Authors

Discussion

Disorientation: The Holocaust Memory in Poland after 1968

In my presentation, I will explore the notions I coined for my research about the memory of the Holocaust in contemporary Poland, namely that of “disorientation” and “disorienting memory.” I want to propose that Polish culture after the post-1968 was engaged in producing the “disoriented subject” regarding the Polish-Jewish past, including the memory of the Holocaust. The 1968 antisemitic campaign resulted in the liquidation of Jewish spaces and cultural presence in the landscape of Poland. For the Jewish minority, it involved a significant emigration (in comparison to how many Jews still lived in Poland) and, for those who stayed, closeting themselves as Jews. For the Polish majority, at least three things happened: non-Jewish Poles lost opportunities to see their everyday space marked as Jewish; with the Jewish Poles closeting themselves, there were even fewer opportunities to interact with members of the Jewish minority (e.g., school friends); after the antisemitic campaign, the word “Jewish” disappeared from public discourse becoming distant and abstract. The official communist culture cutting the natural ties of Jewish culture to Polish culture and the historical and memorial policies aiming at blurring the differences between the wartime Polish and Jewish experience and homogenization of the identities had long-lasting consequences. It accelerated a culture of disorientation, as I call it, which greatly affected the way the Holocaust was remembered among the Poles brought up between 1968 and at least 2000. I will analyze these modes and tools of disorientation by examining specific cases of the history and literature textbooks, commemorative culture, and interviews with Poles about their awareness of the Holocaust.