The Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) was a multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious state. Its people spoke Polish, Belarussian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and German, among other languages. In this sense, the Second Republic was a continuation of the diverse Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the First Republic). It was not until 1945 that Poland became a fundamentally different country – a predominantly monoethnic one. In interwar Poland, ethnic minorities amounted to one third of the total population, including nearly three million Polish Jews. For many years, the intellectual heritage of minority scholars was of minor importance to Polish historians. The same applied to historiographers. Until 1989, researchers were concerned mostly with Polish scholars working in prominent academic centers such as Warsaw, Cracow, or Poznań. After 1989, scholars in the cities of Vilnius and Lviv, absent from historiography under communist censorship, were added to the picture.1 In the 1990s, the first professional works on historians belonging to minority groups in Poland – Ukrainians, Jews, and Germans – were published. There was also growing interest in the lives and works of figures such as Mojżesz Schorr and Majer Bałaban; their largely inaccessible prewar works were reprinted in the early 2000s.2 On the other hand, thanks to rising interest in multiculturalism, researchers started examining increasingly “exotic” topics, such as Polish Tatars’ historical thought.3

Thus, Natalia Aleksiun’s Conscious History is part of a broader assortment of studies on minority historiography. However, regarding Polish Jews, her study is pioneering in many aspects. It is the first comprehensive monograph to present and analyze the institutional, thematic, and societal dimensions of Jewish historiography in interwar Poland. The book’s title calls to mind Sigmund Freud and his idea of the interplay between the “conscious” and the “unconscious.” The author underlines the fact that the process of creating Polish-Jewish historiography was a deliberate choice made by Polish-Jewish historians and that their contributions should be considered important parts of the multicultural historical thought of the Second Republic.

Aleksiun’s monograph is based on impressively broad archival research conducted in Polish, Israeli, Ukrainian, and American collections: the Archives of Modern Records (Warsaw), the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), the Archive of the University of Warsaw, the Archive of the Jagiellonian University (Cracow), the YIVO Archives and Library Collection (New York), the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (Jerusalem), the Yad Vashem Archives (Jerusalem), and the State Archives of the Lviv Oblast. As expected of research on historiography, a significant portion of the author’s sources is comprised of historical writing. These include works by pioneers of Jewish studies in Poland such as Tadeusz Czacki, Wacław A. Maciejowski, and Władysław Smoleński, as well as two generations of Jewish historians: Bałaban, Schorr, and their disciples, Emanuel Ringelblum and Filip Friedman. The author also includes works by Ignacy Schiper and Raphael Mahler. Moreover, Aleksiun utilizes multilingual secondary literature written in Polish, English, and, to a lesser extent, Yiddish, Russian, and German.

The book is structured chronologically and topically. It consists of an introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue, together with a bibliography and an index. The first chapter, titled “Historical Beginnings”, is introductory in nature. The author explores the early stage of Jewish studies in Polish historiography, inaugurated in 1807 by Czacki’s study Rozprawa o Żydach (Treatise on the Jews), which focused on the socioeconomic history of the Jewish community in Poland. The next two chapters describe the evolution and gradual professionalization of Jewish studies after the turn of the century. This evolution is illustrated by the chapter titles themselves: “The Making of Professional Polish Jewish Historians” (Chapter 2) and “Becoming Polish Mainstream” (Chapter 3). Two figures played key roles in the process of forming a self-conscious Jewish historiography: the aforementioned “founding fathers” of Jewish Studies, Majer Bałaban and Mojżesz Schorr. The former studied at the University of Lviv under Szymon Aszkenazy and became a teacher in religious schools. After World War I, he co-founded the Instytut Nauk Judaistyczych (Institute for Jewish Studies) in Warsaw and, in 1936, became a full professor at the University of Warsaw. The latter also studied in Lviv and later became rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw, worked at Warsaw University, and was appointed member of the Senate by Polish president Ignacy Mościcki.

Aleksiun presents the nascence of Polish-Jewish historiography (including female historians, thereby contributing to the study of women in early 20th-century academia) in an interesting way. She describes the historians’ dilemmas and goals, their struggle “to make non-Jewish Poles see Jews as an integral part of the new political and social reality,” and their conviction that “they could give a voice and sense of pride to their Jewish audiences, as well as improve Polish-Jewish relations” (p. 7). According to Aleksiun, these endeavors served an emancipatory function, integrating the Jewish community by presenting the community’s history as an integral part of Polish history. Cognitive functions were tied to identity building. Therefore, it was important for Jewish historians to emphasize Jewish contributions to the socioeconomic development of Poland and Polish culture, as well as the role of the Jewish community during national uprisings. International context also played an important role for Polish-Jewish historians. After World War I, Polish Jews aspired to establish a new center of Jewish intellectual life in Europe.

The fourth chapter, “Beyond the Ivory Tower”, deserves to be praised in its own right. It describes various initiatives by Jewish historians aimed at popularizing Polish-Jewish history, broadly defined. These included lectures, press articles, pamphlets, and conferences, mostly focused on local history. Using a variety of languages (including Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew), these historians endeavored to disseminate historical knowledge among different social groups. Most Jewish historians engaged in such activities, regardless of their political affiliations. In the fifth chapter, “Themes and Trends,” Aleksiun focuses predominantly on the legacy of Jewish historians in urban studies (especially in Warsaw, Łódź, Drohobycz, and Kutno). She emphasizes their modern methodological approach, as they aimed to shift away from the traditional focus on politics and religion to include the history of urban Jewish everyday life in their studies.

Aleksiun’s book serves as a collective biography of the Jewish historians working in Poland at the turn of the century and during the Second Republic. The author skillfully describes their legacy as well as their complicated and sometimes tragic relations with the Poles. The story ends with an epilogue – a commentary on Jewish historians’ fates during World War II. Few of them survived the Holocaust, made victims not only of German totalitarianism, but also, as in the case of Schorr (who was arrested by the NKVD), the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, it is worth remembering that this historiographical tradition, born in independent Poland, became an important point of reference for new research conducted in postwar Poland and, more importantly, in the new centers of Jewish historical writing in the United States and Israel.

Notes:
1 Joanna Pisulińska, Lwowskie środowisko historyczne w okresie międzywojennym (1918–1939), Rzeszów 2012; Zbigniew Opacki, Wydział Humanistyczny Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego w Wilnie 1919–1939, Gdańsk 2021.
2 Wacław Wierzbieniec, Majer Bałaban (1877–1942), in: Złota Księga historiografii lwowskiej XIX i XX w., J. Maternicki, P. Sierżęga, L. Zaszkilniak (ed.), Rzeszów 2014, pp. 265–282; Jakub Goldberg, Mojżesz Schorr – historyk polskich Żydów, in: Jerzy Tomaszewski (ed.). Śladami Polin. Studia z dziejów Żydów w Polsce, Warszawa 2002, pp. 78–93.
3 Wojciech Wendland, „Trzy czoła proroków z matki obcej”. Myśl historyczna Tatarów polskich w II Rzeczypospolitej, Kraków 2013.