Poland

Dictionaries for Intermediate & Advanced Readers of Classic Yiddish Literature

Posted on 12 March 2021 by Defending History

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LIMITED SELECTION

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TO PURCHASE:

Solon Beinfeld and Harry Bochner (editors-in-chief), Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary, Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis 2013; [also: online version with registration]

See also its Yiddish-English antecedents:

Alexander Harkavy, Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary (New York 1928 and numerous photomechanical editions (intro to 1988 Yivo edition)

Uriel Weinreich, English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary (New York 1968 and photomechanical editions)

Aaron Bergman, Student’s Dictionary (edited by Itche Goldberg, New York 1968)

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FREE ONLINE:

Yiddish-Yiddish: the four completed volumes of Yudl Mark & Judah A. Joffe, The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language (original prints still findable):

Volume I (N.Y. 1961)   [PDF]

Volume 2 (N.Y. 1966)    [PDF]

Volume 3 (N.Y. & Jerusalem 1971)   [PDF]

Volume 4 (N.Y. & Jerusalem 1980)   [PDF]

Note: Yudl Mark completed the set of index cards through to the end of the Yiddish alphabet. Hopefully these will all be scanned and put on line “as is” on a stable and professional website without “improvement and revision”  but with a maximum of added electronic search capacity.

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Thesaurus:  Nahum Stutchkoff (Nokhem Stutshkov), Oytser fun der yidisher shprakh [Thesaurus of the Yiddish Language] (NY 1950). Original print edition still findable.

Digitized and latinized free online searchable version

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The Semitic (Hebrew and Aramaic) Component in Yiddish:

Yisroel Shteynberg (Israel Steinberg, with the assistance of A. Roykhverger): Hebreízmen in Yidish  (Wroclaw 1949); Recommended for free download as PDF on your device and/or printout (print edition can be purchased from NYBC).

Note: Yisroel Shteynberg (1894-1970), native of Vonsove [Wąsowo], Poland (west of Poznan), poignantly dedicated his dictionary — destined to become the most important for the Semitic component in Yiddish for 21st century Yiddish students worldwide (primarily because of the thousands of full-phrase quotations from masters of modern Yiddish literature assembled over years of painstaking work) — to his father Avrom-Pinkhes, his children Zalmen and Rivke, and his Yiddish school pupils in Rutke ([Rutka], near Lomzhe [Łomża]), in Zaromb [Zareby Koscielne], in nearby Ostrov-Mazovyetsk [Ostrów Mazowiecka], and in Vasilkov ([Wasilków] near Bialystok), all of whom perished in the Holocaust. The author’s rights are asserted in Yiddish, Polish and English.

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for advanced students also:

Yehoyesh and Ch. Spivak, Yidish vérterbukh (NY 1911)   [PDF]

Tsvi-Nisn Golomb, Mílim bilshóyni (Vilna 1910)   [PDF]

Sh. A. Soyfer, Verterbukh (Czernowitz 1920) [PDF]

Nehemiah Pereferkovitsh, Hebreízmen in Yidish (Riga 1929)   [PDF]

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Compiled by Dovid Katz for students in his intermediate and advanced Yiddish literature courses seeking a short, selective list. Various instructors’ selective recommendations for this purpose (reading Yiddish literature) will differ. See what works best for you! This purpose is distinct from the variety of English-Yiddish dictionaries (and many other tools) important for developing active abilities in speaking and writing Yiddish. See the compiler’s in-progress Yiddish Cultural Dictionary: An English-Yiddish Lexicon (free online); and Schaechter & Glasser’s Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary.

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Poland’s New Holocaust Law is Bad — But Not the Worst

Posted on 25 April 2018 by Defending History

OPINION  |  POLAND  |  FREE SPEECH

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by Dovid Katz

in today’s Jewish Currents

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So what happened on January 31st? The new law, adopted by both houses of the Polish parliament and then enacted on March 1st, warns that, “Whoever claims, publicly and contrary to the facts, that the Polish Nation or the Republic of Poland is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich […] or for other felonies that constitute crimes against peace, crimes against humanity or war crimes, or whoever otherwise grossly diminishes the responsibility of the true perpetrators of said crimes […] shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment for up to three years. The sentence shall be made public.”

The law is in some sense an overreaction to some common mischaracterizations of Poland’s role in the Holocaust, starting with the myth that Hitler chose to build concentration camps there because Poland was so antisemitic. He built them there because that is where the Jews were, more than three million of them. Nor did the Nazis generally recruit Poles to do the actual killing of Jews, as was the case in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and (western) Ukraine, among others. There were, to be sure, atrocities committed by Poles, such as the 1941 massacre of the Jews of Jedwabne—powerfully researched and immortalized by Jan Gross in his masterly 2001 book, Neighbors—and the unthinkable pogrom at Kielce, in 1946, just months after the end of the Holocaust.

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Agnieszka Jablonska’s August 2017 Report on Wrocław Jewish Cemetery Now in Public Domain

Posted on 1 February 2018 by Defending History

CEMETERIES  |  HUMAN RIGHTS  |  POLAND  |  CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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VILNIUS—An important factual report on the fate of the old Gwarna Street Jewish cemetery in Wrocław, western Poland, written by a young Judaic Studies scholar in the city, Agnieszka Jablonska, has been circulating among specialists internationally since last August. It was at the time one of the sources noted in Defending History’s editorial on the subject. The report, entitled On Saving Memory: The Jewish Cemetery on Gwarna Street in Wrocław, Poland provides an abstract that summarizes the narrative:

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New Hotel on Top of Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław? A Challenge for Poland’s Jewish-Interest Activists and London’s CPJCE

Posted on 25 August 2017 by Defending History

CEMETERIES  |  HUMAN RIGHTS  |  POLAND  |  CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS   |  CPJCE  |  OPPOSITION TO VILNIUS CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT  |  VILNIUS PETITION

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New Hotel Wroclaw

Logo for the new Hotel Wrocław?

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WROCŁAW—It would be hard to find a better illustration of what is at stake in the current conflict over the fate of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, Lithuania, than the partly analogous scenario playing out here in this western Polish city that was once the German Breslau (Yiddish Brésle), home to a major European Jewish community. The Gwarna Street Cemetery, just opposite the main railway station, was this city’s first Jewish cemetery, in active use from 1760 until 1856. Although closed for new burials in 1856, it was lovingly maintained, and remained open for visitors until World War II. Several thousand people were buried here.

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, CPJCE (London), Human Rights, News & Views, Poland, Politics of Memory, United Kingdom, US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Hotel on Top of Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław? A Challenge for Poland’s Jewish-Interest Activists and London’s CPJCE

Conference on East European Holocaust Opens in Warsaw

Posted on 5 December 2016 by Defending History

Conference in Warsaw, 5–7 December 2016:

Conference Features Omer Bartov, Christoph Dieckmann, Dan Michman, Antony Polonsky, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Saulius Sužiedėlis, Rūta Vanagaitė, Efraim Zuroff, and Other Major Specialists on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe

Expectations rising that the Lithuanian government sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” (three of whose members are speaking) may now publicly call for (1) research (and acknowledgment of extant research and testimony) on massive “pre-German violence” in dozens of towns in the last week of June 1941; (2) written state apologies to defamed Holocaust survivors Yitzhak Arad, Fania Brantsovsky, Pinchos Fridberg, Rachel Margolis and Joseph Melamed; (3) dismantling of public-space shrines, street names, university lecture halls etc that honor Holocaust collaborators; (4) repeal of the 2010 “red-brown jailtime law” that effectively criminalizes free debate;  (5) abandonment of official adherence to 2008 Prague Declaration (and acknowledgment of the need for consideration also of the points made in the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration).

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2016 Deterioration of Holocaust History and of Freedom of Speech in Poland

Posted on 2 September 2016 by Defending History

[UPDATED]

2 Sept 2016: Forward Exposes Rapid Deterioration of Free Speech and Academic Research on the Holocaust in Poland

1 August 2016: Dozens of Scholars of Polish Jewish History Publish a Bold and Historic Open Letter on Polish Government’s Distortions of History on Jedwabne and Kielce

Suspense rising on ultimate decision of master Brandeis scholar Antony Polonsky, who some think may have been manipulated by Lithuanian state honors in that country’s Holocaust politics

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Dr. Tomasz Wiśniewski, Polish Documentary Film Maker and Judaica Specialist at Vilnius Rothschild Conference, Speaks Out on Fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 9 November 2015 by Defending History

CEMETERIES    OPPOSITION    PAPER TRAIL    ROTHSCHILD     DH SECTION     EU ASPECTS

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VILNIUS—Polish scholar, author, film maker and Jewish heritage specialist Dr. Tomasz (Tomek) Wiśniewski is renowned as a world specialist on the culture and remnants of numerous erstwhile centers of East European Jewish life, most famously Białystok (in Poland, but in Jewish culture within the Litvak north of Jewish Eastern Europe). He was a delegate at last month’s Rothschild Foundation London (Hanadiv) conference on Jewish cemeteries, held here in Vilnius. Following the event, he issued a statement on his Facebook page concerning the fate of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, known as Piramónt, in today’s Šnipiškės district. A slightly revised version was translated from Polish by Julius Norwilla and the translation approved by the author. It reads as follows:

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory, Rothschild Foundation Europe (Hanadiv): Lithuanian Issues | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Dr. Tomasz Wiśniewski, Polish Documentary Film Maker and Judaica Specialist at Vilnius Rothschild Conference, Speaks Out on Fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Vilnius Genocide Center Releases a New Graywash on the Vilna Ghetto

Posted on 19 November 2013 by Defending History

B O O K S    /    O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

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The unfortunate and wasteful campaign of Holocaust obfuscation waged by certain East European state institutions continues apace. The level of investment continues to strike outsiders as puzzling, given current economic and cultural issues and the younger population’s clear focus on the future and a better life for all in the new and multicultural European Union. Here in Lithuania, the first victims of the government’s (rather Soviet-style) “genocide industry” are the hard-working people of the country who deserve more judicious disbursement of their nation’s resources. The state-sponsored Genocide Center has just released three simultaneous editions (English, Lithuanian and Russian) of a new book on the Vilna Ghetto by historian Arūnas Bubnys, its own “director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Department.”

 Dr. Bubnys is also a member of the state-sponsored “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania” (known for short as the “red-brown commission”). He was one of a minority of members of the Commission who refused to sign the (in the opinion of some, inadequate) letter of 14 October 2013 to Dr. Yitzhak Arad.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Books, Double Games, Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, EU, Genocide Center (Vilnius), History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai) | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vilnius Genocide Center Releases a New Graywash on the Vilna Ghetto

English Translation of the Lithuanian Text on the Vilna Ghetto Provided by the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania…

Posted on 18 October 2013 by Defending History

The following is an English translation, by Geoff Vasil, from the original Lithuanian text that appears on the website of the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania concerning the Vilna Ghetto, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of its liquidation on September 23, 1943.

In an important article that appeared in Lithuanian in Bernardinai.lt, and in English in the Lithuania Tribune, author Sergejus Kanovičius pointed out the remarkable disparity of tone between the Lithuanian version on the Chief Archivist’s website (that appears below in English translation), and the English version provided on the Chief Archivist’s website…

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The Unwritten Biography of Jonas Žemaitis: A Tale of Twists and Turns

Posted on 6 June 2013 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

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The modern Republic of Lithuania has been creating a cult of the partisans. Statues are built to memorialize them. There are commemorative plaques and streets are named after them, as well as schools. One of the most prominent to be hallowed by the cult is Jonas Žemaitis, also called Vytautas, Luke, Matthew, the Silent and general as well as president. His biography is a tapestry of events and adventures. One could write an adventure novel about them, except that… Žemaitis isn’t necessarily a hero.

Zemaitis Military Academy

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Double Genocide, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Genocide Center (Vilnius), News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on The Unwritten Biography of Jonas Žemaitis: A Tale of Twists and Turns

“ISTME” Conference Slated for Cracow in September is Funded under EU’s “Science and Technology”

Posted on 3 June 2013 by Defending History

Newest Word for Holocaust Revisionism in Eurospeak? “ISTME” (pronounced Is-it-me?) comes under “Science and Technology”

Is the EU Again being manipulated by “Double Genocide”? Are fine scholars again unwittingly instrumentalized for DG?

More red-equals-brown movement dissemination, now via “Science and Technology”? Orwellian concoctions to downgrade the Holocaust and stifle debate  have included: “Reconciliation of European Histories”, “Platform of European Memory”, “principle of non-discrimination of victimhood” and now, under “European cooperation in science and technology” a possibly brand new “Euro-classic”: In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME)…

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Red-Brown “Platform” Runs Another Double Genocide Conference — in Warsaw…

Posted on 16 May 2013 by Defending History

Another EU Supported Lopsided “Double Genocide” Conference, This Time — in Warsaw (14-15 May 2013), Courtesy of the Red-Brown “Platform”

 

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2013 Started on Wrong Note in Capitals of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania

Posted on 31 January 2013 by Defending History

WARSAW:  Statue of “Praying Hitler” is unveiled in the Warsaw Ghetto. Reports in the Guardian, Daily Mail, Huffington Post.

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Antony Polonsky Returns to Brandeis ‘Knighted’ by Lithuanian President’s Cross of the Officer of the Order — for helping the Baltic State’s Holocaust PR Campaign

Posted on 27 January 2012 by Defending History

C O M M E N T

With the president: Professor Antony Polonsky wearing the Cross of the Officer of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. Photo: Džoja Barysaitė

VILNIUS—Professor Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University, one of the world’s most accomplished scholars of Polish-Jewish history and the long time editor of the seminal Polish Jewish history series Polin, was at the Lithuanian president’s palace today to receive from her excellency the prestigious Cross of the Officer of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. The award, pinned on his chest by President Dalia Grybauskaitė, was not for a lifetime of sterling work on Polish Jewish history, but it seemed, for several years’ staunch and perhaps somewhat naive loyalty to the public relations program of the current government of Lithuania, organized by the local Holocaust revisionism elite’s alleged top handler of “important foreign Jews,” Prof. S.arunas Liekis. The presidential press release, reported in English by Baltic News Service (BNS), put it this way:

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory, Symbology, United States, US State Dept Manipulated?, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Antony Polonsky Returns to Brandeis ‘Knighted’ by Lithuanian President’s Cross of the Officer of the Order — for helping the Baltic State’s Holocaust PR Campaign

Why I am Translating Rozka Korczak’s Vilna Ghetto Memoir

Posted on 10 December 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Evaldas Balčiūnas

The Vilna Ghetto memoir of Rozka Korczak-Marlé (1921–1988) is unfortunately completely unknown to Lithuanians today. I have therefore decided to translate the book into Lithuanian (from the Russian edition that Korczak herself edited), and have published two samples, here and here, on Anarchija.lt.

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Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe reviews Timothy Snyder’s ‘Bloodlands’

Posted on 9 August 2011 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe (Berlin)

Review of Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books: New York 2010. This review first appeared in German in H-Soz-u-Kult (online version here; PDF here). This English version and publication in DefendingHistory.com are by authorization of the author and H-Soz-u-Kult, which has kindly supplied the following copyright notice: Copyright © 2011 by H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact H-SOZ-U-KULT@H-NET.MSU.EDU.

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Obfuscationists planning Vilnius Holocaust Museum miles away from the City Center

Posted on 17 April 2011 by Defending History

Rumors are flying in the Lithuanian capital about plans to induce foreign institutions and governments to support the building of  a new Holocaust Museum at  the mass-murder site Ponár (Paneriai), where no unsuspecting tourist or visitor to Vilnius would ever see it, more than six miles out of town, unless they have prior special interest that would motivate the hiring of a taxi for that purpose.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Double Genocide, Museums, News & Views, Poland, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai) | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Obfuscationists planning Vilnius Holocaust Museum miles away from the City Center

Foreign Ministry’s Crack-Team Holocaust-event Professors Heading for Warsaw

Posted on 10 April 2011 by Defending History

Professors Saulius Sužiedėlis (Millersville University, Pennsylvania) and Šarūnas Liekis (Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Vilnius University, Vytautas Magnus University, etc), two excellent historians with impressive track records, have again been engaged by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry to present a Holocaust program abroad for foreign consumption.

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Polish Ambassador to Lithuania HE Janusz Skolimowski Speaks Out Boldly on Latest Holocaust Denial

Posted on 20 January 2011 by Defending History

VILNIUS—The following is the text of HE Polish ambassador Janusz Skolimowski’s 26 November letter in Veidas, which the ambassador copied to Lithuania’s Minister of the Interior. This authorized English translation was kindly provided to Defending History by the Embassy of Poland here. The letter followed one by seven other ambassadors regarding the same events in Lithuania.

 

From: Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Vilnius
To: Editor-in-Chief of the weekly magazine “Veidas”

For the attention of: Mr. Raimundas Palaitis, Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania

Concerns: Article of Petras Stankeras dated November 14th, 2010:
“The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg — the biggest legal farce in history”

Dear Mr. Editor-in-Chief,

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Polish Embassy Releases English Text of Ambassador’s Letter

Posted on 20 December 2010 by Defending History

The Polish Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, today released to DefendingHistory.com the authorized English text of the letter which Ambassador Janusz Skolimowski had published in Veidas, on 26 November 2010, in relation to the Stankeras Affair and Holocaust Denial more generally; it was issued one day after the letter from seven European ambassadors to Lithuania’s leaders.

The English text of Ambassador Skolimowski’s letter is posted here.

It is hoped that release of the Polish ambassador’s letter will make it easier for release to be authorized of the seven other ambassadors’ letter, of 25 November, 2010, as recently proposed in the Commons by MP Denis MacShane.

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