the edict on the requisition of fur coats and the ghetto filled with Poles eager to buy coats at next to nothing. Purportedly, it was one of the few moments in the history of the ghetto when, as barrister Zygmunt Millet bitterly put it, “You could say that one felt something like a warm current flowing from the other side then.”26 The issue of Polish–Jewish economic relations and the role of the Jewish economy in the economy of the occupied Warsaw are described in a detailed way in Jerzy Winkler’s study on the Warsaw ghetto economy. Like other authors, Winkler stresses predominantly the inequality in those relations resulting from the Jewish entrepreneurs’ total dependency on Polish middlemen and buyers.27
The texts in this volume that discuss assimilation and acculturation also, albeit indirectly, pertain to the issue of Polish–Jewish relations. Although most materials in the Archive are undoubtedly in favour of Zionism and against assimilation, their authors try to describe this issue as objectively as possible. Let us take, for instance, the texts by historian and teacher Marian Małowist included in this volume. In his materials devoted to young people in the ghetto and Polish–Jewish intellectuals, Małowist shows the real tragedy and alienation of those who, feeling Polish, after the closure of the ghetto found themselves in a completely alien community.28 The description of the funeral of one of the two thousand Catholic Jews who were in the ghetto is a symbolic text on this topic. The family of the deceased managed to obtain permission for his burial outside the ghetto, in the Powązki Cemetery. But because they were Jewish, the relatives were unable to accompany the coffin. Natan Koniński, the author of the testimony and a co-worker at the Archives, writes: “However, the family allegedly could go no further than to the border of the ghetto. The deceased had to be taken the rest of the way alone, so that at least after his death he would have the honour of staying with his own kind, which, despite his efforts and sacrifices, he did not manage to accomplish while he was alive.”29
Introduction XXXI
