This volume consists of three short monographs by Polish graduate students in the early stages of their professional development. Two were originally written as MA theses: one by Maciej Pisarski on Jewish emigration from Poland from 1945 to 1951, and the other by Albert Stankowski on Jewish emigration from western Pomerania from 1945 to 1960. The third, by August Grabski, on the organization of Jewish religious life in Poland during the communist and (primarily) post-communist eras, originated as a seminar paper.

On the whole, postgraduate writing of this type, if it is published at all, appears in limited-circulation journals for an audience of academics. The fact that these studies were published in book form, especially in paperback with the aid of a subsidy from the Polish Ministry of Culture, offers further testimony of the keen interest in the history of Jews in Poland evident among the Polish public in recent years. The conviction appears to be growing, as Jerzy Tomaszewski puts it in his introduction to the volume, that ‘it is difficult to understand Polish culture without knowledge of Jewish culture’ (p. 10). Those in Poland seeking to acquire such knowledge, however, have been limited by a dearth of reliable literature on the subject in the Polish language. According to Tomaszewski, ‘until recently studies on the history and culture of the Jews in Poland after 1944 have been especially neglected’ (p. 8). That neglect provides the ostensible justification for publishing this collection of papers in their present form.

Such a rationale prompts the question: precisely what sort of knowledge of the history and culture of Jews in Poland after 1944 is needed to raise the level of understanding of Polish culture? A brief book review is not the place to undertake a general discussion of this issue, but the point has to be made, unfortunately, that whatever sort of knowledge may be required, the studies in the present volume seem unlikely to provide it.

It is not that they fail to bring to light much hitherto unknown data. Indeed, all three researchers have examined formerly inaccessible or unexploited archives and report extensively on their contents.