Polacos in Argentina

Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture
1. Auflage, 1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8173-2039-3
Verlag: Univ of Chicago Behalf of Univ of Alabama

Buch, Englisch, 344 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

Reihe: Jews and Judaism

An examination of the social and cultural repercussions of Jewish emigration from Poland to Argentina in the 1920s and 1930s.

Between the 1890s and 1930s, Argentina, following the United States and Palestine, became the main destination for Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews seeking safety, civil rights, and better economic prospects. Just Between 1918 and 1939, sixty thousand Polish Jews established new homes in Argentina. They formed a strong ethnic community that quickly embraced Argentine culture while still maintaining their unique Jewish-Polish character. This mass migration caused a transfer of cultural, social, and political contents in both Poland and Argentina, forever shaping the cultural landscape of both lands.

In Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture, Mariusz Kalczewiak has constructed a multifaceted and in-depth narrative that sheds light on marginalized aspects of Jewish migration and enriches the dialogue between Latin American Jewish studies and Polish Jewish Studies. Based on archival research, Yiddish travelogues on Argentina, and the Yiddish and Spanish-language press, this study recreates a mosaic of entanglements that Jewish migration wove between Poland and Argentina.

Most studies on mass migration fail to acknowledge the role of the country of origin, but this innovative work approaches Jewish migration to Argentina as a continuous process that took place on both sides of the Atlantic. Taken as a whole, Polacos in Argentina enlightens the heterogeneous and complex issue of immigrant commitments, belongings, and expectations. Jewish emigration from Poland to Argentina serves as a case study of how ethnicity evolves and transforms among migrants and their children, and the dynamics that emerge between putting down roots in a new country and maintaining commitments to the country of origin.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kalczewiak, Mariusz

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Translation, Spelling, and Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1. Jewish Elites, Gentile Opinions, and the Argentine Dream
- 2. Between Hope and Fear: The Imageries of Argentina in Poland's Yiddish Channels
- 3. Argentine Branch: Extending the Yiddishland to Latin America
- 4. Meeting the Gaucho and Searching for Indians: The Trajectories of Exoticization
- 5. Israelita Argentino or Argentiner Yid? Cultural Choices, National Belonging and the Weight of European Baggage
- 6. Being a 'Good Polish Jew' in Buenos Aires: Landsmanshaftn and Jewish-Polish Ethnicity
- 7. Aktsyes, Protest-aktn, and Helping the Old Home: Argentine Children of Jewish Poland Respond to a Changing Europe
- 8. All Immigrant Jews Live with Their Soul in Poland? Debating the Tension between New and Old Home
- Epilogue
- Glossary
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Mariusz Kalczewiak is assistant professor in the Slavic Studies Department at the University of Potsdam. His scholarship has appeared in American Jewish History, The New Ethnic Studies in Latin America, and Studia Judaica.