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From fleeing the Warsaw Ghetto and living underground to fighting for social justice in 1960s’ Seattle and helping smash the communist system in 1980s’ Poland, this is a narrative that erupts into critical moments in Jewish, Polish, and American history. It is also a story of the hidden anguish that accompanies and courses through that history, of the living haunted by the dead. The story is told through a conversation, often contentious, between Michael Steinlauf, historian of Polish-Jewish culture and child of Holocaust survivors, and the anthropologist and artist Elżbieta Janicka. It is illustrated with scores of photographs and documents.
Michael Steinlauf is the author of Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust as well as numerous studies of Jewish culture in prewar Poland. He was one of the founders of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Currently he is completing studies of the Polish Jewish dramatist Mark Arnshteyn and the Yiddish culture hero Y. L. Peretz.
Elżbieta Janicka is a literary scholar and visual artist. She is the author of Sztuka czy Naród? [Art or Nation?] and Festung Warschau, exposing violence and exclusion embedded in Polish dominant culture, as well as numerous studies of Polish antisemitism. Most recently she co-authored Philosemitic Violence. Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).
1. Poland, 1980s
2. Columbia, 1960s
3. Seattle, first half of the 1970s
4. Brighton Beach, 1950s
5. Brandeis, 1979-88
6. Bondage to the Dead, first time around
7. Bondage to the Dead, second time around
8. Moses, Moyshe, Michał, Maryś, Michel, Michael first time around
9. Moses, Moyshe, Michał, Maryś, Michel, Michael second time around
10. Postscripts
Acknowledgements