We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
In the article the author asks a question about the reasons for the absence of postmodern and popular literature in the prose canon of the Shoah. He sees the cause of this state of affairs in the historical conditions of the literature of the Shoah, in the ethically and moralistically oriented reading of its texts and in the problems of this prose associated with the categories of fiction and fictionality. According to the author, the “exclusion” of postmodern and popular prose in the canon and its distance toward these phenomena results from the concern about the excess of textuality which is peculiar to these literary forms. Another reason is associated with the perspective, historically determined in the Polish context, of understanding postmodernism as an ahistorical trend – contrary to the classical views of Linda Hutcheon, Amy Elias or Paula Crosthwaite, who emphasise the state of being “possessed by history”, typical for this formation, which according to the researchers brings about a far-reaching transformation of the perception of historicity and the attitude of literature toward the trauma. As a result, the postmodern answer to the trauma of the past makes a recourse to the repertory of different literary means and it(usually) engages the Shoah from the perspective of a temporal and generational distance. In a similar manner the author attempts to demonstrate, on the basis of a crime novel by Zygmunt Miłoszewski, "Ziarno prawdy" (2011), how Polish memory about the Shoah is reflected in popular literature, being a reflection of the collective mechanism of repression, processing and answering to the trauma of the past.
More...
On the basis of abundant short-story and novelistic material the author presents the formation of the contemporary canon of the Shoah. According to Marta Tomczok, the domination of the short story over the novelistic form constitutes a result of the dialogue of generations and its influence upon the narrative situation of the prose by Agnieszka Kłos, Sylwia Chutnik or Magdalena Tulli. And in a deeper sense, which is discernible in "Czarne sezony" by Michał Głowiński, it involves a departure from the fictionalisation of the Shoah in favour of an autobiographical and memoir reflection. The author perceives the causes of such a state of affairs in the influence of "Sąsiedzi" by Jan Tomasz Gross upon Polish literature after 2000, and the rhetoric of cruelty, which is more and more discernible in it, as well as in the separation of the historiographical and the narrative discourses, which according to the author, influence each other in the case of the contemporary narrations about the Shoah, above all in the sphere of the popular novel.
More...
The article is an attempt to characterize the school canon of required readings concerning the Holocaust, as well as other books dedicated to the youngest readers. The author analyses the records of core curriculum and inspects books for children which were written in the first decade of the 21st century. In these recommended readings she notices a mechanism of creating the post-memory of young readers’ generation, which shape corresponds to the contemporary reflection on the Holocaust, undergoing constant changes which are a result of appearances of still new contexts. The researcher considers a trace to be a superior category which enables forming of contemporary remembering matrices. For the same reason the author pays special attention to this motive while analysing the chosen texts. It results in the conclusion that the presence of a trace generates nostalgia, which in turn leads to the feeling of loss, a category without which it would be difficult to imagine contemporary texts on the Holocaust for children.
More...
The article is a multicontextual interpretation of a poem by Wiktor Woroszylski entitled "Krzysztof Kamil B.", which was published for the first time in the 1988 volume entitled "W poszukiwaniu utraconego ciepła i inne wiersze". The work indicates one of the most distinguished Polish poets of the war generation, Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, who died at the age of twenty-three during the Warsaw Uprising. The poem by Woroszylski who was six years his junior has to do with the controversial question about the Jewish roots of the author of "Elegia o chłopcu polskim" (his mother, Stefania Baczyńska, had a Jewish background and was an assimilated, Catholic convert). The article firstly refers to various studies upon this subject which were initiated in 1979 by Józef Lewandowski’s essay. The studies were then engaged by a number of researchers and critics in the last decade of the 20th c. and at the beginning of the 21st c. They deliberate among other things whether this fact of the poet’s biography actually influenced his works. Theauthors demonstrate the manner in which Woroszylski reveals and at the same time nullifies the anti-Semitic overtones which such speculations feature, the attempts at a more or less categorical determination of someone’s national affiliation. For an important context for the interpretation of the poem "Krzysztof Kamil B." is furnished by its motto – an initial phrase of a famous statement by Marina Tsvetaeva, whose culminating point that “all poets are Jews” is placed by Woroszylski at the very end of his work, where he paraphrases these words.
More...
The article presents the book by Remigiusz Grzela entitled "Wybór Ireny" in the context of the contemporary controversies/debates about the biographies and the narrations about the Shoah. In this case the “biographical loops” result both from the life attitude of the female protagonists who are described as well as from the strategy that was embraced by the biographer. The messenger of the Jewish Combat Organisation disassociated herself from her past and created a new image and biography for herself. The writer is continuously poised between the truth that he intends to reveal and fiction – a mystification put forward by Irena Gelblum vel Waniewicz vel Conti Di Mauro. Thus a story emerged whose essence (and significance) consists not so much in familiarising the reader with the figure and the tragic experiences of one of the “scorched” ones but in the exhibition of the ethical and literary problems associated with an attempt at presenting such a story.
More...
The article attempts to indicate a change in the means of representing the Shoah. The latter is more and more frequently described with the use of the means suggested by popular culture. An attempt was made to reconstruct the evolution of the discourse of the Shoah, with special reference to the contemporary representations which were discussed on the basis of the example of the comic book genre. The subject of the Holocaust comic book was treated in a comprehensive manner by exploring its history, constitutive features and criticism. The comic book entitled "Achtung Zelig! Druga wojna" by Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz and Krystian Rosenberg was used as an example to illustrate the problem which is engaged in the article. Special attention was devoted to its genesis, its realisation of the features peculiar to the genre, its innovative nature and reception. There is an indication of the sources of the surreal convention which was employed by the Polish authors. This convention may have originated, among other things, from the occult roots of Nazism. The authors also mentioned the links between "Achtung Zelig!"… with cinematographic works such as "Hanna" by Joe Wright and "Zelig" by Woody Allen, as well as with Krzysztof Zalewski’smusical project of the same title. Moreover, the authors indicated the similarities between "Achtung Zelig!"… and "Maus" by Art Spiegelman in an attempt to evaluate the extent to which the employment and transformation of models used in the American graphic novel was successful in the case of the Polish comic book.
More...
The review discusses a collection of articles entitled "Niepokoje. Twórczość Tadeusza Różewicza wobec Zagłady" (ed. Piotr Krupiński). Its author directs his attention above all to the dissertations and essays which engage the problem of the interpretative community in which the Różewiczian “traces” of this past are perceived. The text also features a question about the Polish narration (memory) of modernity, and, to be more specific, about the role of Różewicz’s works in the revelation and interpretation of the understatements, inconsistencies and adulterations. The review emphasises the authentic polivocality of the debate about the literary representation of the Holocaust in which the authors of the book participate.
More...
The text discusses Magdalena Sacha’s approach to the issue of cultural activity in death and labour camps in her book "„Gdyście w obóz przybyć już raczyli…”. Obraz kultury lagrowej w świadectwach więźniów Buchenwaldu 1937–1945". It consists of three parts: a historical introduction of major death and labour camps in the Third Reich, an analysis of the cultural production in Buchenwald and an anthology of poetry created in Buchenwald and HASAG-Leipzig camps. The author of the article argues that Sacha’s seemingly traditional approach to historiography is deeply involved in the methodology introduced by New Historicism.
More...
"Holokaust. Auto (tanato) grafie", the most recent book by a distinguished Polish researcher of the literature of the Shoah, Aleksandra Ubertowska, engages the themes which the author herself considers peripheral. The researcher emphasises the instability of the texts that are analysed – essays, women’s writing and the autobiographies of the historians of the Shoah. The main reservations of the reviewer have to do with the lack of a precise indication of the things which lie at the heart of the discourse of the Shoah and of why the selected texts – and these include e.g. the works by Primo Levy and Jean Améry – were considered marginal. Ubertowska also indulges in quite far-fetched associations, and her argument stumbles along theoretical, excessively free-ranging though erudite considerations. In a number of cases there is also a lack of certain important contexts, e.g. a reference to the French feminist historiography. The author of the review also has a different opinion concerning the evaluation of certain phenomena – of Raul Hilberg’s research method or of constructing an analogy between the Jewish condition and the homosexual condition. However, the publication which is here discussed is at its best when the author speaks her own mind instead of resorting to the fashionable, alien, theoretical discourse.
More...
The text presents a collection of essays entitled "Women and the Holocaust: New Perspectives and Challenges" which tackles the issues of female experience of the Holocaust. The author notes that the book as a whole entangles new and old approaches to the problem, thus presenting an interesting, although partly repetitive overview of women holocaust studies perceived as an autonomous field of study.
More...
Ewa Graczyk’s text is above all an attempt at describing the narrative structure of the collection of stories by Agnieszka Kłos entitled "Gry w Birkenau". According to the author of the essay, the contemporary reflection about the Shoah and the accompanying awareness of the impossibility of closing the post-Holocaust space – both the literal and the semantic one – are ubiquitous in Agnieszka Kłos’s prose. In the writings by the author of "Gry"… there is a recurrence of a sort of a “narrative enjambment” which consists in the continuation of the particular themes and subjects by seemingly finished works. This device yields the effect of movement, falling apart and the intertexture of the tropes which are crucial for this prose. This aspect of Ewa Graczyk’s prose which is discussed is associated with the problem of the nomadic singularity of the narratrix/protagonist of the stories. This singularity has to do with the constant constitution (and frequently deconstruction) of the rebellious lesbian feminine subjectivity, which inquires after the power, sex and gender in the world after Birkenau. These tensions are exhibited in the text by juxtaposing "Gry w Birkenau" with the pre-Holocaust writings of Bruno Schulz and Debora Vogel. This juxtaposition enables us to see that Agnieszka Kłos’s stories seem to invoke both Schulzian confrontations of the Maker and the Creator with the work and the world as well as the literary experiments of Debora Vogel in which there is a seeming absence of the narratrix and the creatrix.
More...
The present essay is devoted to a book by Martin Pollack entitled "Skażone krajobrazy". In this volume the Austrian reporter and essayist creates a peculiar map of Central and Eastern Europe. The former includes the sites of mass murders which were perpetrated in strict secrecy, and which until today have not been commemorated. Pollack argues that until this happens, the perpetrators who attempted at all costs to commit their crimes without any witnesses will prevail. A separate trait of Pollack’s essay has to do with a reflection about the “topography of terror”: the author presents with a poet’s devotion the landscapes in which acts of genocide were perpetrated. This enables the readers to examine the process of the Shoah from yet another perspective – a post-anthropocentric perspective.
More...
The aim of the article is to present the merits of Helena Brodowska-Kubicz, later a professor of the University of Lodz and a researcher of the history of Polish peasantry, in saving the population of Jewish origin during World War II. Born in a village near Lublin and active in the peasant movement since the 1930s, she joined the underground movement after the German invasion of Poland. She became a soldier of the Peasant Battalions and joined the Headquarters as the chief of communications. She protected Jews by providing them with false documents, finding accommodation and employment, sending them to the countryside to live with peasant families. Most of them survived the war thanks to her help. For this activity, Brodowska-Kubicz was honored with the Righteous Among the Nations Medal in 1991. The article uses fragments of memories (letters, testimonies) of people who survived thanks to it. In addition, voice is given to the heroine, who describes the backstage of the help provided. The goal is to restore the memory of the merits of Brodowska-Kubicz, which have long been kept silent due to the historical policy pursued by the authorities of Polish People’s Republic.
More...
During the Second World War, the Hungarian state treated Jews as second-rank citizens, marginalized them socially and economically, confiscated all their property, and eventually handed them over to a foreign power to be killed. After the Holocaust, the remaining and returning Jews of Cluj faced serious difficulties. The survivors returning from deportation and labor service not only had to deal with the trauma of war, but also had to face the loss of family members and relatives, confiscation of their homes, and the closure of their institutions. Under these circumstances, the survivors’ primary goal was to rebuild their community and create a new livelihood, but they faced many legal and administrative obstacles in their efforts. In this study, we will trace the process of reorganization of the Jewish community in Cluj after the Holocaust, briefly discussing the problem of recovering confiscated property.
More...
The aim of the article is to reconstruct the self-image by Rutka Laskier, a Jew who died at the age of fourteen in the gas chamber of Auschwitz. It was explicated in the diary she wrote during four months in 1943. This short period of time was enough for her to feel the necessity for finding answers to vital questions due to her impending death. The girl’s lucidity of her tragic situation cracks her identity in statu nascendi and, consequently, disrupts the unity of her textual image. The methodology stays within the framework of the linguistics of enunciation, applied to literary texts. The exploration of the image of Rutka in her writing is done through the traces of subjectivity realised by deictic, affective, evaluative and modal qualifiers.
More...
This article analyzes the image of people of Jewish background as presented in the Polish narratives on rescuing Jews, published in the press of the Polish People’s Republic. The proposed methodological framework is the Bechdel test, applied in the film studies discourse and originally employed as a tool showing the type of women’s presence in films. The author analyzes the material researched in light of the recurring narrative clichés and the discursive order that sets the tone for speaking about the history of Poles and Jews during the German occupation, while at the same time attempting to verify whether and in what way Jews are even the subjects of these narratives. The conclusion is rather negative: Jews serve in the discourse as a pretext to talk about the heroism of Poles and to reassert both the national community and international opinion concerning their noble attitude in the face of the Holocaust.
More...
This article deals with the comparisons between testimonies and theoretical workson Nazi and Soviet camps carried on within literary studies. Going beyond the debates aboutpotentially antagonistic memories of those two regimes, the comparison contributes to decom-partmentalizing research, infusing it with new dynamics and methods as well as the adoption ofa renewed approach to the construction of knowledge. Indeed, by conducting textual compar-isons rather than basing their research on the study of facts, the researchers in the field of liter-ary studies were able to question narrative strategies and the positions of certain works with-in their host cultures. Debates on the generic aspects of literary testimonies have thus helpedshift the focus from the specificity of the experiences they described to their status and form.The article then compares the two bodies of texts from the point of view of their possible useas historical sources, and analyzes a few examples of narrative strategies.
More...