This Was Not America: A Wrangle Through Jewish-Polish-American History - Paperback

by Elżbieta Janicka (Author), Michael Steinlauf (Author)

This is a narrative that erupts into critical moments in Jewish, Polish and American history. It is also a story of the hidden anguish that courses through that history. It is told through a dialogue between Michael Steinlauf, historian of Polish-Jewish culture and child of Holocaust survivors, and the Polish anthropologist and artist Elżbieta Janicka.

Author Biography

Michael Steinlauf is the author of Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust as well as numerous studies of Jewish culture in prewar Poland. He was one of the founders of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Currently he is completing studies of the Polish Jewish dramatist Mark Arnshteyn and the Yiddish culture hero Y. L. Peretz.

Elżbieta Janicka is a literary scholar and visual artist. She is the author of Sztuka czy Naród? [Art or Nation?] and Festung Warschau, exposing violence and exclusion embedded in Polish dominant culture, as well as numerous studies of Polish antisemitism. Most recently she co-authored Philosemitic Violence. Poland's Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).