Cursed : Cornell University Press : 9781501771484 : 1501771485 : 15 Nov 2023 : In Cursed, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir investigates the Kielce Pogrom of 4th July, 1946, a milestone in the periodization of the Jewish diaspora. This massacre led Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust to realize that there was nothing left for them in post-war Poland. Panic-stricken, they fled to the West in droves. The Kielce Pogrom remains a negative reference point in the Polish historical narrative, representing a lack of recognition of antisemitism as a deep-rooted, ubiquitous element of Polish identity. Tokarska-Bakir takes a fresh look at both predicaments, weighing the evidence and conflicting arguments to revise the perception of Poland as a country groaning under the Soviet boot that did not prevent the spread of antisemitism but instead attempted to turn a blind eye to it. The resulting analysis is filled with revelations from the archives, previously classified sources of the communist Ministry