Writings of Destruction and Reconstruction in the Polish-Jewish Diaspora: The Case of Yankev (Jacob) Pat, Yiddish Author, Educator and Activist

In March 1948, Polish Jewish literary figures Shmerke Kaczerginski, Chaim Grade, Yoysef Rubinshteyn, and Nokhum Bomze, then temporarily residing in Paris, contacted their colleague Yankev Pat in New York, for help. “As a writer” who was “connected with the young Yiddish literature in Poland, and as a man, who [was] interested until today in the surviving writers,” Pat would, they felt, understand very well the substance of their request for assistance. ^{2 2} Shmerke Kaczerginski, Chaim Grade, Yoysef Rubinshteyn and Nokhum Bomze to Yankev Pat, 4 March 1948, Jewish Labor Committee Archives, New York University, Tamiment Library, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Part II, WAG.025.002 (henceforth JLC II), box 83, file 10. As these four authors hinted at in their letter, Pat, himself a Yiddish writer from Poland, had been serving as the executive-secretary of the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) since 1941, a position which put him at the head of the social, political, and cultural aid projects which the organization provided to the non-Communist Yiddish world as well as to Socialists in Europe. He was uniquely well positioned to aid Yiddish writers in need of refuge.

This article serves as a biographical and bibliographical reference text to introduce readers to Pat’s life and career, with a focus on the early postwar years. It explores Pat’s dual position, demonstrated in the above example, as both a Yiddish writer and an activist supporting the social, cultural, and political life that surrounded and enabled Yiddish creativity. Pat serves as an exemplar of a wider phenomenon – he is among those Yiddish literary figures whose artistic production was inseparable from a larger communal commitment. These two facets of his life were interconnected and nourished one another.

Pat furthermore serves as a single case study that touches upon many aspects of what literary scholar Judith Lindenberg refers to as “writings of destruction” — a wide range of written works, literary, documentary, and scientific, from poetry and prose fiction to testimony and historical works about the khurbn (the genocide of the Jews in Europe). ^{3 3} See this definition in Judith Lindenberg, “Introduction” in Premiers savoirs de la Shoah, ed. idem (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2017), 10-11. On the term “Literature of Destruction”, used in a larger context, see the noted work edited by David Roskies, Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe (Philadelphia/New York/Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1989). As Lindenberg argues, a complete study of such texts requires examination not only of their textual content, but also of the actions that led to their production. ^{4 4} Lindenberg, Premiers savoirs de la Shoah, 13-14. As this article will demonstrate, Yankev Pat was involved in writings of destruction in an all-encompassing way: as an author, Pat produced literature as well as documentary and scientific works; as an activist, he supported the works of other authors, and was also involved in the larger social, political, and cultural context in which they were produced. It is therefore my contention that Pat’s specific profile, especially his activism on behalf of the JLC, demonstrates the interconnection between the writings of destruction and the reconstruction of Jewish life after the war.

This article also demonstrates how Pat’s postwar work was grounded in prewar concerns and practices. To fully understand the origins of Pat’s postwar publications and activities, it is indeed necessary to present how this Yiddish cultural figure navigated between dual literary and socio-political commitments, with a constant focus on education, and how he pursued these commitments and adapted them after the Holocaust.

A Polish Bundist Cultural Activist,Yiddish Educator, and Writer

Yankev Pat’s formative years are similar in many ways to those of many other Polish and Russian socialist Jews of his generation. Born in Bialystok in 1890 into a traditional Jewish family of modest means, he abandoned, on the eve of the 1905 Russian Revolution, the religious upbringing he was receiving in the yeshives of Slobodke and Slutsk. He then worked for a limited time as a manual worker, continued studying independently, and became a Hebrew teacher. His pedagogical experience began in Bialystok in 1915, where he participated in the creation of the first Yiddish school and became one of its teachers and administrators. According to the biographical information compiled by Emanuel Sherer in Doyres bundistn (Generations of Bundists), Pat was sent several times to Tsarist prisons for his early political activity. ^{5 5} The biographical elements on his prewar period come from the notes by Zalmen Reyzn in Leksikon fun der yidisher literatur, prese un filologye (Vilnius: Vilner Farlag fun N. Kletskin), vol. 2, 1927; Khayim Leyb Fuks in E. Oyerbakh, Y. Kharlash, M. Shtarkman, et al, eds., Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, New York, CYCO/Congress for Jewish Culture, 1968, vol. 7, 69-74; Emanuel Sherer, in Y. S. Herts, ed., Doyres bundistn, New York, Undzer tsayt, 1968, vol. 3, 61-65; Moshe Mishkinsky in Encyclopedia Judaica, eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, vol. 15, 2nd edition, 2007, 685 as well as from the biography written by his son Emanuel Pat (Patt), In gerangl. Yankev Pat un zayn dor (New York: Yankev Pat Familye Fond, 1971).

Pat’s first political involvements were in the Territorialist Zionist-Socialist Workers’ Party, for which he deployed his talents as an orator in many Polish villages; and, for a short time, the United Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party (Fareynikte), which he represented in the kehile of Bialystok in 1918. After World War I, Pat settled for a short time in Vilna, where he pursued his activities within secular Yiddish education. It was there that he became deputy to the founding congress of TSYSHO (Tsentrale yidishe shul-organizatsye - Central Yiddish School Organization) in 1921. Still in Vilna, he eventually joined the ranks of the Bund in 1920, as one among those “prominent kultur tuers (cultural activists) who moved to the Bund from other parties” and came to play important roles in connecting with other political groups within the frame of the secular and leftist TSYSHO schools. ^{6 6} Yuu Nishimura, “On the cultural front: the Bund and the Yiddish secular school movement in interwar Poland,” East European Jewish Affairs, 43/3, 2013, 268-271. His openness to non-Socialist spheres within the context of the TSYSHO did not, however, prevent him from appealing, in 1929, to the leaders of the YIVO (Yidisher visnshaftlekher institute – Yiddish Scientific Institute) to politicize their scholarship, and from claiming that the “institute’s guiding principle should be ‘the shkhine (divine light) of socialism’”. ^{7 7} “Alveltlekher tsuzamenfor funem yidishn visnshaftlekhn institut in Vilne,” RG 82, folder 2261, p. 121, quoted by Cecile Esther Kuznitz, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 148. Pat was also one of the contributors of the “radical left” to the political debates of the Yiddish literary journal Globus, published in Warsaw in 1932-1934 by Arn Zeitlin. See Nathan Cohen, “Globus,” Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Globus (accessed February 20th, 2024).

In 1922, Pat moved to Warsaw, where he remained for most of his prewar adult life, and continued his dual political and pedagogical activism. He was a member of the central committee of the Bund for a few years and represented the party in the Warsaw kehile. If he initially became a Bundist with leftist leanings, he later moved to the center and finally the right wing of the party. His views were developed in his numerous articles for the daily Bundist newspaper the Folkstsaytung (People’s Newspaper) as well as in other journals of different political affiliations. Pat also reached high positions in Yiddish cultural and educational institutions and publications. He edited the Bundist newspaper’s children section, the Kleyne folkstsaytung (Small People’s Newspaper), and from 1926 to 1938 the cultural and educational section of the Folkstsaytung. He was appointed first chairman of the SKIF (Sotsyalistisher kinder-farband – Socialist Children’s Union), acted for some time as secretary of the TSYSHO, directed its publication Shul un lebn (School and Life) and published a variety of works for or about children, from literature and Yiddish textbooks to the scenario of Aleksander Ford’s 1936 movie on the Medem sanatorium, Mir kumen on. ^{8 8} Among the textbooks is Leyenen un shraybn far kleyninke kinder (Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1923). On Pat as co-author, with Wanda Wasilewska, of the scenario of Mir kumen on, see Patt, In gerangl, 280-283. On Pat as chairman of the SKIF, see Jack Jacobs, Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009), 40. On Pat’s role in the Bund and TSYSHO in prewar Poland, see also Gertrud Pickhan, “Gegen den Strom”. Der Allgemeine jüdische Arbeiterbund “Bund” in Polen 1918—1939 (Munich: DVA, 2001). A short video of Pat’s visit of a TOZ (Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population) summer camp near Vilna in 1935 with Yiddish writer Avrom Reyzen, and recorded by the American Jewish travel agent Gustave Eisner, is available on the YIVO website yivoencyclopedia.org/search.aspx?query=pat (accessed February 20th, 2024). See Miriam Udel, “The Second Soul of the People: Secular Sabbatism in Yiddish Children’s Literature,” Jewish Social Studies 21, no. 2 (2016): 78-104.

In addition to his political, pedagogical, and journalistic activities (often under the pseudonym of Y. Vilner), Pat was an author for both adults and children. His literary output reflected his concern for political and intergenerational transmission as well as his rootedness in Polish Jewish culture. His first publications for young people were written in Hebrew, but the emerging author quickly began writing in his mother tongue, which, with the exception of several journalistic articles written in English during and after the war, remained his main, almost exclusive, writing language. Yankev Pat wrote literature in different genres, including folk tales, travelogues, theatrical plays, novels, and life stories, many of which were published in the Yiddish press before being reprinted in books or brochures. ^{9 9} His literary works and news articles were thoroughly catalogued by his son Emanuel Patt in In gerangl, 509-629. Some of his prewar literature was clearly influenced by Bundist politics. Such pieces include his biography, written at a child’s reading level, of the Bundist leader and educator Beynish Mikhaleyvitsh (1876-1928), ^{10 10}Iber nakht groy gevorn: an epizod fun BeynishMikhaleyvitshes lebn (Vilnius: Naye yidishe folksshul, 1929). In New York in 1941, Pat published a second biography of Mikhaleyvitsh: Beynish Mikhaleyvitsh. A byografye (New York: Kinder ring, 1941). his accounts resulting from his 1925-travel in Erets-Yisroel, and his late 1920s trilogy of short stories on past and contemporary Bundist activists: Bundistn (Bundists), Oyf kidesh hashem (As a Martyr) and Oyf di vegn fun baginen (On the Ways of Dawn). ^{11 11} His trilogy about Bundists was published in Warsaw in 1926, 1929 and 1935 by the publishing houses Kultur-lige and Di velt. This trilogy was based on written and oral material drawn from regular activists during Pat’s travels throughout hundreds of towns and villages of Poland, where he “collected” (gezamlt) “the motives, the tones, the half legends, the disappeared shadows and shapes”. ^{12 12} Pat, foreword to Bundistn (Warsaw: Kultur lige, 1926). As a result, Bundistn is, according to the Bundist Noah Portnoy in his foreword, “not a historical (historish) work in the strict sense of the word. But this is a piece of history (geshikhte) told in an interesting and lively way”. ^{13 13} Foreword by Noah Portnoy, Bundistn, 5. Recalling the way that YIVO zamlers (collectors) were documenting popular Jewish life, Bundistn outlines the profiles of many anonymous Bundists, “unknown soldiers” (umbakante zelner) of the party and men of the people, whose stories he wanted to unearth and make accessible to adults and children. ^{14 14} Foreword by Noyekh Portnoy, Bundistn (Warsaw: Kultur lige, 1926), 5. The third volume of the trilogy, published in 1935, focuses on the illegal Bundist journal Di arbeter-shtime in Tsarist Russia and is also based on research in the archives of the Bund then located in Geneva. About the practice of zamlung, see Cecile Eesther Kuznitz, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 72-80. His readership and audience could likewise go beyond socialist circles. For instance, one of his theater plays, In goldenem land (In a Golden Land), whose central theme was the end of the old shtetl (small town) and the quest for modern Jewishness (which included a critique of Zionism), was performed in 1926 at the Yiddish Artistic Theater of Warsaw, under the direction of Zygmunt Turkow, with sets from painter Mané-Katz.15 His literary work for children also extended beyond the political sphere and is largely made up of tales inspired by the Bible, traditional Jewish life in Poland, works written by Russian contemporary authors, and traditional tales like those from the Brothers Grimm or Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. ^{15 15} For example: Biblishe mayselekh (Bible Stories) (Bialystok: Dos bukh, 1919-1920). Traditional folktales for children were also published in short stories series by A. Gitlin from Warsaw in 1921 and 1922, such as Yulik, der vunderlekher leyb (Yulik, the Marvelous Lion), Der shames un der noged (The Beedle and the Powerful Man) or the compilation of tales in Far di kleyne kindersvegn (For Little Children). Coming from this last volume, Yankev Pat’s story “Reyzele,” was translated, introduced and published online in Hebrew by Maya Vaynshtok in February 2022, רײזעלע - איבערזעץ (iberzets.org). His story for children “The Magic Lion” was also published recently in an English version in Honey on the Page. A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature, edited and translated by Miriam Udel (New York: New York University Press, 2020).

An American Yiddish Cultural Activist, Between Memory and Reconstruction

Pat was sent three times to America in order to raise funds for the financially struggling TSYSHO schools in Poland. He did not come back from his last mission of 1938 and remained in New York City following the outbreak of World War II. His wife Rivke Pat, who was a Bundist and TSYSHO teacher in Warsaw, was killed in Vilna during the Holocaust. Transferring his activism to American soil, Pat joined several organizations that belonged to the trend that historian Frank Wolff calls “secondary Bundism”, meaning of Yiddish socialist orientation and close to Bundist ideas and circles, but adapted to the American context and without following the strict Bund’s political agenda grounded in European realities. ^{16 16} Frank Wolff, Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration: The Transnational History of the Jewish Labor Bund (Leiden: Brill, 2021). In 1941, Pat became secretary-general of the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC), a position he held until 1963. Founded in New York in 1934 in reaction to Hitler’s rise to power, the JLC was an umbrella organization of the non-Communist American Jewish labor movement, deeply grounded in secondary Bundism. Its founders and main leaders, such as its first president Baruch Charney Vladeck and its treasurer David Dubinsky, were Bundists who had migrated to the United States from Tsarist Russia following the Revolution of 1905. During the war, the JLC led a large rescue operation of European Socialist figures and supported Socialist resistance movements. Its relief action for Jewish survivors and the remains of the Socialist labor movement was launched after the liberation of Europe. ^{17 17} On the creation of the JLC and its actions during the war, see Catherine Collomp, Rescue, Relief and Resistance: The Jewish Labor Committee’s Anti-Nazi Operations, 1934-1945 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021) and Gail Malmgreen, “Labor and the Holocaust: The Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Nazi Struggle,” Labor’s Heritage 4, no. 3 (1991): 20-35. On Pat’s actions for the JLC, see Collomp, Rescue, Relief, and Resistance, and Constance Pâris de Bollardière, “‘La pérennité de notre peuple’: Une aide socialiste juive américaine dans la diaspora yiddish, le Jewish Labor Committee en France (1944-1948)” (‘The Everlastingness of Our People’: An American Jewish Socialist Aid in the Yiddish Diaspora, the Jewish Labor Committee in Postwar France, 1944-1948”), PhD dissertation, EHESS, 2017. While the founders of the JLC had been integrated into New York’s Yiddish political and cultural life for several decades, Yankev Pat, who had just arrived from Poland, eased the establishment of the JLC’s ties with Holocaust survivors, especially within the Polish Yiddish-speaking world.

In addition to the JLC, Pat’s involvement in American Yiddish associations and educational projects included the Arbeter-ring (Workmen’s Circle), a mutual-aid and cultural organization of socialist orientation and influenced by secondary Bundism which, among other activities, offered Yiddish classes to children. His political activism began to take new forms. Although he remained loyal to the Socialist, anti-Communist and Yiddishist ideas of the Bund, and supported the reconstruction of Bundist groups in postwar Europe, Pat did not belong to its World Coordinating Committee (the federating body of worldwide Bundist sections created in 1947) and left the American Representation of the Bund (created in 1939), both led by recently arrived Polish Bundist refugees, which he considered too closed in on themselves and too hostile towards Zionism. ^{18 18} On Pat and the Bund’s World Coordinating Committee after the war, see Daniel Blatman, For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, 1939-1949 (London/Portland: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), 198; David Slucki, The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 22-23, and Sherer, “Yankev Pat.” His relief activities for the JLC led him, however, to cooperate occasionally with these organizations, which were located in the same building — but not the same floor -— as the JLC, in the famous Forverts building of 175 East Broadway. Distancing himself from the American Bundist journal Undzer tsayt (Our Time), ^{19 19} The biographical dictionary of Bundists Doyres bundistn, published by the American Bund, does however contain a note on Yankev Pat in the third volume published in 1968. he joined the editorial team of the literary and intellectual American journal of socialist and pro-Yiddish orientation Di tsukunft (The Future) and published numerous articles in other Yiddish journals, mostly in the United States, France, Argentina, Mexico, and Israel.

As an activist and writer dedicated to Yiddish and issues of transmission, Pat was deeply involved in the future of this culture after the Holocaust. All his postwar actions connected the reconstruction of Jewish life and Yiddish culture with the memory of the genocide and prewar Jewish life. Pat particularly expressed his dedication to Yiddish culture after the Holocaust through his involvement as one of the initiators of the Alveltlekher yidisher kultur-kongres (World Congress for Jewish Culture, henceforth Kultur-kongres). ^{20 20} Tributes to Pat’s activism are visible in the 7th volume of the Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur (Biographical Dictionary of the New Yiddish Literature), published in 1968 by the Kultur-kongres, as well as, in 2010, through the “Jacob Pat Memorial Lecture” of the Harvard College Library. Inaugurated in New York in September 1948, the Kultur-kongres was a transnational cultural structure created to unite secular non-Communist Yiddish organizations in order to collectively support their minority culture worldwide. The Kultur-kongres faced “opposing imperatives,” as highlighted by scholar Anita Norich: “to mourn and commemorate even as they tried to imagine the future”. ^{21 21} Anita Norich, Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish American Culture during the Holocaust (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 109. On the beginning of the Kultur-kongres, see Rachel Rojanski, “The Final Chapter in the Struggle for Cultural Autonomy: Palestine, Israel and Yiddish Writers in the Diaspora, 1946-1951,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 6, no. 2 (2007): 185-204 and Constance Pâris de Bollardière, “The Jewish Labor Committee’s support of Yiddish culture in early post-Holocaust France, 1945-1948”, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 20, no. 2 (2021), 196-221. Indeed, the resolution leading to its creation included such goals:

Affirm through actions the continuity of Yiddish cultural creation […], bring more hope and encouragement to all of our people […], reinforce hope in the survival of our people, create national memorials for the authors, poets, artists, historians – all the exterminated people of Jewish culture, commemorate for generations the martyrdom and courage during the Nazi war against the Jewish people […], create a library of remembrance. ^{22 22} “Resolution concerning a World Congress for Yiddish Culture,” document from the JLC National Convention, 2 September 1947, JLC I, box 2, file 14.

When talking about a “library of remembrance,” Pat was referring among other things to the publications of “writings of destruction”, works that were dear to him both as a writer and as the head of the memorial section of the Kultur-kongres. One of the transnational organization’s first projects was to support the publication of the anthology of songs from the ghettos and the camps, Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs of the Ghettos and Camps), compiled by Shmerke Kaczerginski, who was residing in Paris at the time. ^{23 23}Lider fun di getos un lagern (New York: CYCO, 1948). Minutes from the Congress for Jewish Culture, Congress for Jewish Culture Archives, New York, 25 July 1947. These archives were accessed at the headquarters and are now at YIVO. I would like to extend my thanks to Bernard Flam and Shane Baker for giving me access to these archives. As for the reinforcement of “hope in the survival” of the Jewish people, this materialized in the Kultur-kongres’ efforts to maintain, promote, and transmit Yiddish language and culture, in its political activities towards the defense of the Yiddish language in Israel, and in protests against the oppression of Jewish culture in the USSR. ^{24 24} On the Kultur-kongres and Israel, see Rojanski, “The Final Chapter.” The JLC, which followed the same anti-Communist political line, applied it within its own labor circles and Socialist agenda. With leading roles in the two organizations, Pat was active on several fronts. While the Kultur-kongres provided cultural guidance and content, the JLC’s task was to send material relief for the reconstruction of Jewish life, based on fundraising in secular Jewish circles and American labor unions. Within this frame, the JLC supported, on its own level, Yiddish culture materially and financially in Europe and Israel. ^{25 25} Pâris de Bollardière, “The Jewish Labor Committee and the Reconstruction of Yiddish Culture.” Yankev Pat, as executive secretary, was directly responsible for this JLC cultural action.In continuity with his prewar and wartime works, and in line with his postwar agenda combining memory and reconstruction, Pat devoted much of his literary creativity and his political and cultural activism to supporting the writings of destruction.

An Author of Polish-Jewish Writings of Destruction

As emphasized by literary scholar Jan Schwarz, the Yiddish world in the postwar period was heavily entrenched in a “culture of remembrance”. ^{26 26} “Culture of Remembrance,” Jan Schwarz, Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015), viii. This evolution can be found in Pat’s literary work since the time of the war, with three of his last six books being about the destruction of Polish Jews. As we shall now see, Pat’s writings of destruction, which are at the crossroads of different literary genres, of archival documentation, and of oral history, reflect a larger trend of these cultural productions in the Polish-Jewish world, and enable us to grasp many of their characteristics and the challenges they faced.

Two of his books, Ash un fayer: Iber di khurves fun Poyln (Ash and Fire: Through the Ruins of Poland, 1947) and Henekh: A yidish kind vos iz aroys fun geto (Henekh: A Jewish Child who Left the Ghetto,1948), were published following a two-month trip to Poland that Pat undertook in winter 1946 at the behest of the JLC to investigate how the American organization could participate to the reconstruction of Jewish life. ^{27 27} Yankev Pat, Ash un fayer: iber di khurves fun Poyln (New York : CYCO, 1946) ; Yankev Pat, Henekh, a yidish kind vos iz aroys fun geto (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun poylishe yidn in Argentine, book series “Dos poylishe yidntum”, vol. 29, 1948). In Ash un fayer, ^{28 28} Yankev Pat, Ash un fayer: iber di khurves fun Poyln (Ash and Fire: Across the Ruins of Poland) (New York: CYCO, 1946). Pat relates his visits to former killing centers and his encounters with Holocaust survivors in different Polish cities, including Warsaw and Bialystok where he used to live before the war. He describes the fate of the Jews during the war as well as their efforts to rebuild from the ruins. As underlined by scholar Robert L. Cohn in his analysis of three travelogues of American-Polish Jews in immediate postwar Poland, Pat’s Ash un fayer “focuses on recounting wartime and postwar stories of the ‘thousands of individual Jews’ whom he meets along the way”. ^{29 29} Robert L. Cohn, “Early Postwar Travelers on the Future of Jewish Life in Poland, The Polish Review 53, no. 3 (2008): 317-340, here 331. On Ash un fayer, also see David Cesarani, “Introduction,” in After the Holocaust. Challenging the Myth of Silence, ed. David Cesarani and Eric J. Sundquist (New York/London: Routledge, 2012), 25, Michael Meng, “Traveling to Germany and Poland: Toward a Textual Montage of Jewish Emotions after the Holocaust,” in Jewish Histories of the Holocaust: New Transnational Approaches, ed. Norman J. W. Goda (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014), 266-281, David Engel, “The End of a Jewish Metropolis? The Ambivalence of Reconstruction in the Aftermath of the Holocaust,” in Warsaw. The Jewish Metropolis. Essaysin Honor of the 75th Birthday of Professor Antony Polonsky (Leiden/Botson: Brill, 2015), 562-569, Leah Wolfson, Jewish Responses toPersecution, 1944-1946 (Lanham/Washington CD: Rowman & Littelfied/USHMM, 2015), 244, Avinoam J. Patt, The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021), 350-358, and Kamil Kijek, “Only Ashes? Jewish Visitors to the New Poland in 1946 and the Future of Polish Jewry,” Journal of Modern European History 20, no.1: 111-126. Among these stories, Pat thus tells about the activities of the workers of the Central Jewish Historical Commission such as Nella Rost, Michel Borwicz, Joseph Wulf, Ada Eber, Shmerke Kaczerginski, Mendel Mann, and Philip Friedman, and presents the content of some of their publications. By sharing the work he witnessed in the Commission in his own literature of destruction, Pat thus also documents writings of destruction, here in their historical scientific component, in the making: ^{30 30}Ash un fayer, 76-82.

From a number of these pictures the Commission has compiled a picture book entitled “The Destruction of Polish Jewry,” the most valuable book of the kind published to date. The first twenty-nine pictures describe the manhunts on Jews during the opening phase of the German occupation – the pogroms, the firing of synagogues, the beating and the mocking of old Jews, the plucking of their beards, the yellow badges, the posters calling for Jewish blood. The next sixty-seven pictures illustrate Ghetto life in a dozen Polish cities – child starvation, slave labor, the pillaging of Jewish property, hunger, cold, nakedness and finally, the burning of the Ghettoes. […] I put the book down and turn to another shelf which contains the writings, memoirs and diaries of Jews who were killed, and some who escaped. The diaries are yellowed and stained; they were dug up from underground bunkers. ^{31 31} English translation of Ash un fayer, by Leo Steinberg, Ashes and Fire (New York: International Universities Press, 1947) 64.

The 392 pages of Ash un fayer contain many photographs of persecution and destruction, as well as quoted words of survivors, and war songs which he collected and noted during his trip, adding a polyphonic documentary-style approach to his travelogue. ^{32 32} Alongside these notes and documents, quotes from traditional folk tales, Yiddish literature and the Tanakh remind of Pat’s prewar diverse literary interests. The book for instance begins with “Dos lid fun Treblinke” (The Poem of Treblinka), a poem attributed to author Shmerke Kaczerginski, who later published a book entitled Lider fun di getos un lagern (Poems of the Ghetto and the Camps) with Pat’s assistance. ^{33 33} Pat to Kaczerginski, 12 January and 4 February, 1948, JLC II, B 83 F 8 and 9. Ash un fayer furthermore falls within the framework of editor Mark Turkow’s series Dos poylishe yidntum, which included three other travel accounts to postwar Poland by other authors. ^{34 34} The two other stories are Barg khurbn (Mountain of Destruction), by Zerubovl and Shmuel Leyb Shneyderman, Tsvishn shrek un hofenung (Between Terror and Hope), published in 1946 and 1947. In one of these, Poyln 1946: ayndrukn fun a rayze (Poland 1946, Impressions of a Journey), the author Henry Shoshkes traveled alongside Pat for part of the trip towards Bialystok, the village of their birth. In his narrative, Shoshkes recounts that they were joined by Marek Edelman, the young Bundist leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, on several occasions during Pat’s trip. ^{35 35} Henry Shoshkes, Poyln 1946: ayndrukn fun a rayze (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun poylishe yidn, coll. “Dos poylishe yidntum” 8, 1946), 112-120. At one of these encounters, Edelman gave Pat a journal written in Polish in 1944 by a thirteen-year-old child named Henekh, from which emerged Pat’s second postwar book. ^{36 36} On Pat’s postwar relationship with Marek Edelman, see Constance Pâris de Bollardière, “Entraide, mémoires et migrations dans le monde yiddish. Une lettre de Yankev Pat à Marek Edelman, 8 octobre 1946,” Tsafon. Revue d’études juives du Nord 76 (2018): 157-168.