The Jews in Poland, Vol. 2

This book is dedicated to Rafael Scharf, on his eighty-fifth birthday. It attempts to mirror the richness of Rafael Scharf's experience and knowledge. His widely ranging interests and different aspects of his personality are presented in the introductory essay by Antony Polonsky, in an interview, and in a number of essays in Part One (published as a separate volume). Part Two presents historical studies on different aspects of Jewish history in Poland before the Holocaust: from its European context and early modern developments to the Jews' struggle for political representation. --- Rafael Scharf (1914-2003) was a guardian of the memory of Poland's and especially Cracow's Jewry, a man who connected the not-so-distant past with new generations of Polish Jews who were searching for their identity, as well as with new generations of Poles who were searching for the identity of their country. "His activity," Antony Polonsky writes, "has been concerned to preserve our memory of the multifaceted world of Polish Jewry... and to reflect on why the history of the 'two saddest nations on earth,' to use Antoni Slonimski's phrase, diverged so drastically and led to so much misunderstanding..." Rafael Scharf's friends and admirers from the worlds of scholarship, literature and the arts have joined efforts to make this birthday gift.