Hero, Conspiracy, and Death: The Jewish Lectures. Translated by Alex Shannon

With Hero, Conspiracy and Death : The Jewish Lectures, the author has written a book of sweeping significance for readers interested in Polish history, Jewish history, and the Holocaust in which she asks troubling questions : Can a Jew be both a Jew and a Pole ? Are we right to talk of "worthy" and "unworthy" death in the Holocaust ? What are the implications of Adam Mickiewicz's philo-Semitism ? In Zygmunt Krasi ? ski's anti-Semitism, do we see the "specter of elimination"? Are humanist and enlightenment values useful in analyzing the Holocaust, or did the experience of Nazi genocide render them obsolete ? Tracing the history of anti-Jewish stereotypes in early nineteenth-century Poland (and beyond), the author offers answers to these questions that are bold, clear and compassionate.