The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust - Couverture rigide

Leff, Lisa Moses

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0199380953 ISBN 13 : 9780199380954

Editeur : OUP USA, 2015

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

[A] riveting portrait of an enigmatic scholar and a reflection about the construction of archives...[A] richly researched, lucidly written and, ultimately, deeply moving book...Lisa Moses Leff has made an invaluable contribution to the expanding literatures on postwar communal reconstruction and Jewish cultural restitution. (Geraldine Gudefin, H-Judaic)

The Archive Thief is a richly researched, lucidly written and, ultimately, deeply moving book... The book is all the more engaging that its author is able to situate Szajkowski's actions within the context of postwar discussions about the rightful ownership of archives. Finally, Leff makes a very persuasive argument about the ambiguous legacy of Szajkowski's collecting and sales. (Geraldine Gudefin, H-Judaic)

Looking at the title of this compelling monograph, the reader could be forgiven for wondering how a man could possibly be both a thief and a saviour. The paradox within this question is answered skilfully by Moses Leff, who has very successfully woven together a detective story which is underpinned by a serious academic examination of the nature and purpose if archives, their content and the question of ownership. ... An intriguing read. (Susan Cohen, International History Review)

[an] engrossing and painstakingly documented book. Her [Leff's] research was made all the more demanding by the fact that there is no way of knowing all that is actually missing from collections. (Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement)

Entertaining and very well written, this is an invaluable contribution to the historiography on French Jewry in the modern era. (Bob Moore, French History)

Through Szajkowski's personal biography, Leff has illuminated the larger story of how Jewish archives and libraries were constructed and reconfigured in the aftermath of World War II, as the centers of gravity in the Jewish world shifted from Europe to Israel and the United States ... Leff casts new light on this transformative moment in postwar Jewish life. As a result of her beautifully written and deeply researched book, we have a greater appreciation of the degree to which the libraries and archives on which we depend are themselves "historical artifacts". In this sense, Leff's thought-provoking and imaginative book raises questions that will intrigue all historians. This work also constitutes a fitting tribute to a man who, despite his flaws and weaknesses, made immense contributions to the field of Jewish history. (Jewish History)

[A] superb book ... Pages fly by as her meticulous and surprising study of the extraordinary life of her "hero" keeps her reader breathless ... an astonishing work of history, founded on a group of original documents by means of which she raises fundamental questions about the very nature of the archive as it fluctuates between being a state memoir and a way to preserve a particular history and culture. (Journal of Modern History)

[A] brilliant new book ... Leff has produced a page-turning account that offers a model for how post-Holocaust Jewish history should be written. The work ponders questions that should interest both specialist and generalist readers and ought to be assigned widely and debated extensively. (Nathan Kurz, English Historical Review)

Lisa Moses Leff tells Szajkowski's fascinating story in a book as gripping as a crime novel, with profound insight into the role played by archive collections in the modern construction of national histories Leff creates a complex portrait of this 'archive thief,' who was no simple villain Szajkowski's story is stunning and Leff tells it exceptionally well. The Archive Thief is a meticulously researched scholarly work that deftly incorporates archival sources, Szajkowski's published writings, and his private correspondence. It is beautifully written and sophisticated without ever becoming pedantic. (H-France)

The Archive Thief is a richly detailed and sympathetic portrait that unfolds with elements of a detective story In writing about the trajectory of Szajkowski's life and career, she raises provocative questions about the nature of collecting, the role of archives and where they belong, and the very writing of history. (The Jewish Week)

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Born into poverty in Russian Poland in 1911, Zosa Szajkowski (Shy-KOV-ski) was a self-made man who managed to make a life for himself as an intellectual, first as a journalist in 1930s Paris, and then, after a harrowing escape to New York in 1941, as a scholar. Although he never taught at a university or even earned a PhD, Szajkowski became one of the world's foremost experts on the history of the Jews in modern France, publishing in Yiddish, English, and Hebrew. His work opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, economic and social modernization, and the rise of modern anti-Semitism. But beneath Szajkowski's scholarly success lay a shameful secret. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the scholar stole tens of thousands of archival documents related to French Jewish history from public archives and private synagogue collections in France and moved them, illicitly, to New York. There, he used them as the basis for his pathbreaking articles. Eventually, he sold them, piecemeal, to American and Israeli research libraries, where they still remain today. Why did this respectable historian become an archive thief? And why did librarians in the United States and Israel buy these materials from him, turning a blind eye to the signs of ownership they bore? These are the questions that motivate this gripping tale. Throughout, it is clear that all involved--perpetrator, victims, and buyers--saw what Szajkowski was doing through the prism of the Holocaust. The buyers shared a desire to save these precious remnants of the European Jewish past, left behind on a continent where six million Jews had just been killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. The scholars who read Szajkowski's studies, based largely on the documents he had stolen, saw the treasures as offering an unparalleled window into the history that led to that catastrophe. And the Jewish caretakers of many of the institutions Szajkowski robbed in France saw the losses as a sign of their difficulties reconstructing their community after the Holocaust, when the balance of power in the Jewish world was shifting away from Europe to new centers in America and Israel. Based on painstaking research, Lisa Leff reconstructs Szajkowski's story in all its ambiguity by taking us backstage at the archives, revealing the powerful ideological, economic and scientific forces that made Holocaust-era Jewish scholars care more deeply than ever before about preserving the remnants of their past.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: OUP USA
• Date d'édition: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0199380953
• ISBN 13: 9780199380954
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 304