Authors
Katarzyna Anzorge1; 1 University of Lodz, Poland Discussion
This paper is based on my study of the evolution of Polish Holocaust Memory in the 1990s. By focusing on power struggles, I demonstrate how Polish Memory of the Holocaust evolved following the fall of the Iron Curtain, influenced by the peak of political and economic transformation in Poland and global memory regimes related to the Shoah.
The discourse surrounding the Holocaust in present-day Poland is characterised by a conflict between opposing narratives regarding the attitudes of Poles towards the Shoah.
On one hand, there are narratives that center on Polish complicity or even involvement,
while on the other hand, there are narratives that emphasise Polish heroism toward Jewish fellow citizens during the war. These conflicting narratives have transformed
the memory of the Holocaust into a mnemonic war in Poland, with the intensity gradually escalating since the late 1980s.
In contemporary Poland, three significant nationwide media debates took place
(two still in the 1980s, one at the turn of the millenniums) which shaped the Polish memory of the Holocaust in an antithetical manner that persists to this day.
While they already undergone extensive scrutiny within scholarly literature, the period between them remains an area awaiting in-depth analysis. In my research, I investigate whether an analysis of this period, in terms of economic, ownership, and power dynamics, provides new insights into the evolution of Polish memory of the Holocaust after 1989. 
