Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource (3 Bände)
Edition:
First published in paperback, with corrections
Year of publication:
2019-
Series Statement:
The Littman library of Jewish civilization
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als Polonsky, Antony, 1940 - The Jews in Poland and Russia
Keywords:
Jews History
;
Jews History
;
Poland Ethnic relations
;
Russia Ethnic relations
;
Polen
;
Russland
;
Juden
;
Geschichte
Abstract:
"In his three-volume history, Antony Polonsky provides a comprehensive survey—socio-political, economic, and religious—of the Jewish communities of eastern Europe from 1350 to the present. Until the Second World War, this was the heartland of the Jewish world: nearly three and a half million Jews lived in Poland alone, while nearly three million more lived in the Soviet Union. Although the majority of the Jews of Europe and the United States, and many of the Jews of Israel, originate from these lands, their history there is not well known. Rather, it is the subject of mythologizing and stereotypes that fail both to bring out the specific features of the Jewish civilization which emerged there and to illustrate what was lost. Jewish life, though often poor materially, was marked by a high degree of spiritual and ideological intensity and creativity. Antony Polonsky recreates this lost world—brutally cut down by the Holocaust and less brutally but still seriously damaged by the Soviet attempt to destroy Jewish culture. Wherever possible, the unfolding of history is illustrated by contemporary Jewish writings to show how Jews felt and reacted to the complex and difficult situations in which they found themselves." --
