Tadeusz Piotrowski (sociologist)

Tadeusz Piotrowski or Thaddeus Piotrowski (born 1940) is a Polish-American sociologist and author. He is a professor of sociology in the Social Science Division of the University of New Hampshire at Manchester in Manchester, New Hampshire.[1]

Tadeusz Piotrowski
Born1940
Poland
OccupationWriter, academic
NationalityPolish-American
CitizenshipAmerican
GenreWorld War II history

Early life and education

Born in the region of Volhynia in occupied Poland, Piotrowski and his family left in August 1943.[2][3] He earned his PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973.

Career

Piotrowski's courses at the University of New Hampshire include the social history of the Holocaust and courses in anthropology.[4]

Piotr Wróbel considers Piotrowski's works as "highly polemical and controversial", similar to those by Richard C. Lukas and Marek Jan Chodakiewicz.[5] Gifford Malone writes that the introduction of The Polish Deportees of World War II is useful, and that the rest of the book contains personal accounts of deportees. All together Malone considers the volume to be a well written and moving account.[6]

Poland's Holocaust

Judith Olsak-Glass writes that Piotrowski's premise in Poland's Holocaust is that Poland's borders and sizable minorities were the main factors leading to the Holocaust in Poland. Piotrowski posits that the aspirations of Ukrainians for a "greater Ukraine", Belorussians for a "reunited Belarus", and Jews for a "Jewish state within the Polish one" were a smoldering issue in the Second Polish Republic. Piotrowski argues that at the outbreak of the war "radical members" of the minorities sided with the Nazis and Soviets. Piotrowski greatly widens the generally accepted bounds of the Holocaust so that it includes not only Jews but all Polish victims of Nazis and Soviets. The book is organized by collaboration of each ethnic group, blaming those who "colluded with the enemy to the detriment of the Polish state and the Polish people". Olsak-Glass sees the chapter on Jewish collaboration as provocative, though important, writing that while Piotrowski acknowledges some antisemitism in Poland he questions its extent and causes stating that some of the responsibility for antisemitism "must surely rest on the shoulders of the Jews themselves". The final chapter examines the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, is based on recent scholarship as well as personal recollection, and details savage barbarity that is not available in other English language books. Overall, Olsak-Glass considers the volume to be a valuable contribution to the field.[7]

Klaus-Peter Friedrich considers the methodology in Poland's Holocaust to be questionable. Friedrich writes that the book is critical towards ethnic minorities in Poland and apologetic towards ethnic Poles.[8] Overall, Friedrich considers the work to be "unbalanced" as Piotrowski "considers collaboration exclusively under ethnic terms as if it was ethnically determined".[9] Lisiunia A. Romanienko considers Poland's Holocaust as an attempt at setting the record straight in the light of recent scholarship denouncing the role of Poles in World War II. In the book, Piotrowski attempts to redefine the Holocaust so that it is expanded to include all "systematic genocidal victims" of the war. The book is not organized chronologically but by cultural coordination/collaboration between ethnic groups, which Romanianko writes provides a refreshing departure inhibiting further ill feeling regarding the role of Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Poles, Jews, Lithuanians and Belorussians in Holocaust on territory of Poland; although Piotrowski's research indicates that involvement of each group in victimising Polish Jews and Catholics was at times ubiquitous, he prohibits widespread censure of entire cultures. Romanianko states that Piotrowski's book is one of the most comprehensive and well documented, multi-methodological contributions to scholarly work in the area."[10]

Selected works

Piotrowski's major books include:[11][12]

  • Vengeance of the Swallows: Memoir of a Polish Family's Ordeal Under Soviet Aggression, Ukrainian Ethnic Cleansing and Nazi Enslavement, and Their Emigration to America (1995), McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-0-7864-0001-0
  • Poland's Holocaust (1998, 2006), McFarland, ISBN 978-0-7864-2913-4, ISBN 0-7864-0371-3
  • Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn (2000, 2009), McFarland, ISBN 978-0-7864-4245-4, ISBN 0-7864-0773-5
  • The Indian Heritage of New Hampshire and Northern New England (2002, 2009), McFarland, ISBN 0-7864-4252-2, ISBN 0-7864-1098-1
  • The Polish Deportees of World War II (2004, 2008), McFarland, ISBN 978-0-7864-3258-5, ISBN 0-7864-1847-8.

Awards
  • The Cultural Achievement Award from the American Council for Polish Culture[1]
  • The Literary Award of the Polish Sociocultural Centre of the Polish Library in London[1]
  • Gold Medal Award for "promoting Polish history and culture", bestowed by the American Institute of Polish Culture at the 35th International Polonaise Ball in Miami.[13][14]

Notes
  1. University of New Hampshire at Manchester, Thaddeus Piotrowski. Faculty. Internet Archive.
  2. The UNH News for Faculty and Staff: Campus Journal, Thaddeus Piotrowski’s fifth major work. Higher Learning, Jan. 16, 2004 Edition.
  3. John Walters, "Eastern Europe and Western Indians". New Hampshire Public Radio, October 3, 2002.[Forced redirect.]
  4. McFarland Publishing, Thaddeus Piotrowski. About the Author. ISBN 978-0-7864-4252-2.
  5. The Eagle Unbowed. Poland and the Poles in the Second World War by Halik Kochanski (review), Piotr Wróbel, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Purdue University Press, Volume 33, Number 3, Spring 2015, page 153
  6. Malone, Gifford (2004-01-01). "The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World". History: Reviews of New Books. 33 (1): 30–30. doi:10.1080/03612759.2004.10526424. ISSN 0361-2759.
  7. Judith Olsak-Glass (January 1999). "Review of Piotrowski's Poland's Holocaust". Sarmatian Review. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  8. Friedrich, Klaus-Peter (1999). "Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland`s Holocaust. Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947". Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung (in German). 48 (2): 277–279.
  9. Friedrich, Klaus-Peter (2005). "Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II". Slavic Review. 64 (4): 711–746. doi:10.2307/3649910. JSTOR 3649910.
  10. Romanienko, Lisiunia A. (2000). "Tadeusz Piotrowski. 1998. Poland's Holocaust (Book Review)". Humanity and Society. 24 (1).
  11. McFarland Publishing, Poland’s Holocaust, description. Archived 2011-06-04 at the Wayback Machine
  12. The American Institute of Polish Culture, Miami, "Gold Medal Awards" 1987-2009 Archived 2011-06-12 at the Wayback Machine
  13. University of New Hampshire at Manchester, "Campus Connections: "Faculty News", February 2007" (PDF). (161 KB) 
  14. Polish American Historical Association, ""Personalia", Volume 64, Number 1, April 2007" (PDF). (1.08 MB) 
gollark: <@209142270195138560> NO FAKE LOADING TIME
gollark: <@209142270195138560> Why did you make a wrapper for gps? What does it do?!
gollark: ```lualocal ev, whatever = os.pullEvent()if ev == "key" then -- do stuffelseif ev == "monitor_touch" then -- do OTHER stuffend```
gollark: You can do `os.pullEvent` with *no* filter then check if it matches, like this:
gollark: I think it might just print the errör instead of returning it, but I don't know.

References
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