Anna Cichopek-Gajraj's Books

Beyond Violence

Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48

By: Anna Cichopek-Gajraj

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Beyond Violence

Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48

By: Anna Cichopek-Gajraj

A unique perspective that goes beyond violence to compare the daily experiences of Holocaust survivors returning to Poland and Slovakia.

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Page Count

301

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1107036666

ISBN 13

9781107036666

An Ordinary Life?

The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918–1996

By: Anna Müller

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An Ordinary Life?

The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918–1996

By: Anna Müller

One woman’s national, political, ethnic, social, and personal identities impart an extraordinary perspective on the histories of Europe, Polish Jews, Communism, activism, and survival during the twentieth century. Tonia Lechtman was a Jew, a loving mother and wife, a Polish patriot, a committed Communist, and a Holocaust survivor. Throughout her life these identities brought her to multiple countries—Poland, Palestine, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel—during some of the most pivotal and cataclysmic decades of the twentieth century. In most of those places, she lived on the margins of society while working to promote Communism and trying to create a safe space for her small children. Born in Łódź in 1918, Lechtman became fascinated with Communism in her early youth. In 1935, to avoid the consequences of her political activism during an increasingly antisemitic and hostile political environment, the family moved to Palestine, where Tonia met her future husband, Sioma. In 1937, the couple traveled to Spain to participate in the Spanish Civil War. After discovering she was pregnant, Lechtman relocated to France while Sioma joined the International Brigades. She spent the Second World War in Europe, traveling with two small children between France, Germany, and Switzerland, at times only miraculously avoiding arrest and being transported east to Nazi camps. After the war, she returned to Poland, where she planned to (re)build Communist Poland. However, soon after her arrival she was imprisoned for six years. In 1971, under pressure from her children, Lechtman emigrated from Poland to Israel, where she died in 1996. In writing Lechtman’s biography, Anna Müller has consulted a rich collection of primary source material, including archival documentation, private documents and photographs, interviews from different periods of Lechtman’s life, and personal correspondence. Despite this intimacy, Müller also acknowledges key historiographical questions arising from the lacunae of lost materials, the selective preservation of others, and her own interpretive work translating a life into a life story.

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Page Count

452

Publisher

Ohio University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0821447823

ISBN 13

9780821447826

Home After Fascism

Italian and German Jews After the Holocaust

By: Anna Koch

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Home After Fascism

Italian and German Jews After the Holocaust

By: Anna Koch

Home after Fascism draws on a rich array of memoirs, interviews, correspondence, and archival research to tell the stories of Italian and German Jews who returned to their home countries after the Holocaust. The book reveals Jews' complex and often changing feelings toward their former homes and highlights the ways in which three distinct national contexts--East German, West German, and Italian--shaped their answers to the question, is this home? Returning Italian and German Jews renegotiated their place in national communities that had targeted them for persecution and extermination. While most Italian Jews remained deeply attached to their home country, German Jews struggled to feel at home in the "country of murderers." Yet, some retained a sense of belonging through German culture and language or felt attached to a specific region or city. Still others looked to the future; socialist and communists of Jewish origin hoped to build a better Germany in the Soviet Occupied Zone. In all three postwar states, surviving Jews fought against persistent antisemitism, faced the challenge of recovering lost homes and possessions, struggled to make sense of their persecution, and tried to find ways to reclaim a sense of belonging. Wide ranging and moving, Home after Fascism enriches our understanding of Jews' homecoming experiences after 1945. It reveals the deep affection and persistent love people feel for their homes, the suffering that comes with losing them, and the challenges of a return.

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Page Count

318

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0253066972

ISBN 13

9780253066978

Beyond Violence

Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48

By: Anna Cichopek-Gajraj

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Beyond Violence

Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48

By: Anna Cichopek-Gajraj

This book tells a story of Polish and Slovak Holocaust survivors returning to homes that no longer existed in the aftermath of the Second World War. It focuses on their daily efforts to rebuild their lives in the radically changed political and social landscape of post-war Eastern Europe. Such an analysis shifts the perspective from post-war violence and emigration to post-war reconstruction. Using a comparative approach, Anna Cichopek-Gajraj discusses survivors' journeys home, their struggles to retain citizenship and repossess property, their coping with antisemitism, and their efforts to return to 'normality'. She emphasizes the everyday communal and personal experiences of survivors in the context of their relationships with non-Jews. In essence, by focusing on the daily efforts of Polish and Slovak Jews to rebuild their lives, the author investigates the limits of belonging in Eastern Europe after the Holocaust.

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Page Count

301

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

113999252X

ISBN 13

9781139992527

Book's by Anna Cichopek-Gajraj

Beyond Violence

Beyond Violence

An Ordinary Life?

An Ordinary Life?

Home After Fascism

Home After Fascism

Beyond Violence

Beyond Violence

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