Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

"Morituri vos salutant": Szmul Zygielbojm's Suicide in May 1943 and the International Socialist Community in London1

2000; Oxford University Press; Volume: 14; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/hgs/14.2.242

8756-6583

Isabelle Tombs,

Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies

The prominent Jewish-Polish socialist Szmul Zygielbojm arrived in London in March 1942, residing and working there until his suicide on 12 May 1943. This article analyzes his relations with socialists in the British capital during that period. It describes how his contacts helped him disseminate the early information, arriving from Poland, about the Holocaust there—information that had a powerful impact on a significant section of socialist opinion. At the same time, it examines the limitations of his role, his increasing despair at the lack of effective measures to rescue Jews, and his realization that major divisions among the Allies, as well as among socialists and Jews, made unlikely any decisive action to help the Jews in Poland, let alone any potent protest of their treatment by the Nazis.