POLAND'S THREATENING OTHER

In this provocative and insightful book, Joanna Beata Michlic interrogatesthe myth of the Jew as Poland's foremost internal "threatening other,"harmful to Poland, its people, and to all aspects of its national life.This is the first attempt to chart new theoretical directions in the studyof Polish-Jewish relations in the wake of the controversy over Jan Gross'sbook Neighbors. Michlic analyzes the nature and impact of anti-Jewishprejudices on modern Polish society and culture, tracing the history ofthe concept of the Jew as the threatening other and its role in theformation and development of modern Polish national identity based on thematrix of exclusivist ethnic nationalism. In the late nineteenth centuryand throughout the greater part of the twentieth, exclusivist ethnicnationalism predominated over inclusive civic nationalism in Polishpolitical culture and society. Only in the aftermath of the politicaltransformation of 1989 has Polish civic nationalism gradually gainedpredominance. As civic nationalism has become more assertive, Polishscholars have begun to unearth and critically examine the legacies ofPolish anti-Semitism and other anti-minority prejudices. Michlic conductedextensive research in Polish, British, and Israeli archives for this book."Poland's Threatening Other" contributes to modern Jewish and Polishhistory, the study of nationalism, and to a new school of critical inquiryinto the nature of anti-Jewish prejudices. Joanna Beata Michlic is anassistant professor in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at theRichard Stockton College of New Jersey. She was a visiting scholar in theDepartment of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University in2003-05 and is the co-editor of "The Neighbors Respond: The Controversyover the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland" and "Coming to Terms with the "DarkPast": The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre".