ISBN: 9788322729779
This is an extensive Polish language resource on Jewish Memorial Books. Taken from the summary, “The present book is an anthology of more than 160 texts from approximately eighty Jewish memorial books.” “Although some of them concern whole regions, e.g. Galicia, Podlasie or Zaglembie, or even whole countries, memorial books are usually devoted to Jewish communities in concrete cities and towns.” Memorial book books consist typically of three parts concerning the history of a community before, during, and after the Holocaust. Special note should be made to the book’s immense and detailed bibliography, which organizes sources by region and town. In cases of towns that today no longer exist within the post WWII borders of Poland, information of the town’s pre-war and post-war names, regions, and nationalities are included.

Zagłada Biłgoraja Księga pamięci : materiały zebrane przez Abrahama Kronenberga - Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Andrzej Trzciński i Marzena Zawanowska
Call Number: 305.89240438 Z132
ISBN:9788374538336
A Polish language resource on Jewish Memorial Books.

Księga pamięci żydowskiego Lublina / wstęp, wybór i oprac. - Adam Kopciowski
Call Number: 305.892404384 K949
ISBN: 9788322732946
A Polish language resource concerning the Jewish memorial books of Lublin, Poland. From the summary: “The present publication consists of two main parts. In the first one the wide context of creating the Lublin memorial book is presented, including the history of Lublin Jews in the first years after World War II, an outline of activities of Lublin landsmanshaftns in France, Israel, Poland and the United States, the process of creating the book, and presentation of tis contents” The second part contains a selection of more than thirty translations of the most important and most interesting texts from the Lublin memorial book” these contents include the Lublin memorial book’s table of contents, introduction, history of early Jewish settlement in Lublin until WWII, testimonies and articles accounting the destruction of Lublin’s Jews, the early post-war period, and an obituaries of Lublin’s Jewish population.