The Silence of Judaica

• Authors: Piotr Nazaruk

Abstracts

EN

"The National Library of Poland holds a vast collection of Yiddish prints, both pre and post-war, issued mainly in contemporary and former territories of Poland. Thanks to the effort of the Library and years of digitizing the material, about 25 thousand Yiddish newspaper issues, hundreds of books, posters and leaflets were published online and made available for free at the Library’s digital library polona.pl. Although the researcher’s dream has not yet been fulfilled and the Yiddish OCR system has not yet been implemented in polona.pl, Yiddish scholars in Poland received a powerful and user-friendly research tool. Furthermore, by publishing scans of newspapers from big cities and smaller towns, polona.pl has revealed a forgotten or suppressed multi-linguistic and social landscape of pre-war Poland. Even if some Poles living in, for instance, present day town of Chełm knew about their town’s rich Jewish history and its importance in Jewish folklore already ten or so years ago, the image was surely vague. Today, by a single click, one can literally immerse oneself into the world of pre-war Polish-Jewish reality of a small town and – even withoutunderstanding Yiddish, but simply by browsing the papers and reading Polish fragments appearing there from time to time – find out that it was more complex than one might think [...]".

Keywords

EN

The National Library of Poland; collection; Yiddish prints; post-war period

PL

Biblioteka Narodowa; kolekcja; druki w jidysz; okres powojenny

• Publisher: Akademia Zamojska
• Journal: Studia Żydowskie. Almanach
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 9-10
• Pages: 171-173

Dates

published

2020

Contributors

author

Piotr Nazaruk

References

• The National Library of Poland, id. 521.951.
• The National Library of Poland, id. P.100303, id. P.806390, id. 512.265.
• Der Bialik-tog in Lublin, „Lubliner Tugblat”, November 27 1931, p. 7.
• „Lubliner Tugblat”, November 26 1931, p. 1.

Identifiers

DOI

10.56583/sz.697

Biblioteka Nauki

2116720