In Dialogue: Polish-Jewish Relations during the Interwar Period

Lecture & Conversation Co-presented by Columbia University, Fordham University, and the YIVO Institute Admission: Free

Venue: McNally Amphitheater | 140 West 62nd Street | Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University | New York, NY 10023

In 1918, after over 120 years under the rule of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, Poland returned on the European map. Its return came amidst discussions about the new Poland’s national identity and the place ethnic groups now played in Polish society. Samuel Kassow (Trinity College) and Paul Brykczyński (University of Michigan) will discuss Polish and Jewish society and culture, contested questions about Polish-Jewish relations of this period, the cultural, political, and ideological transformations, including nationalism and antisemitism in the aftermath of World War I, and the eve of World War II.

About the Speakers

Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, and is recognized as one of the world's leading scholars on the Holocaust and the Jews of Poland. Kassow was born in 1946 in a DP-camp in Stuttgart, Germany and grew up speaking Yiddish. Kassow attended the London School of Economics and Princeton University where he earned a PhD in 1976 with a study about students and professors in Tsarist Russia. He is widely known for his 2007 book, Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Indiana University Press). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, has won numerous awards, and has lectured widely.

Paul Brykczyński is an independent historian, whose interests include nationalism, antisemitism, and radical politics, in Eastern Europe and beyond. His first book, Primed for Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland, won the Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies. The Polish translation of the book was recently awarded the prestigious POLITYKA Prize for the best first book on modern Polish history. Paul has also published scholarly articles on topics including nationalism, comparative history, and the relationship between religions and politics, in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He received an MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and a PhD in History from the University of Michigan.