Kat, sędzia i ofiara w „Spowiedzi” Calka Perechodnika
Executioner, Judge and Victim in Calel Perechodnik’s “Spowiedź” (“Confession”)

Summary/Abstract: Calel Perechodnik’s “Spowiedź (Confession)” should be placed among the most important evidence of the Holocaust. It is a unique work as it was produced by a man who collaborated with the Nazi oppressor. Jewish police uniform did not save the author of the memoirs from a personal tragedy. Finally, he himself had to lead his wife and daughter to the train of death heading for Treblinka, which greatly influenced on the subject and form of his account. Perechodnik describes the reality of occupation from three different points of view: an executioner, a judge, and a victim. The first two may arise controversies among wider public as “Confession” is not only a literary examination of conscience, but also a penetrating act of indictment in which the author does not spare his native society. For that reason it is easy to lose the figure of Perechodnik as a victim of Shoah. A careful reading of “Confession” offers one more perspective of understanding the literary evidence of the Holocaust since it sheds a new light on the activities of Jews-collaborators. Some of them till the end of their lives regretted that they joined the army of oppressors. Perechodnik’s “Confession” is a certain balance between moral duty towards family and nation dying in concentration camps. It is a moral dilemma running through the entire creativity about the Shoah.

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