Poland Books

I love this book! I had to do a project on Marie Curie and this helped me a lot! I love how she was a women physicist and how brave she was. And to be one of the first physicists, wow. I think this woman rocks!

This is an absolutely great set of books. Readers as young as 10 will enjoy these easy to read books. They are packed with interesting stories of the saints. They certainly will inspire you. We have these in our parish library, and I highly recommend them for adults as well as youth.

Although this set of books is not currently available to buy at Amazon, many of the books are available on an individual basis. Just do a search for May Fabyan Windeatt to find them. My favorite is the story of Saint Margaret Mary.

This is an excellent book, well written, indexed, and thoroughly resesarched. A painstaking review of the history of the Nazi experiment whereby the "science" of Eugenics became manifest due to the "fortuitous" opportunity of WWII. The authors are clear that "Lebensborn" did not have its roots in Nazi Germany -- Eugenics was a worldwide movement that did not begin, nor end, in Nazi Germany. In fact, the best chapter is the last chapter.

In the conclusion, the case is made that those in favor of the "scientific" breeding of the human race are not, themselves, a dying breed. Those who were part of the project during the war had no problem finding powerful positions after the war, and their work does, indeed go on. The fact that it is, so to speak, "hidden in plain sight" is what makes it so dangerous. There needs to be more of a dialogue, a public consensus, as it were, that we know that this is happening, and an accountability for what is taking place. Decisions are being made by an elite few that may or may not benefit the human race as a whole. The fact that so few people know about it or have anything to say about it is what makes Lebensborn an unending nightmare for us all.

Saint Faustina received the message of Divine Mercy and passed it on using many methods. First, she recorded information about the message in her Diary, which became available for all to read. She also spread the message through prayer and sacrifice. Another method for spreading the message was through her conversations and other communications with others. However, Fr. George Kosicki has captured in a wonderful and effective way her most effective way of spreading the message of Divine Mercy-by her example. By living it!

Melting the Darkness is a book intended for professionals, but it speaks to patients, too. It was recommended to me by my own analyst after my ongoing questions about how the "dyad" works. The "dyad," for other non professionals considering this book, is the relationship between the analyst and patient. The dyad is now seen as a key (perhaps THE key) instrument of healing a psyche. I was astonished to see my own feelings spelled out in this book, feelings understood by analysts in general. Those of us in analysis tend to feel as though we are alone, but we're not. It is difficult to remember that our analysts themselves have been through analysis. They DO know what it means to feel vulnerable.

Here are a couple of lines that struck me:

"The very experience of being viewed by the analyst may feel disintegrating for a patient with a weak sense of self." Oh. Now I see why feel so self conscious in session.

"Analysis not only exposes, it intensifies." Oh. Now I see why I feel bad on the way to feeling better.

"The analyst's silence, too, is a form of statement, often a powerful one." Oh. Now I see why, at least partially, I feel panicky when he's silent. Now I know why it feels like he's shouting when he's silent. For me, a silence often puts me floating in an abyss with nothing to grasp onto. I hadn't told my analyst that before I read the book.

"Analysis demands profound regression." Oh. Now I see why I have to cry, even though I don't want to. Now I see why I want to stay home, under my comforter, and not face the day.

"There are levels or degrees of insight. Perhaps the deepest level is that in which understanding is most thoroughly integrated, so integrated that one's character and mental functioning utilize the understanding without having to resort to conscious thought." Oh. Now I see where I'm going.

Dr. Poland humanizes the analyst in a way the analyst cannot do. Dr. Poland can generalize. With one's own analyst the relationship is too singular, too specific. One never knows if a reaction is part of a transference. One never knows if a behavior of an analyst is a personality quirk or a technique.

The book is also reassuring on the genuineness front. For a long time with my own analysis I wasn't sure what was genuine and what was technique. There is too much information to go into detail here, but by the end of the book, I had a deep sense of the caring and genuineness that emanates from at least some (and hopefully most) of the people who do this work.

Not a quick and easy read, but definitely an enlightening one.

Enjoy.

This is by far the most informative, well-documented and clearly argued portrayal of Polish Hasidism available in any language. This book brought me into the world of nineteenth century Hasidism and Polish Jewry. It illuminates the paradox of Hasidism: a soaring mystical movement bouyed by music, dance and charismatic "rebbes" that was, nevertheless, fully grounded in daily Jewish life. I had always thought of Hasidism as a movement of the poor, but the author shows how nearly every type of Jew, including those of the Warsaw "business" class, was drawn to Hasidism. The book also shows the impact of the Polish surroundings on Hasidism, and vice versa (sadly, most Polish Jewish history is written as if Jewish life occurred in a vacuum). And the sources! New archives, inner Hasidic and non-Hasidic literature, etc. are blended together to provide a multi-faceted view of Polish Hasidism. Anyone interested in Polish and/or Jewish history absolutely must read this book!

Benski's stories rank with Borowski's and Shalamov's in showing in a quiet, subdued way what man can do to man under inhumnan conditions. This collection focuses on the survivors of the holocaust. It is not to missed by any serious reader.

When I began reading this book, I was enthralled by the description of the photograph and the circumstances under which it was taken. But shortly after, I found myself bored. The author seemed to wander a bit an I lost interest.
Fortunately, for me, I stuck with the book. Karl Plank goes on to describe the situation of events in Lodz Ghetto, where the photo was taken. He uses excerpts from the memoir of Jozef Zelkowicz to illistrate the horrors of what was occuring inside the ghetto walls. Zelkowicz describes the death of a mother and her young daughter at hands of the Nazis as punishment for not abondoning her daughter.
Karl Plank also uses the poetry of Simcha Bunem Shayevitsh, a Lodz Ghetto inhabitant, to illistrate his ideas. The poetry of Shayevitsh, there are only two poems that survive, are profound and moving. His poem speaking of his young daughter, Blimel, is easily the most haunting of images. As readers, we know what their fate is, the poet is left to agonize over the unknown.
This is a wonderful book to read. I would also reccomend you read Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege. This book also uses more of Zelkowicz's memoirs of his life inside Lodz and it
also has passages on the Shayevitsh family.

Music in the Culture of Polish Galicia, 1772-1924 was a co-winner of the 2003 AAASS/Orbis Books Prize for Polish Studies awarded annually for the most outstanding English-language book
on any aspect of Polish affairs.

The other winner was Jolanta T. Pekacz's Music in the Culture of Polish Galicia, 1772-1914 (University of Rochester Press).

The Prize committee - Izabela Kalinowska-Blackwood, Andrzej Tymowski, and Halina Filipowicz - wrote the following about the winning volumes:

Both books are exemplary monographs based on meticulous archival research. Both provide an important point of entry for exploring a lost symbolic world in a rather out-of-the-way place, at least in geopolitical terms: the multiethnic province of Galicia in the Habsburg Monarchy. Ezra Mendelsohn's elegantly written book concentrates on the work of Maurycy Gottlieb, a founding father of modern Jewish art, who was born in a small town known in Polish as Drohobycz, now associated primarily with the internationally acclaimed writer Bruno Schulz. Jolanta T. Pekacz's study addresses an understudied area - popular music genres in nineteenth-century Galicia - within a well-informed historical framework. In examing their topics, both Mendelsohn and Pekacz also tell us much about the multiethnic society of nineteenth-century Galicia - about its social tensions, divisions, and hierarchies, and about about its strength and fragility.

Mendelsohn's and Pekacz's studies not only expand our knowledge and understanding of the social and symbolic world of old Galicia, but they also challenge our tendency to think of culture - any culture - as a static and homogeneous entity (if only to make it possible to talk about it). To do justice to the complexity of their project, both Mendelsohn and Pekacz keep alive several perspectives, chief among them the perspective of cultural studies. They show that, contrary to a common misconception, cultural studies are not primarily concerned with banal populism. They agree that all forms of cultural production need to be studied - not as self-contained and independent entities, knowable apart from their own time and place, but rather in their particular historical contexts. They also agree that the perspective of cultural studies offers fresh insights into the underlying importance of literature and the arts in the formation of national identities.

Ezra Mendelsohn's Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art and Jolanta T. Pekacz's Music in the Culture of Polish Galicia, 1772-1914 are highly original studies on the cutting-edge of several disciplines: social history, history of ideas, cultural studies, Jewish studies, Polish studies, and Polish Jewish studies. Both books offer the rare intellectual pleasure that goes with disentangling intricate historical patterns behind the mythologized image of Galicia as a land of pride and tears, where good men and women were busy shaking the dead hand of the past.

This is an excellent, brief presentation of what musical life was like in the Nazi ghettos and camps. It tends toward the "academic" with regard to structure but, for me, it works nicely because I find it easy to use within a university context. Ms. Gilbert provides an excellent bibliography and a very useful index. Her book is a fine introduction to this particular aspect of Holocaust history.