Emblems of Adversity

From many quarters, Polish observers report a powerful interest in Jews throughout their country. Media attention is palpable, publications multiply, building projects extend from monuments to restorations and Jewish tourism is booming. Beginning in the 1980s with public debates about the Holocaust, and intensifying after the fall of communism with efforts to recover a suppressed history, journalists, artists, academics, Catholic clerics and politicians of many stripes have been steeped in a post-1989 inquiry about how Jews should fit into the narratives of Polish society. Centrally at issue are questions of pluralism, Polish national identity and how Poles should envision their country’s future. Accompanying this interest is the exploration of Poland’s linkages with the wider world, an affinity excluded in the Soviet era. Jews have prominently joined this conversation—not just the tiny but articulate remnants of Polish Jewry inside Poland, but also Jews from abroad, many of...