Rzeczy – Zagłada – świadectwo na przykładzie getta warszawskiego
Objects – the Holocaust – Evidence Upon the Example of the Warsaw Ghetto

Summary/Abstract: The theme of my studies are objects-from-the-Holocaust. First they were Jewish and then only formerly Jewish. Some remained in soil mixed with ashes and residues of burnt bones because they belonged to the victims at the time of death. Others stayed underneath rubble and the surface because they were concealed in secret places by the victims or carelessly abandoned in fear, haste, and chaos. Still others simply cocreated the material substance of houses, homes, wardrobes, shelves, and drawers. It is precisely an encounter with those objects that forces me to reflect on the concept of the witness and the act of giving evidence.What are objects in their capacity as witnesses? Are they only evidence guiding the investigator to clues of the crime? Mere traces of people who surrounded themselves with them and used them? Or solely artefacts of interest to us owing to their makers? Thus comprehended objects cannot be acknowledged as ”witnesses” in the full meaning of the word, because the essence of testimony is a manifestation of unique, individual, and, predominantly, human subjectivity. Within the context of considering objects--from-the- Holocaust traditional concepts of the witness, testimony, and testifying must be rethought. Apparently, redefining them should aim at reflection on material quality and an expansion of the categories of life and subjectivity by including the domain of the inorganic. In my article I refer to methodological inspirations of the new humanities: the turn towards objects, the biography of the object, and Bruno Latour and his “actor-network” theory.

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