Overview

This book offers a study of the Jewish community in Kielce and its environs during World War II and the Holocaust. It is the first of its kind in providing a comprehensive account of Kielce's Jews and their history as victims under the German occupation. The book focuses in particular on Jewish-Polish relations in the Kielce region; the deportation of the Jews of Kielce and its surrounding areas to the Treblinka death camp; the difficulties faced by those attempting to help and save them; and daily life in the Small Ghetto from September 1942 until late May 1943.

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9781644694596

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Reviews

Sara Bender's In Enemy Land: The Jews of Kielce and the Region, 1939-1946, appears at a time when Holocaust history is under new pressures. These pressures are most evident in Poland, where a nationalist government has seen fit - and has largely failed - to limit certain kinds of Holocaust-related terminology if it ascribes guilt to Poles during wartime. ... Bender's carefully researched and tightly focused study of Kielce and its environs is not directly engaged with these discussions until its concluding chapter. But Kielce, as is well known, was the site, in the spring of 1946, of the worst postwar pogrom in liberated Poland. Like the wartime events in the smaller northern town of Jedwabne, the events at Kielce, in which 47 Holocaust survivors were murdered in mob violence, remain a flashpoint in any postwar account of Polish-Jewish relations. --Norman Ravvin, Canadian Jewish News --Norman Ravvin Canadian Jewish News Most [researchers] believe it necessary to study the Holocaust in Kielce to understand Polish-Jewish relations afterward. Sara Bender, a renowned Holocaust scholar and long-time professor of Jewish history at the University of Haifa, shares this conviction and devotes her book primarily to the Holocaust in the region. Her description of the murder of the Jews of Kielce by the Germans and their local helpers is so terrifying that writing a review of her text almost feels wrong. There is no doubt: thousands had been murdered in Kielce or sent from there to be murdered, and the details Bender provides highlight the magnitude of the crime. --Piotr J. Wrobel, University of Toronto, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Sara Bender's In Enemy Land: The Jews of Kielce and the Region, 1939-1946, appears at a time when Holocaust history is under new pressures. These pressures are most evident in Poland, where a nationalist government has seen fit - and has largely failed - to limit certain kinds of Holocaust-related terminology if it ascribes guilt to Poles during wartime. ... Bender's carefully researched and tightly focused study of Kielce and its environs is not directly engaged with these discussions until its concluding chapter. But Kielce, as is well known, was the site, in the spring of 1946, of the worst postwar pogrom in liberated Poland. Like the wartime events in the smaller northern town of Jedwabne, the events at Kielce, in which 47 Holocaust survivors were murdered in mob violence, remain a flashpoint in any postwar account of Polish-Jewish relations. -Norman Ravvin, Canadian Jewish News -- Norman Ravvin * Canadian Jewish News * Most [researchers] believe it necessary to study the Holocaust in Kielce to understand Polish-Jewish relations afterward. Sara Bender, a renowned Holocaust scholar and long-time professor of Jewish history at the University of Haifa, shares this conviction and devotes her book primarily to the Holocaust in the region. Her description of the murder of the Jews of Kielce by the Germans and their local helpers is so terrifying that writing a review of her text almost feels wrong. There is no doubt: thousands had been murdered in Kielce or sent from there to be murdered, and the details Bender provides highlight the magnitude of the crime. -Piotr J. Wrobel, University of Toronto, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Sara Bender's In Enemy Land: The Jews of Kielce and the Region, 1939-1946, appears at a time when Holocaust history is under new pressures. These pressures are most evident in Poland, where a nationalist government has seen fit - and has largely failed - to limit certain kinds of Holocaust-related terminology if it ascribes guilt to Poles during wartime. ... Bender's carefully researched and tightly focused study of Kielce and its environs is not directly engaged with these discussions until its concluding chapter. But Kielce, as is well known, was the site, in the spring of 1946, of the worst postwar pogrom in liberated Poland. Like the wartime events in the smaller northern town of Jedwabne, the events at Kielce, in which 47 Holocaust survivors were murdered in mob violence, remain a flashpoint in any postwar account of Polish-Jewish relations. - Norman Ravvin, CanadianJewish News

Author Information

Sara Bender is Professor at the Department of Jewish History of the University of Haifa. Her studies compare the histories of the Jewish communities in Poland and Eastern Europe during World War II and the Holocaust, focusing on Poland and subjects such as Jewish resistance, relations with Poles in towns and villages, forced labor camps in the Radom district, and Jewish life among partisan units in Lithuania and west Belorussia. Her book The Jews in Bialystok during World War II and the Holocaust was published by Brandeis University Press in 2008.

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