Czy Polacy i Żydzi nienawidzą się nawzajem? Literatura jako mediacja
Do Poles and Jews Hate Each Other? Literature as Mediation

Author(s): Marta Tomczok
Subject(s): Jewish Thought and Philosophy, History of Judaism, History of Antisemitism
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: Polish-Jewish relations;Polish literature;the Holocaust;Shoah;Czajka-Stachowicz Izabela;Polish nobility
Summary/Abstract: In Polish literature, the story of Jews, their culture and its influence on the Polish society has been in circulation for over three hundred years. Since the 1940s, the Holocaust has delineated the story, testing linguistic efficiency and imagination, as well as forming a permanent reference point in the collective consciousness and one of the most important issues of Polish culture. It can be couched in the question, “How should we build relations with Jews?” Literature has been posing it in a virtually unchanged form for a century, failing to notice the long absence of the important addressee and interlocutor: Jews. The question about Polish relations with Jews, which has an extremely strong impact on writers, requires clarification. Firstly, it is not addressed only to Jewish recipients, but above all to Poles. Secondly, it is symbolic, not actual, and results from the overwhelming need to take over the dominant narrative of mutual relations and “set it up” in such a way that it would no longer be a stain on our history, but would allow us to purge ourselves of it, explain it or even write it anew. From the chapter, “What Unites Us?”

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