Pamięć religijna społeczności lokalnych
The Religious Memory of Local Communities

The Example of Jedwabne

Summary/Abstract: This article looks on Jedwabne and the debate on Polish involvement in the Holocaust from the perspective of the Jedwabians. The author shows that until the erection of the national monument to the murdered Jews in Jedwabne in 2001, the Jedwabians’ memory of their Jewish neighbors was a part of local memory. Jedwabians commemorated the Jews in accordance with their frames of memory. The point is that the people in Jedwabne are first of all a members of parish community, so their memory is religious in nature. This has a profound effect on their relationship to the past and their perception of the role of monuments and memorials. By reconstructing the history of the erection of selected monuments in Jedwabne, the author shows which events of the past Jedwabians want to commemorate and what social function is played by memory of the commemorated events. She also considers to what degree memory of the group’s past lies at the base of the Jedwabians’ contemporary identity.

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