Department of Jewish Studies

This article regards the existential experience of Holocaust victims and the
psychological and cognitive mechanisms in confrontation with the 􀏐irst news about
the functioning of the death camps. It analyzes the testimonies of Jews from over
40 towns and small towns in the General Government regarding the gradual in􀏐lux
of news about the Holocaust and the consequent reactions. Initially, the hearsay
came mostly from afar, and then from increasingly close localities. The Poles were
the source of that (imprecise) information about the lot of the deported Jews, while
in certain localities appeared escapees from the death centers who gave accounts
of what they had witnessed. That hearsay and those testimonies met with different
reactions — from despair, through denial, suppression, and resignation, to attempts
to save one’s life. This article devotes special attention to a re􀏐lection on the
possibility of death of oneself and one’s family as well as the phenomenon of denial
and pushing the news about the Holocaust away from oneself.

This text contains an analysis of the experience of chaos, disorder, and family suffering among the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War, based on materials of a biographical nature, that is, personal documents. The author refers to the concept of a trajectory, which makes it possible to grasp the breakdown of adaptation strategies in the face of an extreme situation. She analyzes the processes of family disintegration and degradation in the Ghetto and proposes a new analytical category—the “family trajectory.”

The author analyses fragments of testimonies about the Warsaw ghetto regarding
children’s family relations. The article describes the demographic transformations
that changed the social structure, which forced the families into functional
adjustments. The most important change was the forcing of groups, which
had not worked, that is children, to earn money. The article presents the consequences
of those transformations for family relations and analyses the experience
of childhood and parenthood in the ghetto.

This article explores the demographical dynamics of the population of Jews in Warsaw ghetto during World War II. The main stress was put on the analysis of demographic transformation, which could be observed in the ghetto even before the mass deportation of 1942 from Warsaw to Treblinka death camp in Treblinka and the start of direct extermination of Jews by the Nazis. The particular focus of the article were three aspects of social changes and their demographic expressions: mortality and shifts in women and children’s social positions during the ghetto period.
The case described in the text shows intertwinement between macro-level of demographic processes and micro-level of individual lives. In the article, excerpts from personal documents and memoirs and interpreted along with the demographic data in order to show how people confined in the Warsaw ghetto had to rapidly adjust to very dramatic changes of society’s structure.

Cet article se propose d’étudier les dynamiques démographiques de la population juive du ghetto de Varsovie pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. La transformation démographique du ghetto avant la déportation massive de 1942 vers le camp de Treblinka et le début de l’extermination des juifs a été placée au cœur de l’article, qui porte sur trois aspects des mutations sociales et de leurs expressions démographiques : la mortalité, l’évolution des positions sociales des femmes ainsi que des enfants au cours de cette période. Cette étude de cas montre notamment l’entrelacement des différents niveaux de processus démographiques (au niveau macro et individuel). Des extraits de documents personnels et des mémoires ont été utilisés et croisés avec des données démographiques afin de mettre en exergue la manière dont les personnes confinées dans le ghetto de Varsovie ont dû s’adapter rapidement à des changements particulièrement dramatiques au sein de la société du ghetto.

In the beginning of the German occupation of Poland in 1939, press censorship and a strict ban on radio listening were imposed. Poles and ghettos-imprisoned Jews could obtain international information by reading German-controlled newspapers or, alternatively, by reading the clandestine press or listen to rumours. This article stresses the significance of information distributed by activists of Hashomer Hatzair, Zionist, leftist youth movement, who conducted radio monitoring and prepared daily news bulletins distributed in Warsaw ghetto. The article describes their monitoring practices and shows how news extracted from broadcasts was later used in the press. It also engages with the question as to why foreign news was so important to Jews struggling to survive in terrible conditions of the ghetto. It also identifies motivations for conducting radio monitoring during the Holocaust and compares it with those of people listening to foreign radio stations in other contexts and with different intentions.

In this paper I have analyzed connection between rumors on the Holocaust circulating in Warsaw ghetto and emergence of knowledge on that issue among the public opinion and ordinary inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto.
I have focused on rumors regarding extermination in other villages and towns and on rumors regarding letters that were allegedly sent by the deportees who, in fact, were sent to Treblinka death camp.

Publikowany tekst składa się z dwóch części: w pierwszej przedstawiono biografię rabina Josefa Lejba Gelerntera. Od 1931 r. Gelernter był rabinem w Skępem, potem trafił do getta warszawskiego, gdzie angażował się w organizowanie opieki społecznej dla ortodoksyjnych uchodźców i przesiedleńców. W drugiej części zamieszczono trzy teksty źródłowe: relację o wygnaniu Żydów ze Skępego w 1939 r. oraz szczególnej roli, jaką Gelernter odgrywał w swojej społeczności; sprawozdanie Gelerntera dotyczące problemu koszerności wśród uchodźców do getta warszawskiego oraz przypisywaną mu odezwę na temat zaniedbania obyczajów pogrzebowych w dzielnicy zamkniętej.

Before the ghetto in Warsaw was closed in November 1940, Jews for over a year had lived in the occupied city and heard gossips of the possible creation of the ghetto. The main goal of the article is to analyze such news and rumors.
            The paper contains a timeline of the actions that German authorities took in order to create a ghetto and their changing plans in that regard. I have also shown prevailing social and psychological responses to rumors and patterns of reaction. I have focused on the Jewish perspective, but I have also shown that for Poles rumors of the ghetto triggered the process of imagining the city ‘without Jews’ and envisioning the possible consequences of such fact for Polish inhabitants of the city. Separate section of the paper is devoted to interactions Poles and Jews had in regard to the exchange of apartments before sealing off of the ghetto.
I have also explained the role of the news of the possible creation of the ghetto play in the psychological and social isolation of the Jews of Warsaw during the first year of the war.

This thoroughly researched book addresses an important problem: what did Jews of the Warsaw ghetto know about the events taking place outside of the ghetto and how did they understand them? What information various groups of Jews had about the chain of events that we refer to today as 'the Holocaust'? How did the knowledge about it emerge among the Jews 'then' and 'there'?
Maria Ferenc's monograph contributes the growing field of research regarding the circulation of knowledge during the Holocaust by showing how vital were information. The author shows the multitude of Jewish reactions and responses to the knowledge about the genocide. She explores the subject of the existential experience of Holocaust victims and the psychological and cognitive mechanisms in confrontation with the news about the functioning of the death camps.
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Ile wiedzieli‚ zamknięci w getcie warszawskim‚ Żydzi o tym‚ co dzieje się poza murami? Jakie znaczenie miały dla nich informacje o przebiegu wojny? Jak zdobywali wiadomości o eksterminacji Żydów‚ jakie pogłoski do nich docierały i jak na nie reagowali? Kiedy zrozumieli‚ że wszyscy Żydzi zostali skazani na śmierć?

https://ksiegarnianatlomackiem.pl/kazdy-pyta-co-z-nami-bedzie-mieszkancy-getta-w,3,4744,5029

Autorka poddała analizie fragmenty relacji z getta warszawskiego dotyczące relacji rodzinnych dzieci. Opisałam przemiany demograficzne prowadzące do zmiany struktury społecznej, które wymusiły na rodzinach funkcjonalne przystosowania. Najistotniejszą zmianą było wciągnięcie w reżim zarobkowania grup wcześniej niepracujących: dzieci. Artykuł przedstawia konsekwencje tych przemian dla relacji między członkami rodziny, zawiera też analizę doświadczenia dzieciństwa oraz rodzicielstwa w getcie.