Gallery 5: ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY, 1772–1914
“Jewish sorrows? I cannot find a special corner in my heart for the ghetto . . . I feel at home in the entire world wherever there are clouds and birds and human tears,” wrote Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), an important Marxist theorist. She was born into a middle-class family in Zamość and spent her childhood and early youth in Warsaw. As a result of her involvement in the Proletariat, a socialist organization, she was forced to leave Warsaw. She earned her doctorate in Zurich with a dissertation on the industrial development of Poland, focusing on the Łódź cotton workers. She was a co-founder of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) party.