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In Cursed, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir investigates the July 4, 1946, Kielce pogrom, a milestone in the periodization of the Jewish diaspora. This massacre compelled thousands of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust to flee postwar Poland. It remains a negative reference point in the Polish historical narrative and represents a lack of reckoning with the role of antisemitism in postwar Polish society and identity politics. Tokarska-Bakir weaves together the voices of the Kielce pogrom survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators with a myriad of other archival sources. Her meticulous research exposes wartime and postwar biographies of local factory workers, city and church officials, local police officers, and members of the security service, some of whom participated in the Holocaust and then directly or indirectly participated in the Kielce pogrom. Tokarska-Bakir paints a social portrait that explores people's behavior in light of forces and emotions greater than themselves. She reconstructs a postwar communist system that, despite promises to combat deeply rooted antisemitism, not only failed to prevent its spread but turned a blind eye to it and eventually used it to legitimize itself. Cursed is a microhistory that recreates the events of the Kielce pogrom step by step and examines the dominant hypotheses about the pogrom through the prism of previously classified archival evidence. It offers readers a nuanced analysis that cuts across social and ideological divisions. The resulting narrative is filled with new discoveries not only about the Kielce pogrom but about the nature of antisemitism, hostility toward minorities, and collective violence. Published in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

This book reexamines the situation of Jews who after the liquidation of ghettos were hiding in the villages of the Kielce-Sandomierz region, and the attitude of local Christian people and partisans towards these Jews. A fresh perspective is contributed by the author's anthropological approach to the newly discovered field and archival sources.

Des Juifs ont été assassinés en Pologne jusqu'en 1946, accusés par une foule en colère de pratiquer des "meurtres rituels" d'enfants chrétiens. Ce livre événement remonte à la racine fantasmatique du phénomène antisémite polonais à partir d'une étude minutieuse des discours et des récits qui transforment les Juifs en ennemis. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir se fonde sur un corpus de légendes anciennes encore vivaces, qui relatent profanations d'hostie ou enlèvements d'enfants chrétiens, qu'elle passe au crible de l'analyse linguistique, pour confronter ensuite ses conclusions à une enquête de terrain. Au cours de cette enquête, conduite avec ses étudiants, 400 Polonais de plus de cinquante ans ont été interrogés, montrant que la légende fonctionne comme un savoir constitué, familier et naturel, un savoir incrusté dans la langue, la religion, les transmissions familiales et générationnelles, les rites folkloriques, etc. En 2005, on trouvait encore dans la cathédrale de Sandomierz, au-dessus de l'autel, un tableau représentant un meurtre d'enfants chrétiens par des Juifs.

Focused on the struggle to survive by the Jewish Poles stranded in the Polish countryside during the Holocaust, case studies collected in this volume are based on research carried out at Poland's Institute of National Remembrance. Where possible, they are also complemented by Jewish survivors' testimonies dispersed throughout the world. There are at least two leitmotifs recurring throughout all texts: What are the social correlates of the anti-Jewish violence undertaken by Polish neighbours without German initiative and even knowledge? Are there certain types of social relationships more subject or prone to this kind of violence? What was the role of peasantry, social elites, and Catholic church in inciting and perpetrating it? Was this violence influenced by the Holocaust, or was it a separate form of genocidal violence?