Katarzyna Person

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the emotional landscape of post-war Europe was profoundly shaped by the intertwined notions of retribution and physical revenge, particularly for Holocaust survivors. While much scholarly attention has focused on extra-legal purges in post-war Europe, the experiences of individual Polish Jews have largely been overlooked.The Hour of Revenge addresses this critical gap, exploring the particular journey of Polish Jews as they navigated the complexities of their post-conflict realities. Katarzyna Person examines how these individuals not only confronted their traumatic pasts but also actively contributed to the reconstruction of their communities.Crossing the traditional historiographical divide between "West" and "East," Person illustrates how Polish Jews moved between these zones before the Iron Curtain descended, how they reconciled memories of the war and their former lives, and how they built emotional communities in the face of loss. The book contributes to a more integrative, multi-ethnic history of post-war Poland and to the global history of societal reconstruction in the wake of conflict. In an era of mass migration, The Hour of Revenge sheds light on connections to pre-war homelands as expressions of integration and exclusion.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the emotional landscape of post-war Europe was profoundly shaped by the intertwined notions of retribution and physical revenge, particularly for Holocaust survivors. While much scholarly attention has focused on extra-legal purges in post-war Europe, the experiences of individual Polish Jews have largely been overlooked.The Hour of Revenge addresses this critical gap, exploring the particular journey of Polish Jews as they navigated the complexities of their post-conflict realities. Katarzyna Person examines how these individuals not only confronted their traumatic pasts but also actively contributed to the reconstruction of their communities.Crossing the traditional historiographical divide between "West" and "East," Person illustrates how Polish Jews moved between these zones before the Iron Curtain descended, how they reconciled memories of the war and their former lives, and how they built emotional communities in the face of loss. The book contributes to a more integrative, multi-ethnic history of post-war Poland and to the global history of societal reconstruction in the wake of conflict. In an era of mass migration, The Hour of Revenge sheds light on connections to pre-war homelands as expressions of integration and exclusion.

This book explores one of the most notorious aspects of the German system of oppression in wartime Poland: the only purpose-built camp for children under the age of 16 years in German-occupied Europe. The camp at Przemyslowa street, or the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt as the Germans called it, was a concentration camp for children. The camp at Przemyslowa existed for just over two years, from December 1942 until January 1945. During that time, an unknown number of children, mainly Polish nationals, were imprisoned there and subjected to extreme physical and emotional abuse. For almost all, the consequences of atrocities which they endured in the camp remained with them for the rest of their lives. This book focuses on the establishment of the camp, the experience of the child prisoners, and the post-war investigations and trials. It is based on contemporary German documents, post-war Polish trials and German investigations, as well as dozens of testimonies from camp survivors, guards, civilian camp staff and the camp leadership

This book explores one of the most notorious aspects of the German system of oppression in wartime Poland: the only purpose-built camp for children under the age of 16 years in German-occupied Europe. The camp at Przemyslowa street, or the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt as the Germans called it, was a concentration camp for children. The camp at Przemyslowa existed for just over two years, from December 1942 until January 1945. During that time, an unknown number of children, mainly Polish nationals, were imprisoned there and subjected to extreme physical and emotional abuse. For almost all, the consequences of atrocities which they endured in the camp remained with them for the rest of their lives. This book focuses on the establishment of the camp, the experience of the child prisoners, and the post-war investigations and trials. It is based on contemporary German documents, post-war Polish trials and German investigations, as well as dozens of testimonies from camp survivors, guards, civilian camp staff and the camp leadership

In Warsaw Ghetto Police, Katarzyna Person shines a spotlight on the lawyers, engineers, young yeshiva graduates, and sons of connected businessmen who, in the autumn of 1940, joined the newly formed Jewish Order Service. Person tracks the everyday life of policemen as their involvement with the horrors of ghetto life gradually increased. Facing and engaging with brutality, corruption, and the degradation and humiliation of their own people, these policemen found it virtually impossible to exercise individual agency. While some saw the Jewish police as fellow victims, others viewed them as a more dangerous threat than the German occupation authorities; both were held responsible for the destruction of a historically important and thriving community. Person emphasizes the complexity of the situation, the policemen's place in the network of social life in the ghetto, and the difficulty behind the choices that they made. By placing the actions of the Jewish Order Service in historical context, she explores both the decisions that its members were forced to make and the consequences of those actions. Featuring testimonies of members of the Jewish Order Service, and of others who could see them as they themselves could not, Warsaw Ghetto Police brings these impossible situations to life. It also demonstrates how a community chooses to remember those whose allegiances did not seem clear. Published in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Jews in Nazi-occupied Warsaw during the 1940s were under increasing threat as they were stripped of their rights and forced to live in a guarded ghetto away from the non-Jewish Polish population. Within the ghettos, a small but distinct group existed: the assimilated, acculturated, and baptized Jews. Unwilling to integrate into the Jewish community and unable to merge with the Polish one, they formed a group of their own, remaining in a state of suspension throughout the interwar period. In 1940, with the closure of the Jewish Residential Quarter in Warsaw, their identity was chosen for them. Person looks at what it meant for assimilated Jews to leave their pre-war neighbourhoods, understood as both a physical environment and a mixed Polish Jewish community, and enter a new, Jewish one. She reveals the diversity of this group and how its members’ identity shaped their involvement in and contribution to ghetto life. In the first English-language study of this small but influential group, Person illuminates the important role of the acculturated and assimilated Jews to the history and memory of the Warsaw ghetto.