Kamil Kijek

University of Wroclaw, Department of Jewish Studies, Faculty Member

Followers

653

Following

465

Co-authors

Public Views

http://judaistyka.en.uni.wroc.pl/department-of-jewish-studies/people/faculty-and-staff/kamil-kijek/

less

InterestsView All (25)

Uploads

Papers by Kamil Kijek

In the Shadow of, or Buried under, the Holocaust? On The Paradox of Presence and Nonpresence of Jewish History and Culture in Contemporary Polish Discourse

Pole/Jew. History, Literature, Identity, Future, eds. John J. Bukowczyk, Hanna Filipowicz (Athens: Ohio University Press,), 2025

Download

Jedyny taki Sztetl. Dzierżoniów, 1945-1950

Newsweek Historia, nr. 1 , 2026

Short popular press discussion about unique Jewish community in early post-Holocuast Poland.

Download

Between Ethnic Democracy, Authoritarianism and Violence: Inter-War Experiences and Jewish Socio-Political Stances in Early Post-War Poland

Contemporary European History, vol. 34, issue 3 (2025), 2025

This article focuses on Jewish political stances in early postwar and post-Holocaust Poland and e... more This article focuses on Jewish political stances in early postwar and post-Holocaust Poland and explores why so many Polish Jews supported the new communist-dominated regime after 1945, despite the fact that only a small minority held communist political views. While acknowledging the impact of Holocaust experiences, the weakness of the Polish Jewish community after the war and the widespread perception that the communist regime was the only possible bulwark against postwar anti-Jewish violence, this article offers a different perspective in foregrounding the inter-war experiences of Polish Jews. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew and English, this article argues that inter-war experiences shaped Polish Jews' understandings of the emerging postwar social and political system, as well as their political stances towards the new state.

format_quoteBetween 1945 and 1946, up to 120,000 Jews emigrated from Poland after the Holocaust, indicative of the community's precarious state.format_quote

Download

Izrael i Palestyna a historia krytyczna

Dwutygodnik , 2025

Polemika z esejem Ewy Górskiej "Palestyna. Jak wymazuje się narody" https://www.dwutygodnik.c... more

Truly the “Last Ones.” On forgotten “Jewish Jews” in postwar Poland

"1945. Not the End, Not the Beginning", 2025

This is an essay published in publication accompanying temporary exhibition ""1945. Not the End, ... more

format_quoteAttending a Passover meeting revealed a vibrant Jewish community with deep historical ties, contradicting the belief that Jewish culture had vanished.format_quote

Download

Naprawdę ostatni. O zapomnianych "żydowskich Żydach" powojennej Polski

1945. Nie koniec, nie początek, 2025

Jeden z esejów w publikacji towarzyszącej wystawie historycznej ""1945. Nie koniec, nie początek"... more

Download

Czy we wczesnopowojennej Polsce funkcjonowała żydowska autonomia narodowa (1945–1948)?

Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, nr 4 (292), 2024

This text confronts “autonomy” as useful category characterizing political situation of the Jewi... more This text confronts “autonomy” as useful category characterizing political situation of the Jewish community in early postwar Poland in the years 1945–1948. It starts from historical overview of organized Jewish community, its place in legal and political systems in Poland and Eastern Europe, both in pre-modern and modern era, establishing what elements of Jewish communal situation and which of Jewish demands were branded by contemporaries and byhistorians as “autonomy”. Than, by discussing main elements of Jewish self-organization and its status in early post-war Polish state: Central Jewish Committee (CKŻP) and its regional branches, internal political culture of CKŻP and its relation to the dominant communist political culture of the state, place and status of Zionist and Orthodox institutions in post-war Poland, finally, lack of sovereignty of Jewish public discourse especially vivid regarding problem of anti-Semitism and Kielce pogrom – article confronts this state of affairs with historical and common sense definitions of “autonomy”.
It concludes that while “autonomy” should not be used to describe situation of early-postwar Polish Jewry, nevertheless in the years 1945–1948 this community was indeed characterized by wide, although somewhat limited and relative self--government, pluralism, political, social and cultural subjectivity, all important elements of early-post Holocaust Polish Jewish history.

Download

Yiddish Spaces and Daily Culture in Early post-Khurbn Poland: A Preliminary Analysis

"Socialist Yiddishlands. Language Politics and Transnational Entanglements between 1941 and 1991, eds. Miriam Chorley-Schulz, Alexander Walther , 2024

This article is a preliminary historical and sociological analysis of the venues of functioning o... more This article is a preliminary historical and sociological analysis of the venues of functioning of Yiddish language in daily Jewish life in Poland in the first years after the Holocaust. It argues against crude teleological vision of inevitability of its linear demise and while not denying the specific context of communist East Central Europe it draws on some parallels on sociology of Yiddish language here and it other places of Jewish world in the second half of XX century.

Download

Beyond Post-Holocaust Trauma Polish Jewish Childhood in Dzierżoniów, Lower Silesia, 1945–1950

Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 36, 2024

Dzierżoniów was one of the largest Jewish settlements in Lower Silesia. Its Jewish population inc... more Dzierżoniów was one of the largest Jewish settlements in Lower Silesia. Its Jewish population included many children, and their paths into adulthood provide a unique perspective on the post-war period in Poland. For young Jews the experience of growing up in Lower Silesia, among relatively strong and pluralistic Jewish communities, was very different from that in the in post-Holocaust landscape of central Poland. It was not
defined mainly by antisemitism, assimilation, or concealing one's Jewish identity, but by a unique mixture of older pre-1945 Jewish traditions and the new post-Holocaust reality, including educational opportunities unavailable to their parents’generation. The long term processes
that affected this generation of Polish Jews in communist Poland,
metropolitanization and professionalization while maintaining a strong Jewish identity, made its members not unlike their counterparts in non-communist centres of the post-Holocaust Jewish world.

Download

Jewish 'Shtadlan' in Communist Poland? A Microstudy of the Historical Continuation and Paradoxes of Jewish Communal Subjectivity

SIMON (Shoah: Intervention. Menthods. Documentation), Vol. 10, No. 3, 2023

This article is a microhistorical study of the activity of Commissar for the Productivisation of ... more This article is a microhistorical study of the activity of Commissar for the Productivisation of the Jewish Population that took place in the Jewish community of Reichenbach/ Dzierżoniów in the years 1946-1947. By studying the activity of communist Jewish Commissar, Simcha Intrator, in the very unique milieu of Dzierżoniów (town in former German territories of which half of the population consisted of Polish Jews in the summer of 1946)this article shows the role of prewar continuations in post-Holocaust Polish Jewish life. As I claim, in the specific social and cultural climate of Dzierżoniów, Simcha Intator, nominated to help to mould the Jewish community according to the communist model, acted against the prerogatives of his institutions, strengthening non-communist, pluralistic elements of local Jewish life. Thus, this article is a microhistorical study of the role of continuation of older norms and traditions in the postwar socio-political subjectivity of the Polish Jewish community.

format_quoteDzierżoniów's Jewish population was significant, constituting half the town in 1946, highlighting a unique cultural revival despite adverse conditions.format_quote

Download

U źródeł Zagłady: nazizm, faszyzm i europejski antysemityzm

Polityka. Pomocnik Historyczny: Opór i Zagłada. 1943. Powstanie w getcie warszawskim Nr 2 , 2023

Download

Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust and the Unexplored Research Perspectives in Studies about the Holocaust in Polish Lands

Studia Litteraria et Historica, No 11 , 2022

By reading Zygmunt Bauman's famous study critically, this text attempts to show how both the bril... more By reading Zygmunt Bauman's famous study critically, this text attempts to show how both the brilliant analyses, observations, and intuitions contained in Modernity and the Holocaust and its errors and distortions can still serve as important guideposts for further studies of the Holocaust in Polish lands and in Central and Eastern Europe even today, some thirty years after publication. What remains absent from our understanding of the Holocaust in this region is a broader and deepened historical perspective, taking into account the preceding decades as well as the challenges of peripheral modernity in this part of Europe and its impact on relations between Christians and Jews both before and during the Holocaust.

Download

Nowoczesność i Zagłada Zygmunta Baumana a brakujące perspektywy badań nad Holokaustem na ziemiach polskich

Studia Litteraria et Historica, No 11, 2022

Poprzez krytyczną lekturę głośnej pracy Zygmunta Baumana staram się pokazać, w jaki sposób błysko... more Poprzez krytyczną lekturę głośnej pracy Zygmunta Baumana staram się pokazać, w jaki sposób błyskotliwe stwierdzenia, obserwacje i intuicje wyrażone w Nowoczesności i Zagładzie, podobnie jak zawarte w niej błędy i przeinaczenia, również dzisiaj, po trzydziestu latach, mogą być istotnym drogowskazem do dalszych badań nad Zagładą na ziemiach polskich i w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej. Tego, czego ciągle brakuje nam w rozumieniu Holokaustu na tych terenach, to jego pogłębionego pojmowania z dłuższej historycznej perspektywy-perspektywy kilku poprzedzających go dekad-oraz z uwzględnieniem kwestii związanych z peryferyjną nowoczesnością tej części Europy i jej wpływem na relacje chrześcijańsko-żydowskie zarówno przed, jak i w trakcie Zagłady.

Download

"A New Life? The pre-Holocaust Past and post-Holocaust Present in the Life of Jewish Community of Dzierżoniów, Lower Silesia, 1945–50"

„Jewish Lives under Communism. New Perspectives”, eds. Kamil Kijek, Katerina Capková, New Brunswick, N.J., 2022, p. 15-34 , 2022

Download

Only Ashes? Jewish Visitors to the New Poland in 1946 and the Future of Polish Jewry

Journal of Modern European History, Vol 20, Issue 1, 2022

In this article, I will take a fresh look at the allegedly universal belief in the immediate post... more In this article, I will take a fresh look at the allegedly universal belief in the immediate postwar period that the Jews had no future in post-Holocaust Poland. While providing new analysis of reports from Poland in 1946 that were written by Jewish travellers from United States, Western Europe and Palestine, my revisionist goal is to problematize and question the concept of the 'Holocaust aftermath.' I seek to demonstrate that the widespread view of postwar Poland as the cemetery of Polish-Jewish civilization in the immediate postwar period did notcontrary to common perceptions todaynecessarily lead to the conclusion that the subsequent marginalization of Polish Holocaust survivors and their departure from Poland was inevitable. This logic of inevitability crystallized only over the course of a couple of years. From 1946 to at least the intensification of the Communist dictatorship in 1948-49, such logic was matched by ambivalence and the cautious belief that a collective Jewish life, centred on national expressions of Jewish identity, was still feasible in Poland.

Download