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Jews in Oświęcim, 1918-1941
This book by Lucyna Filip, from the staff of the Archives at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, has been published as Juden in Oświęcim 1918-1941. It is an expanded German version of her Żydzi w Oświęcimiu 1918-1941, published in 2003.
The book describes the Jewish community of pre-war Oświęcim: its religious, social-political, cultural, and economic life, as well as its tragic fate at the beginning of the Nazi occupation, including the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation, resettlement in ghettoes, and deportation to Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
In addition to numerous period and contemporary photographs, the book features numerous annexes, including lists of synagogues, rabbis, Jews buried in the cemetery, and names of deportees to the Sosnowiec ghetto. The German addition includes new material on the postwar fate of the Oświęcim Jews.
Juden in Oświęcim 1918-1941, Lucyna Filip, Wydawnictwo Scientia, 2005, 348 pp.
Lucyna Filip was born in Oświęcim and is a graduate in history of the Silesian University in Katowice. She has worked for years as an adjunct in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim. She has published in Wprost, Śląsk, Dziennik Zachodni, Dziennik Polski, Pro Memoria, and the Auschwitz Information bulletin of the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. She translates from German, and held a fellowship in a Tempus project (Civil Society and Social Change after Auschwitz) at the Carl v. Ossietzky University in Oldenburgu. Lucyna Filip is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation/Jewish Education Center in Oświęcim.
Żydzi w Oświęcimiu 1918-1941 is the first study in Polish of the history of Jews in Oświęcim.
“Lucyna Filip’s book is an important contribution to knowledge about the Oświęcim Jewish community, which has great significance because of the place where that community existed. This thorough study makes it possible to compare the history of the Oświęcim Jews to that of similar communities in Galicia, and in the Second Polish Republic as a whole. The author’s meticulous use of original sources is particularly noteworthy.”
-- Professor Ryszard Kaczmarek (Silesian University in Katowice)
“Lucyna Filip presents in detail the cultural, economic, and political life of the city’s Jews in the period between the wars. . . . The number of names and individuals that emerge from anonymity show that the Jewish history in Europe is not only a history of victims but, primarily, the history of a dignified, rich, and vital culture.”
-- From the introduction to the German edition by Professor Werner Bold (Carl v. Ossietzky University in Oldenburg).
