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Copyright of Komunikaty Mazursko-Warminskie is the property of Komunikaty Mazursko-Warminskie and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper undertakes the topic of racism and its moral evaluation by the Church’s Magisterium. It begins with an inductive study which consists in a lexical analysis of selected texts of the Church’s Magisterium and papal encyclicals aimed at tracing the topics of race and racism. The study has shown that although not numerous, the documents addressing this issue are very significant. The paper additionally reviews selected definitions of racism. Finally, the author makes an attempt to interpret the phenomenon of racism and provides a theological proposal to overcome this problem in a theoretical and definitional sense. The article is a contribution to further research and exploration.

Ryszard Ganszyniec, an outstanding classicist, professor at the Jan Kazimierz University in the years 1920-1939 and, on and off, until 1946, as one of a few academic lecturers, openly opposed the growing wave of antisemitism among Polish students in interwar Lviv. His readings inspired by events at universities - the introduction of the so-called numerus clausus principle and of the bench ghetto in the thirties - were published in the form of two extensive brochures: The case of "numerus clausus" and its fundamental meaning. Academic antisemitism as a symptom of social antisemitism (1925) and Bench Ghetto (1937). The author did not only expose the low motives and methods of Polish nationalists. As a discerning humanist, he spoke on the principles of coexistence of two nations, Poles and Jews, in the new conditions of the resurgent Polish State after 123 years of political dependence. Despite the increasing acts of violence against Jewish youth, inspired mainly by the All-Polish Youth (beatings and even murders in the 1930s), and the passive, quiet consent of the majority of professors, Ganszyniec dealt with the phenomenon of numerus claususus on ethical, religious, economic and sociological levels. He reminded zealous Catholic nationalists of the Jewish origin of Christ. He juxtaposed the industriousness and austerity of Jews with the ineptitude of Poles, particularly visible in trade. He warned that attempts to transform the Polish nation into a politically and ethnically uniform formation would never succeed. He proved that privileging Polish students at universities leads them to laziness and strengthens their demanding attitudes. The bench ghetto, introduced by force during lectures, would begin to isolate Jewish shops, services, houses, and create places of retreat for this nation similar to the German concentration camps already existing at that time. Ganszyniec predicted that the Jews would be followed by communists, socialists, peasant activists and the entire opposition, until finally the single party system would take over, for which the Constitution would be only a "piece of paper". The scholar saw the bench ghetto as a dangerous element in the nazification of society. One of the greatest weaknesses of Polish chauvinists, as he saw it, was the lack of any arguments for the alleged superiority of the "Polish race". He easily proved the superiority of Jewish merits over those of Poles in building world cultural heritage. The postulates of the Lviv classicist, which made him many enemies, could not influence the situation at Polish universities on the eve of the Second World War, when two totalitarian systems were tightening around the Republic of Poland: Nazi and Stalinist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture Context / Konteksty Kultury is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyses Catholic discourse on Jews in the Polish Jesuit monthly Przegląd Powszechny between 1884 and 1939. The periodical shows continuity in the Catholic ‘anti- -Judaic' narrative represented by the authors. Catholic anti-Judaism in this publication is defined through four arguments: Jews lost their position as the chosen nation by their rejection of Christ; due to this, they are not heirs to Biblical tradition; Jewish morality is significantly lower than the Christian one; and Jews are a ‘destructive element' in Christian societies, thus their isolation in these societies is necessary. The thesis of the ‘lower morality' of Jews appears central to the Jesuit discourse, however it is backed more by sociological than theological arguments. Incidentally, we can trace racist elements in this Jesuit publication, but more often the authors condemned Jews on moral grounds, as a ‘destructive element' in Christian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture Context / Konteksty Kultury is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The main theme of the text is the wartime and postwar history of the area of the German Nazi extermination camp Treblinka II, seen from the perspective of the production of landscape – with a special focus on the identity aspect, i.e. the nationalization of nature and the naturalization of the nation. The argument refers to imaging conventions of nature and ethnographic photography, like the German Heimatphotographie and the Polish Fatherland Photography, that go along with landscape production. This paper also touches upon the issue of classification as the principle organizing the workings of the human mind as well as the uses made of classification in terms of cognition and identity – up to and including the deadly consequences thereof. Another crucial point of reference is the history of the herbarium as a form of organizing knowledge (Maria Sibylla Merian, Rosa Luxemburg, Szymon Syreński) and its connections with the visual arts (Krzysztof Jung, Alina Szapocznikow). The rich iconography illustrates the analyzed representation patterns, with particular focus on the axiosemiotics of Polish antisemitism, going back to its elitist forms in Jagiellonian Poland. The text summarizes fifteen years of the author’s work on Herbarium, a photographic project carried out on the site of the former German Nazi extermination camp Treblinka II.

The aim of the paper is to provide evidence for the claim that the Polish word ‘Żyd’ and its derivatives as used with reference to the “chosen people” taking part in the events described in the Bible is a linguistic anachronism. The word in its present graphic and phonetic shape had not come into existence before Middle Ages. As an anachronism it is inappropriate in the context of biblical events. Yet, it occurs not only in the language of contemporary Jewish people but also as an accepted term in biblical and Judaic studies. The article contains a number of examples of anachronistic Polish versions of the Bible. One can venture the claim that the anachronism in question significantly contributes to maintaining anti-Semitic attitudes, especially among certain groups of contemporary Christians.

Tuwim’s approach to the “Jewish question” has already been analyzed by Polish and foreign scholars. The article is intended to consider some “survival strategies” of the Polish poet from a slightly different angle. In Poland, in the period between the wars Jewish writers were persuaded to accept total polonization and a rejection of their ethnic identity; yet, at the same time they often suffered a rejection from the circles of Polish artists. Any attempt of highlighting their Jewish identity or even a slight interest in Jewish culture incited brutal Jew-bashings. Tuwim considered his being a Polish Jew not only as a fact to be proud of, but also as an opportunity for engaging with self-criticism. He painfully felt the Jewish question as “a powerful wedge cleaving [his own] worldview”. However, like many other Polish-Jewish writers he masked its enduring presence in his own psyche, constructing his public persona through a process of self-fashioning. This paper tries to follow the traces of this “wedge” in Tuwim’s works: from poems supposedly having nothing to do with the “Jewish question”, to encrypted allusions to the great Yiddish writers, from his relentless questioning of all forms of intolerance and nationalist rhetoric, to his conviction that a new poetic language could “reform the world” and become a homeland for all readers regardless of their nationality.

An introduction is presented noting the theme of the entire December 2008 issue of the journal "Kwartalnik Historii Żydów"--namely, the Polish political crisis of March 1968 and anti-Semitism (as revealed in papers presented at the March 5, 2008, Warsaw (Poland) conference, "Antecedencje Marca '68").