ŚWIĘTOWANIE W OPOWIEŚCIACH WSPOMNIENIOWYCH WILAMOWIAN O POWOJENNYCH PRZEŚLADOWANIACH
CELEBRATION IN VILAMOVIANS’ MEMORY-BASED ACCOUNTS OF POST-WAR PERSECUTION

Summary/Abstract: The Vilamovians are an ethnic group living in the small town of Wilamowice (“Wymysoü” in the Vilamovian language), situated in the borderlands between Silesia and Małopolska (Lesser Poland). Among the numerous determinants of the Vilamovians’ identification, of particular importance are their shared culture, shared history, and awareness of their own distinctiveness. All three of these elements are evident in the Vilamovians’ memory-based accounts of post-war persecution. Analysis of these stories has shown that they belong to more than a single community of memory. The borders between these communities sometimes run within families. The purpose of the author’s research was to analyse how post-war persecution, the new situation in which the Vilamovians found themselves, was seen by the respondents to have changed their approach to celebration. The article describes change in the situation of the group, which was seen by the interlocuters as limiting opportunities for holding rituals in their traditional form, as forcing change upon them, and as a cause behind deprivation. Stories about people being prohibited from wearing Vilamovian dress have undergone fictionalisation and become part of their folklore, while accounts of holidays celebrated at home and in post-war labour camp are personal in character. Both one and the other, circulating among members of the Vilamoviancentric community of memory, contained numerous topoi comprising the positive image of their own people, the Vilamovians, and negative image of others—of Poles and the soldiers of the Red Army.

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