Jews, Poles, and Slovaks: A Story of Encounters, 1944-48.

Abstract

After the Holocaust (1944-48), Jewish survivors returned to Poland and Slovakia to face the loss of their families, material destruction of their homes, lack of basic supplies and the absence of safety and security. In addition to this personal upheaval, Jews as well as Poles and Slovaks faced new political landscapes. Change of regime in Slovakia and civil war in Poland were new facets of public life that intimately affected the private sphere. Importantly, the Jews, both as a community and as individuals, had to cope with antisemitism and the growing wave of violence directed against them.

My work is a response to a common historical narrative which presents the postwar Jewish returns to Eastern Europe as a story of antisemitism and emigration alone. This narrative presents Jewish postwar emigration as an inevitable outcome of antisemitism. In my work, I complicate the picture by shifting the focus to the experience of everyday life and by introducing a comparative perspective between Poland and Slovakia. The examination of daily experience, in particular, allows the return of Jewish survivors to be seen not solely as a struggle against antisemitism but as a series of encounters with their neighbors (society) and the administration (state). These encounters included traveling back home, struggling to repossess property and retaining citizenship, rebuilding normal lives by marrying, having children, finding a job, engaging in political and cultural life, and, yes, experiencing violence.

This new focus together with the comparative perspective showcases the contingency of Jewish emigration and integration after the war in Poland and Slovakia. It illuminates how the two processes were linked to and were unintelligible without the social and political conditions of the two countries. Second, a closer examination of the everyday experience illuminates the agency of the survivors: their daily interactions and negotiations with the majority population and the state. Finally, this new approach casts light on the general dynamics of interaction among ethnic groups and the limits of belonging of an ethnic minority to a national community after crisis.