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'''Antony Polonsky''' (born 1940, [[Johannesburg, South Africa]]) is Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at [[Brandeis University]].<ref name = "brandeis">{{cite web |
'''Antony Polonsky''' (born 1940, [[Johannesburg, South Africa]]) is Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at [[Brandeis University]].<ref name = "brandeis">{{cite web |
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| url = http://www.brandeis.edu/facguide/person.html?emplid=7a470e807a5e8b2896df230df3bace187f70c1ee |
Revision as of 16:23, 29 April 2012
Antony Polonsky (born 1940, Johannesburg, South Africa) is Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University.[1] He is the author of many historical works on the Holocaust,[2] and has been described as an expert on Polish Jewish history.[3][4][5]
Career
For his first degree, Polonsky studied history at the University of the Witwatersrand. A Rhodes Scholarship took him to England to read modern history at Worcester College and St Antony’s College. In 1989, he was appointed professor of International History at the London School of Economics. In 1992 he was appointed Visiting Professor of East European Jewish History at Brandeis University, and in 1993, he was granted the Walter Stern Hilborn Chair in Judaic and Social Studies. In 1999, he was appointed Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies, an appointment held jointly at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Brandeis University. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Warsaw, the University of Cape Town, Skirball visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Senior Associate Member of Saint Antony’s College, Oxford and Honorary Research Fellow at University College, London.[1]
Professor Polonsky was a founder and is now vice-president of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies in Oxford.[6] He was for six years a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and was a member of its Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Committee. He is an editor of The Library of Holocaust Testimonies. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the National Polish American-Jewish American Task Force and an Associate of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University.[1] In 1999, he received the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, and in 2006 the Rafael Scharf award for outstanding achievement in preserving and making known the heritage of Polish Jewry.[7] He is the founder and general editor of Polin, perhaps the only scholarly publication devoted entirely to Polish–Jewish history.[6][8]
In 2011, Polonsky was awarded the Kulczycki Books Prize by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies for Volumes I and II of The Jews in Poland and Russia.[9]
Themes
In The Jews in Poland and Russia, Vol. I, Polonsky argues that interference with Jewish life during the reigns of Catherine the Great and Nicholas I was motivated more by the Russian rulers' integrationist policies, rather than by Judeophobia. The reforms of Alexander II led to circles of inegrated culture, primarily in Odessa and St Petersburg.[10] The retreat of the tsarist government from integrationist policies during the period from 1881 to 1914 led to a rise in the poverty of the Jewish masses. But a period of enormous creativity and transformation of religious culture coincided with these years of repression.[10]
Professor Jeffrey Veidlinger of Indiana University has commented that Polonsky’s history of the Jews in Poland and Russia helps to “correct the nostalgic and romanticized portraits of what is sometimes considered a lost civilization, while simultaneously demonstrating the vibrancy and diversity of Jewish life in the region.”[10]
Reviewing the first two volumes of Polonsky's three volume The Jews in Poland and Russia, The Jewish Chronicle wrote that Polonsky wants "to avoid the earlier tendencies to either dismiss the eastern European Jewish experience as backward (the approach of the great German Jewish historian, Heinrich Graetz) and ultimately doomed to extinction or, alternatively, to view it nostalgically post-Holocaust as an unchanging and harmonious lost world." The reviewer concludes that Polonsky "more than succeeds in this task, although it is perhaps only in chapters where there is a synthesis over time and place, such as mini-studies of "Jewish Places", "Jewish Literature" and "Women", that the study really comes alive."[11]
Polonsky has written that one of the biggest issues confronting historians of the Holocaust is that all of the countries of Eastern Europe were subjected to two occupations—a Nazi and a Soviet occupation. The Poles, the Lithuanians, Latvians, and the Ukrainians, were faced with two enemies, and faced the dilemma of how to choose between them.[12] In a talk at the United States Holocaust Museum, Polonsky said, "The Jews were in a different position. For the Jews, the Nazis were unequivocally enemies, whose goal was to destroy physically Jews in Eastern Europe. The Soviets were potential allies. So we’re talking about a very complicated situation in which two totalitarian systems are in conflict, and in which a lot of innocent people on all sides are suffering. And what we need to do is to understand the complexity of these events and show some empathy for all those people—including Jews—caught up in this tragic conflict."[13]
Major Publications
The Great Powers and the Polish Question, 1941-1945 (London School of Economics, 1976) ISBN 978-0853280460
The Little Dictators: The History of Eastern Europe since 1918 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975) ISBN 978-0710080950
Politics in Independent Poland: The Crisis of Constitutional Government (Clarendon Press, 1972)
A History of Poland, co-author with Oskar Halecki (Routledge, 1983) ISBN 978-0710086471
The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland, December 1943-July 1945, co-author with Bolesaw Drukier (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) ISBN 978-0710005403
The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland, co-editor with Joanna B. Michlic, (Princeton University Press, 2004) ISBN 978-0691113067
Contemporary Jewish Writing in Poland: An Anthology, co-editor with Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, (University of Nebraska Press, 2001) ISBN 978-0803237216
Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46, co-editor with Norman Davies. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991)
'My Brother’s Keeper?': Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust, editor (Routledge, 1990) ISBN 978-0415042321
The History of Poland Since 1863, co-editor with R.F. Leslie, et. al., (Cambridge University Press, 1983) ISBN 978-0521275019
The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume 1: 1350-1881 (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009) ISBN 978-1874774648
The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume 2: 1881-1914 (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009) ISBN 978-1904113836
The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume 3: 1914-20008 (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011) ISBN 978-1904113485
External links
References
- ^ a b c "Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University". brandeis.edu. February 9, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2012.
- ^ "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow Professor Antony Polonsky". ushmm.org. February 1, 2008. Retrieved April 19, 2012.
- ^ "Professor Antony Polonsky's 70th birthday celebrations at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland". Embassy of the Republic of Poland in London. June 23, 2010. Retrieved April 19, 2012.
- ^ Berkowitz, M. (October, 2011). "The Jews in Poland and Russia. Volume 1: 1350–1881" (PDF). polishjewishstudies.pl. Retrieved April 29, 2012.
{{cite web}}
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(help) - ^ Kirsch, Adam (September 17, 2010). "A Tumultuous Time". TheNewRepublic.com. Retrieved April 27, 2012.
- ^ a b "Institute for Polish Jewish Studies". littman.co.uk. Retrieved April 19, 2012.
- ^ "The "Felek" statuette dedicated to the memory of Rafael F. Scharf, has been awarded for the year 2006 to Professor Anthony Polonsky". Polish cultural Institute in New York. April 9, 2006. Retrieved April 19, 2012.
- ^ "Polin". littman.co.uk. Retrieved April 19, 2012.
- ^ "Kulczycki Books Prize in Polish Studies". aseees.org. Retrieved April 27, 2012.
- ^ a b c Veidlinger, Jeffrey (February, 2011). "The Jews in Poland and Russia: A New History". H-Judaic.org. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
{{cite web}}
: Check date values in:|date=
(help) - ^ Kushner, Tony (October 24, 2011). "Review: The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volumes 1 and 2". thejc.com. Retrieved April 27, 2012.
- ^ A. Polonsky, (2012), The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume III, 1914 to 2008, pp.359–362
- ^ "Voices On Antisemitism, Antony Polonsky". ushmm.org. August 7, 2008. Retrieved April 19, 2012.