The Holocaust Bystander in Polish Culture, 1942-2015

The Story of Innocence
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-030-66410-7
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 364 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 496 g

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict

This book concerns building an idealized image of the society in which the Holocaust occurred. It inspects the category of the bystander (in Polish culture closely related to the witness), since the war recognized as the axis of self-presentation and majority politics of memory. The category is of performative character since it defines the roles of event participants, assumes passivity of the non-Jewish environment, and alienates the exterminated, thus making it impossible to speak about the bystanders’ violence at the border between the ghetto and the ‘Aryan’ side. Bystanders were neither passive nor distanced; rather, they participated and played important roles in Nazi plans. Starting with the war, the authors analyze the functions of this category in the Polish discourse of memory through following its changing forms and showing links with social practices organizing the collective memory. Despite being often critiqued, this point of dispute about Polish memory rarely belongs to mainstream culture. It also blocks the memory of Polish violence against Jews. The book is intended for students and researchers interested in memory studies, the history of the Holocaust, the memory of genocide, and the war and postwar cultures of Poland and Eastern Europe.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

¿Ukowski, Tomasz

Hopfinger, Maryla

Zukowski, Tomasz

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Museumskunde, Materielle Kultur, Erinnerungskultur
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte Deutsche Geschichte: Holocaust
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Chapter 1: We are all witnesses. Instead of an introduction; Maryla Hopfinger.- 2. Chapter 2: Constructing the Figure of the Polish Shoah Witness; Katarzyna Chmielewska.- 3. Chapter 3: Alternative Narratives of the 1940s vs. the Politics of Memory; Katarzyna Chmielewska.- 4. Chapter 4: Hand in hand. Calling on witnesses to Polish-Jewish brotherhood; Anna Zawadzka.- 5. Chapter 5: Bearing witness to witnessing: Jewish narratives about Polish “witnesses” to the Holocaust; Anna Zawadzka.- 6. Chapter 6: The guilt of indifference; Aránzazu Calderón Puerta, Tomasz Zukowski.- 7. Chapter 7: Nostalgic archeology and critical archeology; Tomasz Zukowski.- 8. Chapter 8: Documents and fictions; Wojciech Wilczyk.-

Über Autor(innen)

Maryla Hopfinger is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. She works in the areas of the theory of culture and social communication. She has authored numerous books and articles and has also acted as editor to a number of collected volumes. Her most recent publication in English (2010, translated in 2020) is entitled Literature and Media.

Tomasz Zukowski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. He is a literary historian interested in the identity and discourses in the context of the Shoah. Previous works include The Great Whitewash (2018) and Under Pressure.(2021).