Overview

"""""What! Still Alive?!"""" offers a powerful and deeply affecting examination of the complex memories of Jewish survivors returning to their homes in Poland after the Holocaust. These survivors left unparalleled testimonies of their first impressions with the Jewish historical commissions from 1944 to 1950. As many survivors found they were no longer welcome by their Polish neighbors, they chose to settle in the new state of Israel. Again, these surviving Jews left testimonies describing their postwar returns. In """"What! Still Alive?!,"""" Rice investigates the transformation of survivors’ memories from the first account after their initial return to Poland and later accounts, recorded at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem between 1955 and 1970. Through close readings of these firsthand narratives, Rice traces the ways in which the passage of time and a changing geopolitical context influenced the survivors’ memories."

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9780815635536

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Reviews

This extremely moving and path-breaking work seeks to investigate the creation of the Jewish collective memory of the Holocaust and of the fate of those in Poland who survived the attempted Nazi genocide of the Jews.... the author's understanding of and empathy with the survivors in the tragic dilemmas they faced shines through....a remarkable and sophisticated work.--Antony Polonsky author of Abraham Lewin's A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, winner of the Joseph and Edith Sunlight Literary Prize Rice's original work deals with the trauma and memory of Polish Jewish survivors and engages with the scholarly literature pertaining to Polish-Jewish relations during and after the Holocaust. In the context of work that has already been published, this work raises questions that have not yet been explored...thought-provoking.--Natalia Aleksiun Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History at Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro College Monika Rice has written a well-researched and thoughtful book, a real contribution to Holocaust studies. Highly recommended.--Jan T. Gross Princeton University Monika Rice has delved deeply into the complex processes that shape human recollection over time. Her research sheds important light on how social experience and political context contribute to the shaping of memory.--David Engel Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies, New York University A fascinating, often very moving study of how Jewish Holocaust survivors remembered coming home at war's end to find only traces of annihilated Jewish communities. Historian Rice (Seton Hall Univ.) focuses on how Jewish and Israeli popular historical memory was formed through the process of recollection in thousands of written survivor testimonies collected in Poland and Israel in the immediate aftermath of the German defeat, the rise of a communist Poland, and the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel....Rice explores the processes of memory of traumatic events among survivors. Very highly recommended.--R. M. Shapiro, Brooklyn College CHOICE

Monika Rice has written a well-researched and thoughtful book, a real contribution to Holocaust studies. Highly recommended.--Jan T. Gross Princeton University

Monika Rice has delved deeply into the complex processes that shape human recollection over time. Her research sheds important light on how social experience and political context contribute to the shaping of memory.--David Engel Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies, New York University

Author Information

Monika Rice teaches courses in Catholic studies and Jewish-Christian studies at Seton Hall University.

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