(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)June 20, 2016

(MAHWAH, NJ) –Dr. Joshua D. Zimmerman, Professor of History and the Eli and Diana Zborowski Professorial Chair in Holocaust Studies at Yeshiva University in New York, spoke about his recent book The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945 on March 9. The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies sponsored the event.

Dr. Zimmerman examined one of the central problems in the history of Polish-Jewish relations: the attitude and the behavior of the Polish Underground – the resistance organization loyal to the Polish government-in-exile – toward the Jews during World War II. Using a variety of archival documents, testimonies, and memoirs, Zimmerman provided a careful, dispassionate narrative, arguing that the reaction of the Polish Underground to the catastrophe that befell European Jewry was immensely varied, ranging from aggressive aid to acts of murder.

By analyzing the military, civilian, and political wings of the Polish Underground and offering portraits of the organization’s main leaders, his book is the first full-length scholarly monograph in any language to provide a thorough examination of the Polish Underground’s attitude and behavior towards the Jews during the entire period of World War II. For its readability as well as its scholarly and dispassionate approach, the book has won wide praise around the world, including in Poland.

Not surprisingly, a lively discussion followed Dr. Zimmerman’s talk. Some participants questioned his even-handedness, which they saw as ignoring the anti-Semitism of the Home Army (the largest and most nationalist component of the resistance). The problem, as Zimmerman pointed out, was the change in leadership emanating from the London government-in-exile. The other, perhaps more important, factor was the changing course of the war in which the threat of an impending Soviet liberation loomed larger than the German occupation.

Dr. Zimmerman received his Ph.D. in comparative history from Brandeis University. He also holds an M.A.in History from the University of California at Los Angeles and a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. His interests include East European Jewish history, modern Europe and Russia/Eastern Europe, and nationalism.

In addition to The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), he is also the author of Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004) and the editor of two contributed volumes: Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and its Aftermath (2003) and Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945 (2005).  He has also published scholarly articles in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, East European Jewish Affairs, and Jewish Political Studies Review.

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