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When Fajga Left Tadeusz. Wartime Relationships of Survivors after the Holocaust
Natalia Aleksiun
natalia.aleksiun@touro.edu Author BiographyProfessor of contemporary Jewish history at the Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro College in New York. Historian of Polish Jews, doctor of history (UW), and Jewish Studies (NYU). In the academic year 2021-2022, she serves as a senior research fellow at the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies in Warsaw, and from January 2022, she holds the professorship of Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida. Her debut was with Dokąd dalej? Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce 1944–1950 (2002) [Where Next? The Zionist Movement in Poland 1944–1950 (2002)], also published a critical edition of the Zagłady Żydów żółkiewskich [Holocaust of Żółkwia Jews] by Gerszon Taffet (2019) and the monograph Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust (2021). She is a co-editor of two volumes “Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry ”, one of which was devoted to the memory of the Holocaust (vol. 20), and the other to Jewish historiography in Eastern Europe (vol. 29). She is preparing a volume of "Polin" on Jewish childhood and monographs on the experience of Jews hiding in Eastern Galicia and the so-called corpse scandal in Central and Eastern Europe. Together with Karolina Szymaniak, editor-in-chief of East European Jewish Affairs.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7712-4878
Touro College, Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Nowy Jork
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 17 (2021), Pages: 229-260
Submission Date: 2021-12-17Publication Date: 2021-12-20
https://doi.org/10.32927/zzsim.877
Abstract
This article examines the post-war correspondence between Fajga Ginsburg, a Polish Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust in Lwów (today Lviv in Ukraine), and Tadeusz Kobyłko – a Pole who hid her and her niece. Their letters offer a window into intimate dilemmas in the aftermath of the war. Their relationship exemplifies decisions made by survivors with regard to their identity. Fajga’s letters express the emotional trauma of Jews who survived the Holocaust and show the lasting effects of post-war choices made by the survivors. Her letters also reveal how differently Faiga and Tadeusz understood their relationship and subsequent separation, in part due to their addressing different audiences whilst writing. While Fajga wrote personal letters to her husband, Tadeusz’s letters were sent to various Jewish and Polish institutions and were more official in nature. His letters clearly echoed his anger at the “Jews” whom he blamed for the breakdown of his family, but they are also permeated by a sense of threat of post-war antisemitism in Poland, as he himself experienced it after Fajga’s departure. Although the exchange of letters between Fajga and Tadeusz is rich and full of understatements, it refutes the stereotypes of a “nationalist Pole” and a “self-conscious Jew”. Indeed, both categories turn out to be an oversimplification that does not reflect the complexity of the relationship, especially the one initiated under the duress of the Holocaust.
Keywords
Aryan papers , sexual barter , gender , rational relationships , Righteous among the Nations
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