„Puszcza Białowieska rośnie na osadach ludzkich” – las i pamięć
'The Białowieża Forest grows on human settlements' – trees and memory

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of the article is to show the specifics of the forest as a memorial site. The starting point is the story of the graves of Romuald Rajs "Bury’s" victims hidden in the forest. The issue of the location of their graves, and later – a form of commemoration, is an example of memory conflicts that often occur in areas with a complex history and heterogeneous ethnic structure, to which Podlasie belongs. The events of 1946 and their consequences for subsequent generations of the inhabitants of Hajnówka became the factual canvas for the crime story of Okularnik [The Mercedes W210] by Katarzyna Bonda, the interpretation of which is an essential part of the considerations contained in the article. The forest, due to its ambivalent attributes and cultural connotations, such as opacity, place of refuge/ threat, closeness/ strangeness, persistence/ changeability, turns out to be one of the key metaphors for describing difficult community memory, which it hides/ conceals and protects at the same time. The research perspective used in the article is memory studies. The category of necropolitics (within the meaning of Ewa Domańska) is also important.

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