The Silence of Judaica

"The National Library of Poland holds a vast collection of Yiddish prints, both pre and post-war, issued mainly in contemporary and former territories of Poland. Thanks to the effort of the Library and years of digitizing the material, about 25 thousand Yiddish newspaper issues, hundreds of books, posters and leaflets were published online and made available for free at the Library’s digital library polona.pl. Although the researcher’s dream has not yet been fulfilled and the Yiddish OCR system has not yet been implemented in polona.pl, Yiddish scholars in Poland received a powerful and user-friendly research tool. Furthermore, by publishing scans of newspapers from big cities and smaller towns, polona.pl has revealed a forgotten or suppressed multi-linguistic and social landscape of pre-war Poland. Even if some Poles living in, for instance, present day town of Chełm knew about their town’s rich Jewish history and its importance in Jewish folklore already ten or so years ago, the image was surely vague. Today, by a single click, one can literally immerse oneself into the world of pre-war Polish-Jewish reality of a small town and – even withoutunderstanding Yiddish, but simply by browsing the papers and reading Polish fragments appearing there from time to time – find out that it was more complex than one might think [...]".