Notes from Slavic Quick Cataloging, Pt. 12

More fun with Polish!

Here’s an English language book, published in Poland, on local adaptations and interpretations of Shakespeare. Flipping through it briefly, one case is about a Singaporean modern adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, called “Chicken Rice War,” wherein the unfortunate lovers are children of rival chicken rice vendors. Since everything is on the internet, here’s what the film’s website says: “It is in the midst of bitter rivalry, close friends and chicken rice that love begins to blossom.” http://www.mediacorpraintree.com/crw/index.htm

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So much Polish today! Here’s a book title I would reuse, in my imaginary rewriting of books based on how I think they translate: Dzień przed końcem świata, by Aleksander Jurewicz. Seems like “The Day Before the End of the World” to me. The cover features a 1940s black and white photo of a mournful little boy on a rocking horse, with a equally serious young man kneeling with an arm around the child. Perhaps it is actually a novel about WWII.

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A subject heading from a Polish book: “Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust”

That’s the thing — spend any amount of time poking around in Eastern European type things, and things start turning up about Jewish history, and the terrible things that happened to them. Not that I can keep track of all the books I’ve seen, but I can recall two or three just about the extermination of Lithuanian Jews during WWII. My supervisor, who is from Lithuania, mentioned that the financial crisis is bringing up anti-Semitic feelings there, given the stereotypical view of Jews being in charge of the financial system. Oh, and Bernie Madoff’s not helping.