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""Reading not only for sociological data but to excavate the assumptions and understandings common to a generation's social imagination, Kijek has produced, at one level, an endlessly rich, wideranging, and insightful ethnographic reconstruction of the lives and hopes of the Jewish generation that came of age in the 1930s. If that were all he had accomplished, that in itself would be enough to merit the wide attention the book will surely receive. But add to that the fact that it makes not one but by my count five major arguments about the trajectory of Polish Jewish political, religious, social, and cultural history in the 1930s, and this a work that nobody working on modern Jewish history can ignore.""—Kenneth B. Moss, author of An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland ""By examining a treasure trove of documents—a huge collection of first-hand accounts written by Jewish youth in the 1930s as part of an essay competition— Kamil Kijek is able to show a fascinating contradiction. On the one hand, these texts reinforce the aforementioned pessimism and even despair. On the other hand, the people writing those documents were deeply embedded in a Polish-language culture, often to the point of being able to write only in Polish. . . . Kijek explores a community that was inexorably trending towards linguistic acculturation because of all the familiar forces of modernization (urbanization, a universal educational curriculum, mass popular culture), even as the politics of nationalism created a deepening chasm between each ethnic group.""—Brian Porter-Szucs, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom

""Reading not only for sociological data but to excavate the assumptions and understandings common to a generation's social imagination, Kijek has produced, at one level, an endlessly rich, wideranging, and insightful ethnographic reconstruction of the lives and hopes of the Jewish generation that came of age in the 1930s. If that were all he had accomplished, that in itself would be enough to merit the wide attention the book will surely receive. But add to that the fact that it makes not one but by my count five major arguments about the trajectory of Polish Jewish political, religious, social, and cultural history in the 1930s, and this a work that nobody working on modern Jewish history can ignore.""—Kenneth B. Moss, author of An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland ""By examining a treasure trove of documents – a huge collection of first-hand accounts written by Jewish youth in the 1930s as part of an essay competition – Kamil Kijek is able to show a fascinating contradiction. On the one hand, these texts reinforce the aforementioned pessimism and even despair. On the other hand, the people writing those documents were deeply embedded in a Polish-language culture, often to the point of being able to write only in Polish. . . . Kijek explores a community that was inexorably trending towards linguistic acculturation because of all the familiar forces of modernization (urbanization, a universal educational curriculum, mass popular culture), even as the politics of nationalism created a deepening chasm between each ethnic group.""—Brian Porter-Szucs, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom

""Reading not only for sociological data but to excavate the assumptions and understandings common to a generation's social imagination, Kijek has produced, at one level, an endlessly rich, wideranging, and insightful ethnographic reconstruction of the lives and hopes of the Jewish generation that came of age in the 1930s. If that were all he had accomplished, that in itself would be enough to merit the wide attention the book will surely receive. But add to that the fact that it makes not one but by my count five major arguments about the trajectory of Polish Jewish political, religious, social, and cultural history in the 1930s, and this a work that nobody working on modern Jewish history can ignore.""—Kenneth B. Moss, author of An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland ""By examining a treasure trove of documents – a huge collection of first-hand accounts written by Jewish youth in the 1930s as part of an essay competition – Kamil Kijek is able to show a fascinating contradiction. On the one hand, these texts reinforce the aforementioned pessimism and even despair. On the other hand, the people writing those documents were deeply embedded in a Polish-language culture, often to the point of being able to write only in Polish. . . . Kijek explores a community that was inexorably trending towards linguistic acculturation because of all the familiar forces of modernization (urbanization, a universal educational curriculum, mass popular culture), even as the politics of nationalism created a deepening chasm between each ethnic group.""—Brian Porter-Szucs, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom ""Kamil Kijek's fine work, meticulously researched and elegantly written, is arguably the most extensive and the most ambitious of these latter-day investigations. . . . His thoughtful treatment of his material pushes the analytical envelope well beyond what previous scholars have done with it and demonstrates its potential to deepen understanding of Polish-Jewish history.""—David Engel, author of The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews ""An essential text for any course on modern and Interwar Polish history and culture; required reading for scholars of Jewish modernity. Kijek takes the reader into individual human stories – autobiographies of interwar Polish Jewish youth, written in the 1930's, informed by their hopes and fears for the future. His brilliant study makes visible the complex and fascinating social, cultural, and political landscape of multilingual, multiethnic Poland. Illuminating and remarkably relevant in 2025.""—Karen Underhill, author of Bruno Schulz and Galician Jewish Modernity

""Reading not only for sociological data but to excavate the assumptions and understandings common to a generation's social imagination, Kijek has produced, at one level, an endlessly rich, wideranging, and insightful ethnographic reconstruction of the lives and hopes of the Jewish generation that came of age in the 1930s. If that were all he had accomplished, that in itself would be enough to merit the wide attention the book will surely receive. But add to that the fact that it makes not one but by my count five major arguments about the trajectory of Polish Jewish political, religious, social, and cultural history in the 1930s, and this a work that nobody working on modern Jewish history can ignore.""—Kenneth B. Moss, author of An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland ""By examining a treasure trove of documents – a huge collection of first-hand accounts written by Jewish youth in the 1930s as part of an essay competition – Kamil Kijek is able to show a fascinating contradiction. On the one hand, these texts reinforce the aforementioned pessimism and even despair. On the other hand, the people writing those documents were deeply embedded in a Polish-language culture, often to the point of being able to write only in Polish. . . . Kijek explores a community that was inexorably trending towards linguistic acculturation because of all the familiar forces of modernization (urbanization, a universal educational curriculum, mass popular culture), even as the politics of nationalism created a deepening chasm between each ethnic group.""—Brian Porter-Szucs, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom ""Kamil Kijek's fine work, meticulously researched and elegantly written, is arguably the most extensive and the most ambitious of these latter-day investigations. . . . His thoughtful treatment of his material pushes the analytical envelope well beyond what previous scholars have done with it and demonstrates its potential to deepen understanding of Polish-Jewish history.""—David Engel, author of The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews ""An essential text for any course on modern and Interwar Polish history and culture; required reading for scholars of Jewish modernity. Kijek takes the reader into individual human stories – autobiographies of interwar Polish Jewish youth, written in the 1930's, informed by their hopes and fears for the future. His brilliant study makes visible the complex and fascinating social, cultural, and political landscape of multilingual, multiethnic Poland. Illuminating and remarkably relevant in 2025.""—Karen Underhill, author of Bruno Schulz and Galician Jewish Modernity ""Kamil Kijek offers a pathbreaking analysis of Jewish youth in interwar Poland, examining how ""radical modernism"" shaped the last young Jewish generation before the Holocaust. Through meticulous study of autobiographies and diverse sources, he reveals how symbolic acculturation and exclusion drove young Polish Jews toward ideological movements, creating a political youth culture marked by radical aspirations.""—Marcos Silber, University of Haifa

Author Information

Kamil Kijek is Assistant Professor in the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław, Poland. He has held doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships in the United States, Israel, Germany, and the United Kingdom, including in the Center for Jewish History in New York and Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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