Triumph and Tragedy: Journeying Through 1000 Years of Jewish Life in Poland, compiled by Joel Padowitz, J Roots (c) 2013, ISBN 978-1-937887-06-3, 264 pages including endnotes.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — Essentially this is a Jewish guide book to Poland. The “triumph” portion focuses on the great rabbis and writers who preceded the Nazi era, while the “tragedy” portion relates Poland’s Holocaust history in considerable detail.
The book is well-researched, clearly written, containing sufficient detail to provide the flavor of Polish places, history and personalities, yet not so packed with facts and dates as to overwhelm the senses. Intended as a companion volume for students who travel to Poland on J*Roots tours, it is also valuable for the general public interested in a primer about Poland.
What may not be general knowledge is that Poland once was a haven for Jews who were escaping the prejudice, discrimination and inquisitions of Western Europe. But as Jews competed commercially against other Poles, and as churches fanned the fires of anti-Semitism, pogroms became a recurring theme in the Polish Jewish experience, eventually climaxed by the Holocaust.
It is perhaps galling that Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi mass murderer, rates more “ink” in this book than does writer I.L Peretz, or even the founder of the Chassidic movement, the Baal Shem Tov. However, the sad fact of it is that Eichmann had a tremendous impact on Jewish history in Poland, evil and perverse thought it was.
Telling the story of Poland without Eichmann and other Nazis would be like trying to tell the story of Purim without mentioning Haman. Alas, it can’t be done.
As good as this book is as a reference, the sorry thing about Polish history — from early times on — was that as far as the Jews were concerned, there was a lot more tragedy than triumph.
As one who constantly reads European Jewish history, both in non-fiction and in novels, I am glad to have this handbook with its capsule descriptions of the Jewish experience in various Polish cities, and its biographical summaries of those people, for better or worse, who were important in Jewish history.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com