Circulation of Tropes of the Shoah in Polish Imagery. Between a Stadium and an Art Gallery

The starting point of this text, devoted to the circulation of tropes of the Shoah in Polish imagery, is Sławomir Buryła’s article, Topika Holokaustu. Wstępne rozpoznanie (2012). Instead of the research on the presence of loci communes of the Shoah in Polish literature, the author proposes the analysis of manifestations of traces of the Holocaust in contemporary Polish culture. The inspiration for such an approach is Barbara Skarga’s conception put forward in Ślad i obecność (2002). References to the Holocaust appear in various literary, cinematic and theatrical contexts, but also in journalism, Internet entries, street art and graffiti, and even chants sung in the stadium. They are driven by different intentions, their form reveals diverse cultural competencies, and yet they belong to one communication code. Therefore, an attempt at an analysis of tropes of the Holocaust in contemporary imaginary, in which communicative signs circulate despite class, regional or generational differences, seems to be legitimate, even if these tropes are not equally legible in all the situations and for all the people. Such an analytical work would include tracing their historical changes, but first of all it would make it possible to treat traces of the Holocaust as the tropes leading to the main problems of Polish identity narration and collective memory.

Key words: trace, imagery, topos, Holocaust, narrative

Traces of the Common Places. On the Advantages of the Notion of a Topos for the Holocaust Studies

The author proves the relevance of the notion of a topos for the studies on the narratives of the Shoah, emphasising its unique status of the phenomenon which on the one hand is a ready‑made interpretation of a given situation/event/image, and on the other shows the contextual oscillations of their meanings, actualised in a specific use. Having noted the most interesting contemporary ways of using topoi in the humanities (Reinhardt Koselleck, et al., Geschistlische Grundbegriffe, Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities etc.) and their less known exegeses in literary theory (e.g. Paolo Valesio, Novantiqua), then having referred to the proto‑classification of the common places in the Holocaust discourse (Słowa niewinne, LTI, Encyklopedia getta etc.), and finally having commented upon the contemporarily used tools of the related studies (imagery, trace etc.), the author outlines the project of the dictionary of the topoi of the Shoah in Polish literature, film, journalism and other narrative forms.

Key words: theory, topos, structure, imagery, trace

The (Non‑)topos of the Holocaust in Opowieści zasłyszane

The article is a twofold attempt: at re‑reading the category of a topos after the Shoah and at interpreting the particular record of the oral history in the context of the liminal metamorphoses the notion of the topoi – crucial in European culture and literature – has undergone. In the first part of the text, the author recapitulates the studies on the aforementioned category – from Aristoteles to the twentieth century scholars (Curtius, Lausberg, Ziomek, Abramowska, Panas); in the second part, she tries to apply it in interpretative practice.

Key words: topoi, oral history, rhetoric, Majdanek, gulag, non‑place

DEATH TRAINS – Some Notes on the Construction of the Dictionary Entry

The article discusses the topos of the death train in Polish literature and collective imagination. In the first part, the author presents the genesis of the topos and reconstructs its meanings. In the second part, he focuses on the specific problems related to including the entry in the future dictionary of the topoi of the Holocaust. The topos of the death train is one of the oldest ones in the collection of the Holocaust‑related themes. It is often perceived as a synonym to the Shoah. The author of the article enumerates and briefly interprets the most significant literary and cultural examples of the death trains.

Key words: Literary topos, Holocaust, Holocaust literature

What Hides behind the Barn? Metamorphoses of the Post‑Jedwabne Topos in the Context of the Topoi of the Holocaust

The author endeavours to develop and discuss the concept of a topos which would respond to the needs of the future dictionary of the topoi of the Holocaust. She starts with the summary of the historical understanding of the notion in Aristoteles, Cicero and Quintilian; then, she takes a closer look at the twentieth century conceptualisations, among others in Janina Abramowska and Berthold Emrich. Finally, the author discusses the descriptions of the topoi of the Holocaust in Sławomir Buryła, Władysław Panas and Paweł Wolski, examining how the category of the image and imagery functions in their works. The author assumes that imagery, realism, affectivity, emotional impact and being prone to changes in meaning are the distinctive features of the topoi belonging to the thematic area of the Shoah. In the second part of the article, the author analyses Szmul Wasersztejn’s account of the Jedwabne massacre, firstly extracting all the possible topoi from it, and then describing in detail the topos of the barn. In the final part of the article, the author proposes the analysis of three different examples of its use: in Michał Pilis’s Łąka umarłych, Kevin Vennemann’s Blisko Jedenew and Marcin Wrona’s film, Demon.

Key words: topos, image, pop culture, film, novel, intertextuality

The Topos of Poland as the Jewish Cemetery in Hebrew Literature of the Third Generation

The aim of this paper is to enumerate and describe possible strategies of realising the topos of Poland as the Jewish cemetery, present and significant in Hebrew literature and other Israeli texts of culture. Hebrew literature – along with Polish literature – is the main and natural reservoir of the Holocaust‑related topoi. Simultaneously, it presents a perspective distinct from the one visible in Polish literature and contains motifs absent in Polish authors’ works. Chosen examples point to the constant presence of the vision of Poland as a Jewish cemetery in the texts referring to the experience of the Shoah and the memory of it, while showing the multitude of applications of this motif. Popularity of the usage of the mentioned topos is emphasised by the demonstration of its presence within texts of a different generic origin – from poetry, through graphic novel and drama, to literary attempts of the participants of school pilgrimages to the memory places in Poland.

Key words: Poland as a Jewish necropolis, Hebrew literature, Holocaust in Israeli discourse, postmemory

Wound – Proximity – Non‑memory. Psychoanalytically Grounded Trauma Discourse from Freud to Ettinger

Trauma is a notion whose perception in the psychoanalytic discourse has undergone dynamic changes, starting from the transfer of this concept to the psychic ground, through the
conceptualisation of its impossibility of being shared, ending with Bracha L. Ettinger’s intervention. The aim of this paper is twofold: to track these changes and to (re)define the potential of thetrauma discourse(s). After the analysis of main assumptions concerning the psychic wound in the thought of the fathers of psychoanalysis, the author proceeds to the branch of trauma studies influenced by the Holocaust, so as to finally introduce Bracha L. Ettinger – a clinical psychoanalyst, theoretician, artist, feminist and member of the Second Generation after the Holocaust – and her matrixial theory. As the author endeavours to demonstrate, this thought provides us with the tools to rethink the shape and possibilities of the trauma discourse.

Key words: trauma, Bracha L. Ettinger, memory, psychoanalysis, matrixial theory, transcryptum

Something out of Nothing? Professor Spanner (Once Again)

The article discusses the genesis and reception of Zofia Nałkowska’s short story Professor Spanner, the “black legend” of professor Rudolf Spanner and the motif (topos) of the Nazi criminal.

Key words: Medallions, soap, fat, document, realism, invention

Survival in the Era of Chaos and in the Time of the Grand Collapse in Stanislaw Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

The paper interprets Stanislaw Lem’s novel Memoirs Found in a Bathtub in the context of the writer’s experience of the occupation. Drawing from the information provided in the correspondence between Lem and Michael Kandel, the author points out the autobiographical allusions contained in the novel. The author also points to the references to the period during which the writer was hiding on the “Aryan side.” The author asks questions about historical topics relating to the everyday life of people living on “Aryan papers” during the occupation. Science fiction staffage and vague allusions to historical events in Lem’s prose have been read as personal, generational and family traumas.

Key words: Stanislaw Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Lviv, memory studies, science fiction

Death and the Role of Corpses in “Dead Spaces”

The article focuses on the presentation of basic features of the camp world in the memoirs of former prisoners as a space of tangled categories defined as dead and alive. The world of values described by the witnesses illustrates a significant change in the generational awareness: the birth of a new dimension of the narrative. The text stresses the role, meaning and change in distinctive features of the genres related to memoir literature. The traditional typology, based on the universal rules of distinguishing the genres from one another, gives way to a more open formula, striving for “communicational orientating.” In the article, the “consciousness” of the prisoner’s body and its basic strategies are presented. The author provides an overview of gulag stories, revealing the perspective of the body, whose “adventures” in Auschwitz form the central narrative axis of these statements. The camp body transforming into the dead body, returning intermittently to the order of the living, overlays the whole camp space, to finally become its most capacious symbol. In the prisoners’ memoirs, it is a biological organism, a cell within a living organism, and a part of the scenery, both the real one – the horizon, the landscape – and the cultural one, as it builds this place (cemetery). A special role in these narrations is assigned to the corpses, which are proofs of the experienced loneliness, fragments of the camp landscape, reminders of the physical fragility, subjects of jokes, vaudevilles and songs, but also documentaries filmed during the functioning of Auschwitz concentration camp.

Key words: memoirs, genre, testimony, corporeality, bones, ashes, trauma, landscape, humour

"If It Was only the Outer Voice of Sky and Cloud". On the (Non-)banality of the Background. From the Photo Album of Karl Höcker

This text is an attempt at interpreting the photographs depicting SS officers captured in the moments of holiday relax. After fulfilling their everyday duties in Auschwitz, the SS men – in Höcker’s pictures from his album – rest, walk, joke, sing, feast and flirt with women; they are cheerful, smiling and carefree. The study of the album – revealed only in 2007, consisting of 116 pictures taken between June and December 1944 – is an impossible study, a study of silence, of commenting voices, a study spread between black and white, photography and the world, words and aphonia, hell and its background. It is the account of helplessness – of the gaze, language and understanding.

Key words: photography, memory, image, album, Holocaust, Auschwitz

Category of the Grotesque in Descriptions of the Music from Concentration Camps Gry oświęcimskie by Szymon Laks

The article presents the grotesque as an autobiographical strategy of talking about the experience of concentration camps. In his autobiographical testimony, Szymon Laks describes the music in Birkenau as the part of the Nazi system of exploitation of prisoners. In his memories, music in the concentration camp is deprived of humanistic values, and becomes a symbol of the violence, hierarchy and absurdity of the camp life. For Laks, the grotesque and self‑parody become the only means of speaking about the experience of the concentration camp. Laks chooses the literary tactics of inhuman accustoming, similar to the works of such writers as Tadeusz Borowski and Piotr Rawicz.

Key words: Szymon Laks, music in concentration camps, Holocaust, trauma, grotesque, parody

Schlemiels. Animals and the Shoah in Children’s Literature

The author of the article is interestedin R.M. Groński’s book, entitled Szlemiel, whose narrator and protagonist is an English bulldog, living with a Jewish intellectual family in pre‑war
and war Warsaw. Other pieces mentioned in the text – providing a context for this short story, in which the animal motif is dominant – are among others Bezsenność Jutki by D. Combrzyńska‑Nogala, XY by J. Rudniańska, Wojna na Pięknym Brzegu by A.M. Grabowski and Arka czasu… by M. Szczygielski. Firstly, it is shown how narratives aimed at children regain the issue of the fate and experiences of the companion species during World War II, with a special emphasis put on the Shoah: the issue underestimated in both so‑called literary texts for adults, and historical works. After all, Jews in certain regions of the Third Reich were not allowed to keep animals at home; many of them were hidden and then abandoned out of necessity when their owners were moved to ghettoes. Sensitivity and imagination of a child turns out to be a medium that is in particular proximity to emotions and experiences of animals, while their perspective makes it easier for the youngest readers – target audience of the analysed novels – to confront the memory of the Shoah. The important context, somewhat legitimising the narratives the author examines, is the presence of these threads in literature of personal document (for instance in V. Klemperer’s diaries) and memoir prose (for instance in I. Krzywicka’s Mieszane towarzystwo…), which so far has often been overlooked. The methodological basis of the interpretation is É. Baratay’s Point depue animal. Uneautre version de l’histoire, recently published in Polish (Zwierzęcy punkt widzenia. Inna wersja historii). By formulating a thesis that literature for children on the subject of the Holocaust somewhat assert the animals’ fate, the author on the one hand thinks about therestrictions and simplifications these narratives presuppose, and on the other asks whether the inclusion of non‑human subjects breaks the schemes this literature has created.

Key words: children’s literature, Holocaust, animal studies

“Armenian Night Squints its Eyes”. Around the Metaphor of the Iconic Fate in Jerzy Ficowski’s Poetry

In his work, Jerzy Ficowski – the author of Odczytanie popiołów, Ptak poza ptakiem, Demony cudzego strachu and Czekanie na sen psa – concentrates on the borderland in its broad sprectrum. Tryptyk bizantyjski – the subject of this study – is a piece in which the author emphasises the need for memory and emphatic writing, which is especially visible in its third part, devoted to Armenian memory. Being a reminder of the tragic history of the forgotten nation, the poem is simultaneously a cry for literary presence and audibility. This cultural, historical and literary borderland, significant in Ficowski’s poetry, appears also in the gesture of rewriting an icon and in the creation of oxymoronic poetry.

Key words: Jerzy Ficowski, post‑war poetry, Armenians, memory, memory studies, trauma, postmemory, icon

Creating an Archive. Anna Baumgart’s §1000

The article is an analysis of Anna Baumgart’s film, §1000, which is a recording of the play directed by Agata Baumgart based on residual records of the prison play from 1947 prepared by Norwegian Nazis in Falstad. Baumgart’s project is discussed in the context of the newest theories related to the notion of an archive: from the classical approaches of Derrida and Foster, to the newest conceptions proposed by Rebecca Schneider, Heike Roms and Paul Clarke. The text reveals numerous levels of Baumgart’s reflections on artistic representations of history and the functioning of an archive; moreover, it is an attempt at formulating an extended definition of a theatre archive on the basis of the discussed project.

Key words: archive, memory, performance, document, performing the archive, Holocaust

Auschwitz as the Metaphor for Everything. Wojciech Albiński’s Oświęcimki

The object of analysis in this article is the short prose collection entitled Oświęcimki (2014). Wojciech Albiński’s pieces reveal how strongly war and Holocaust clichés are rooted in the
dictionary, gestures and collective bodily memory of contemporary generations. These texts can be also read as the critiques of the pop‑cultural infantilisation of the Shoah and the signs of tiredness due to the excess of traumatising testimonies on the events of World War II. As the author endeavours to demonstrate, Albiński’s texts reveal the empathetic unease and the real needs of approaching the past, understanding it, and searching for sense in it. Oświęcimki are analysed in the context of the issues connected with the functioning of the Holocaust in the permanently changing collective memory.

Key words: Oświęcimki by Wojciech Albiński, Holocaust, Auschwitz, collective memory, post-memory, post‑traumatic culture

Medallions against Silence. Michał Głowiński: Carska filiżanka. Szesnaście opowieści. Warszawa, Wielka Litera, 2016, ss. 238.

The author of the review is interested in chosen questions appearing in the collection of sixteen stories by Michał Głowiński, entitled Carska filiżanka… These include: memory and oblivion, silence and speaking, fate, past, old age, and homoerotism. While discussing the particular parts of the book, the author points to its most important and complex issue – homoerotism. Next to the war and its traces vanishing in old memory, it seems to be the most mature and interestingly formulated subject matter of the collection. The author does not abandon the autobiographical reading of Głowiński’s work, but she proposes that one can observe it through the prism of the category of the medallion, described by the writer in one of his works in literary studies. In this way, Marta Tomczok finds new realisations of the literary form known from Zofia Nałkowska’sand Ludwik Hering’s works, filled with a historical reality which is completely different from one of the war. The author also stresses the element linking the mentioned medallions: the crystal clear language.

How to Explain to the Child What Auschwitz Was? Annette Wieviorka: Czym było Auschwitz? Rozmowy z moją córką. Przeł. Paulina Tarasewicz. Gdańsk, Wydawnictwo w Podwórku, 2015, ss. 92.

In Auschwitz Explained to My Daughter – which is a conversation between Annette Wieviorka and her daughter Mathilde – a Jewish‑French historian describes to a French teenager, who is also a representative of the third generation descendent, what exactly Auschwitz was and how it has affected her life and her family’s lives. During this conversation Wieviorka has to face a difficult double role – of being a mother and a historian – and cope with complicated questions about the Holocaust experiences, which are in fact unspeakable, irrational, and out of any order.

“Revolt Gets Sensitised”. Katarzyna Kuczyńska‑Koschany: „Все поэты жиды”. Antytotalitarne gesty poetyckie i kreacyjne wobec Zagłady oraz innych doświadczeń granicznych. Poznań, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013, ss. 360.

This text provides an overview of questions presented in Katarzyna Kuczyńska‑Koschany’s book, which are connected to the possibility of a literary conceptualization of the gesture of
resistance. The reviewer notes the exceptional character of the text, whose author explores the margins of literature of the Shoah via the deconstruction of the canon. Appreciating the author’sconception, the reviewer presents three parts of her work, simultaneously accentuating the last part, comprising micrological analytical‑interpretative studies; this part reveals the practical use of the eponymous category in life and works of prominent Polish poets, whose witnessing to the  Shoah is based on the ethics of memory. The reviewer stresses the role of “anti‑totalitarian poetic and creational gestures” discussed in Kuczyńska‑Koschany’s book and points to the approach of the author, who stands for the personalized reading of the legacy of the Shoah.

Foreign Body, Body’s Foreignness. Jan Borowicz: Nagość i mundur. Ciało w filmie Trzeciej Rzeszy. Warszawa, Instytut Wydawniczy Książka i Prasa, 2015, ss. 161.

In his review, the author discusses Jan Borowicz’s monograph Nagość i mundur. Ciało w filmie Trzeciej Rzeszy, in which the Third Reich cinematography has been analysed in terms
of the ways of depicting corporeality. The review discusses the methodology foregrounding the piece and notes the innovative character of not only the framing of the subject of study, but also numerous conclusions drawn from Borowicz’s research. All the three main parts of the monograph are analysed, describing the depictions of the Nazi body, the non‑German one, and the sick, monstrous and disfigured body of the Jew. The interdisciplinary character of the book is pointed at, since Nagość i mundur… connects the visual and film studies with the cultural, philosophical, sociological, as well as political and biopolitical perspectives.

Polskojęzyczny romans polityczny z izraelską historią w tle. Elżbieta Kossewska: Ona jeszcze mówi po polsku, ale śmieje się po hebrajsku. Partyjna prasa polskojęzyczna i integracja kulturowa polskich Żydów w Izraelu (1948–1970). Warszawa, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2015, ss. 507 + 8 s. wkł. zdj.

Polish‑language Political Romance with the History of Israel in the Background. Elżbieta Kossewska: Ona jeszcze mówi po polsku, ale śmieje się po hebrajsku. Partyjna prasa polskojęzyczna i integracja kulturowa polskich Żydów w Izraelu (1948–1970). Warszawa, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2015, ss. 507 + 8 s. wkł. zdj.

New research on Polish‑language communities in Israel has a peculiar critical literary resonance in Poland, among others due to the complex, double, Polish‑Jewish identity of the authors. Thus, the fact that Polish literary criticism does not pay much attention to Elżbieta Kossewska’s book, Ona jeszcze mówi po polsku, ale śmieje się po hebrajsku…, is puzzling. This review points to this interesting study of the so far untackled issue of Polish‑language party press in Israel, which gives the recipient considerable cognitive satisfaction. Elżbieta Kossewska’s project included conducting research in several dozen libraries in Poland and abroad. The book resulting from it shows the richness of Polish‑language press in the Land of Israel. The thesis of the study concerns the dependence of particular press titles on political parties. Despite its monographic character, the publication is really a story about Jewish people moving from Poland to Israel, composed from scattered pages of Polish‑language Israeli newspapers. The reviewed piece should occupy an important position among the accomplishments of press studies in Poland.

Memory Places. On the Synagogue in Poznań in Wroniecka Street. Joanna Roszak: Słyszysz? Synagoga. Wychodząc spod poznańskiej synagogi przy Wronieckiej. Lublin–Warszawa, Instytut Slawistyki PAN – Ośrodek „Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN”, 2015, ss. 140.

Joanna Roszak’s book, Słyszysz? Synagoga. Wychodząc spod poznańskiej synagogi przy Wronieckiej, is a collection of commentaries and the author’s conversations with the witnesses of the bygone Jewish past, whose central place was the old synagogue in Poznań. As this review shows, the main axes of the book are memory and place, but also compassion, which are mentioned among others by Zygmunt Bauman, Baruch Bergman, Wojciech Wilczyk and Tomasz Pietrasiewicz. Through these conversations, the author points to various formulations of the memory place. She notes that the synagogue is perceived multidimensionally: firstly it is a historical site, secondly it is a space of anthropological experience, and finally it is still a place of a singular, individual sensation.