Narracje o Zagładzie 2018, nr 4. Strony tytułowe i spis treści

„Tam jest życie, a tu już jakby nie‑życie”. Z Piotrem Pazińskim o hebrajskiej literaturze Zagłady rozmawiają Jagoda Budzik i Bartłomiej Krupa

„Trudno znaleźć coś lepszego”. O polsko‑izraelskich splotach pamięci o Zagładzie z Shoshaną Ronen rozmawiają Jagoda Budzik i Bartłomiej Krupa

The aim of the article is to present and analyse texts whose authors – members of the Israeli Third Generation – refer in various ways to the phenomenon of pilgrimages to the memorial sites, attended by high school students for more than three decades. This phenomenon involves such questions as: the role of the Shoah in the Israeli collective narrative, the level of its institutional commemoration, relations between the act of memorialising the Holocaust and military activities, and lasting confidence in the experience of pilgrimage to Poland as part of the process of the Israeli youth’s coming of age. The texts included in these reflections are used to portray the multiplicity of possible attitudes adopted by authors towards such methods of commemorating the Shoah – from unconditional acceptance, through the belief in their inevitability, to outright criticism.

In the article, the author endeavours to describe the advantages of juxtaposing studies on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with the Holocaust studies. Arguments for it are found in works in sociology and philosophy of prejudice and ethnic conflicts (Monika Bobako), reflections on memory and decolonisation (Michael Rothberg), and – especially – those on dual nationality as a philosophical issue (Judith Butler). However, the author primarily focuses on further developing Butler’s intriguing theory of vulnerability and applying it to fragility as a political, architectural, and existential problem. In order to do so, the author discusses the poetry of Mahmud Darwish (hardly present in Poland) and the film Notre musique by Jean-Luc Godard.

The author reflects upon the presence of the Shoah-related issues in Israeli cinema, from the early Zionist films to the newest productions, and from the apology of the Jewish state to the focus on an individual protagonist. The ideological stigma of first films from 1950s and 1960s gives way to the authorial narration in which the fates of the survivors are told by the Second and Third Generation representatives. The topic of the article is also the artistic weakness of such narrations which – against common opinions – are posited not in the centre but merely on the peripheries of interests expressed by Israeli filmmakers. Transgressions of memory, entanglement in the history of Israel, the fates of the survivors and their children are marginal in Israeli cinema. The emancipatory and integrative function that the cinema has served for multicultural Israeli society tackles the narrations of the Shoah to an inconsiderable extent. Sometimes, the Holocaust becomes an attractive background for genological stories present in mainstream cinema.

In the aftermath of World War II, approximately 450,000 Holocaust survivors immigrated to the nascent State of Israel. The complex encounters of the newcomers with the Jews who already lived in the land were reduced to a series of superficial representations in Israeli feature films. Holocaust survivors were often portrayed as people broken in body and in spirit, who could be healed only in the land of Israel. After the 1961 Eichmann trial, first attempts were made at producing feature films which portrayed more complex images of survivors. As opposed to the shallow images of Holocaust survivors portrayed in cinemaof the 1940s and 1950s, in which broken people turn into "new Jews" thanks to the help of veteran Jews, films such as The Cellar and The Hero's Wife tried to shape a more complex image of survivors attempting to build new lives in the shade of the trauma. The myth of the "new Jew" that peaked after the Six-Day War. The article claims that the euphoria that followed the 1967 war had a problematic effect on the image of Holocaust survivors, and brought back the shallow, even negative representations of the 1940s and 1950s. The article discusses this revision through the analysis of two prominent films that were produced in the decade following the 1967 war: He Walked Through the Fields [Hu halachbasadot(Yosef Millo, 1967)] and Operation Thunderbolt [Mivtsa Yonatan, (Menahem Golan, 1977)]. The article shows how these films placed Holocaust survivors on the margins of the narrative, strengthening their role as antithesis to the heroic warrior "new Jew."

There is already wide range of studies that aim at understanding the different ways in which the Holocaust is presenting in Israeli cinema. Although these studies present wide spectrum of themes, processes and points of view regarding this issue, this rich corpus of research does not include references to the various ways in which Polish-Jewish relations are portrayed in Israeli films. This article is interesting to open scholarly discussion on the ways in which Jewish-Polish relations are presenting in in several documentary and fictional Israeli films: Aba'le Bo La-lonapark (Daddy Come to the Amusement Park), directed by Nitza Gonen in 1995; Spring 1941, directed by Uri Barbash in 2007; Pizza b'Auschwitz (Pizza in Auschwitz) by Mosh Zimmermanh in 2008; Ema shel Valentina (Valentina's Mother), directed by Arik Lubzki and Matti Hararri in 2009; and Hakatayim (Past Life) directed by Avi Nesher in 2016. A discussing  on the perception  of Polish Jewish relations at this collection of films can add an additional angle to the topic of Polish-Jewish relations during and after the Second War World. 

The article focuses on both theoretical and artistic activities of Bracha L. Ettinger, an Israeli artist, author of the matrixial theory, psychoanalyst, feminist, and daughter of Holocaust survivors. It endeavours to prove that Ettinger’s artistic gesture – on the one hand – stands for almost-borderless closeness to traumatic events and – on the other hand – may occasion the viewer’s suspension between such notions as now and then or presence and absence. To specify, it attempts to demonstrate that gesture can move the viewer towards the traumatic experience of the Other. As Ettinger herself admits that in her case art and theory are strongly interconnected, this article follows a similar path, trying to show how these two instances affect each other in a productive way. The article begins with an introduction to Ettinger’s artistic technique, the notion of trauma(s) in her oeuvre, and the matrixial take on memory. It moves on to the interpretation of chosen paintings from Ettinger’s most famous series, Eurydice, based on the 1942 picture of the execution of naked women in the Mizocz ghetto, and of selected works of art with a mother theme; these artworks are read through the prism of, among others, the trauma of the World and the fort/da game. Lastly, the article hints at ethical implications of chosen Ettingerian concepts that apply to the aesthetic practice.

An Israeli artist of the Second Generation or the postgeneration, Haim Maor uses in his art various means of expression, such as painting, installation, photography, or performance, and creates biographical art. In numerous works, he uses words or texts in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, German, Polish, and Arabic. In this article, the author focuses mainly on these works of art in which Haim Maor – in a way close to conceptualism, postconceptualism, and concrete poetry – uses words, especially those in Hebrew and Yiddish. The author refers to the presence of tension in this art between the official language of the young and proud country of Israel (Hebrew) and the language of diaspora, despised by Israeli elites (Yiddish). Works by Maor evoke the Shoah mainly by means of references to familial stories. In the article, the author tackles the motif of memory found in this art, putting it in the context of post-Holocaust art and the notion of postmemory (Marianne Hirsch), and showing the way in which the attitude towards the tragedy of the Shoah transformed in Israel. Maor’s art criticises the myths functioning in Israeli society, such as the myth of “beautiful” death. Using not only the research of Israeli Zionist historians (Anita Shapira) and so-called new historians (Shlomo Sand, Tom Segev, Ilan Pappé, Idith Zertal) but also the texts of left-wing publicists and writers (David Grossman, Amos Oz, Ari Shavit), the author attempts to depict the way in which art works through the same problems which historians, writers, and journalists face.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

The article is an attempt at a creative reading (one that employs figures and other works by the discussed writer) of Miriam Akavia’s autobiography entitled My Own Vineyard.... Indicated in the title of the article, the most significant theoretical reference here is Aleksandra Ubertowska’s Holokaust. Auto (tanato) grafie. This article uses the Derridean notion of quasi-genre modified by Ubertowska to interpret an important identity-related work by Akavia, a writer whose formative experience was the Holocaust.

The article contains reflections on Miriam Akavia’s prose, with a special emphasis on her last book, written in 2005 and entitled Moje powroty [My Returns]. The main theme of Akavia’s oeuvre was her biography: her childhood in Cracow before the Second World War, experiences during the occupation, the Holocaust, and her life in Israel after the war. Her method of writing was traditional; she used conventional and topical forms of expression as vehicles for expressing her attachment to such values as home, family, native land (along with her home town Cracow), and new adoptive country.

The article presents an interpretation of David Grossman’s novel See Under: Love in the context of alternative history. Revealing the problems related to depicting the Holocaust, the story becomes a critique of our culture. It shows how four distinct parts are related, creating a vision of the dark sphere of our “I” hidden from the world: an alternative version of a story about ourselves is a sui generis reckoning with the concept of humanity dominant in our European community.

Yehiel De‑Nur’s collapse was one of the most significant moments during the Eichmann trial. A Holocaust survivor and a writer, De‑Nur was a witness at the trial. The article is an attempt at investigating his fainting on recordings and in accounts of the trial and at interpreting it in the performative and visual context.

The article is an attempt at analysing the mechanisms of discursive and symbolic violence that could be found in German-language reception of the works by Paul Celan. The criticism – among others by Günter Blöcker and Hans Egon Holthusen – was often grounded upon anti-Semitism; Celan reacted to such criticism highly affectively, noting with concern the return of rhetoric resembling that of Nazi propaganda. The poet expressed his anxieties in a series of letters and several poems; the author of this article interprets them.

Using Michael Rothberg’s concept of the multidirectional memory, the author of this article proves that in Halina Poświatowska’s poetry memory of the Shoah is activated in confrontation with media images of the Vietnam War. In the poems, the memory of various genocides is dynamic, because of which such phenomena as competitiveness, rivalry, or dominance of forms of commemorating chosen mass crimes give way to the rule of consolidation of memory. The author also investigates the feminist motifs and observes the convergence between the forms of resistance presented by Poświatowska and the concepts of revolt discussed by Judith Butler (grievability, vulnerability). The involvement of the poet in matters contemporary to her is – next to the contemplation of the fragile body – the most important theme of her poetry, which has not been noted by the critics, who accused her of escapism, egotism, imitativeness, and infantilism.

The article is devoted to sui generis tropology of memory of the Shoah that can be discovered in Piotr Sommer’s poetry. In the works by the author of Pamiątki po nas, such memory is coded by means of discrete literary devices, but it seems to be an important source of experience written down in the texts. The author endeavours to construct a dynamic, internally varied model of the Sommerian “memorial poem”; her arguments are supported with notions taken from the theories of memory and its representation influential in contemporary humanities.

The author of the article focuses on the position and possibilities of theatre education – more specifically, the musical – in Holocaust education, which is a significant element of peace education. Wishing to widen the scope of Betty Reardon’s tetrad which identifies the following foundations of ideal education for peace: personal, political, pedagogical, poetic, the author proposes to add one more “p” – performative. Two musicals interpreted in the article, Imagine This and Korczak are convergent in multiple aspects; among others, both share the motif of theatre within theatre, and their location is the Warsaw ghetto of 1942.

Prose of the Second Generation: Other Ways of Remembering (translated into Polish by Jagoda Budzik)

Ida Fink, On Holiday (with the Introduction by Bartłomiej Krupa)

Karolina Famulska-Ciesielska, An Old Notebook

Natalia Parfeniuk, Ewelina Suszek, Mizocz - A Palimpsest

The review of Sacha Batthyany’s A co ja mam z tym wspólnego? Zbrodnia popełniona w marcu 1945 roku. Dzieje mojej rodziny focuses on several key issues related to the philosophy of memory of the Shoah. Two animal metaphors are central to the text: that of a whale and that of a mole, which symbolise different approaches towards the familial history revealed before the Swiss writer. “Whale persons” vanish in darkness of the deep once the time of confrontation with the difficult truth about the past comes; “mole persons,” in turn, are devoted to massive archival work and to an analysis of meticulously reconstructed facts. Batthyany chooses to speak of the massacre in Rechnitz from the authorial perspective; he reaches the documents and the diary, simultaneously altering the story in a manneristic way by means of referring to his own experiences, often dominant in the narration. Even though it is one of the basic rights of artistic practice, subjectivism in discussing and accepting truth can become deceptive as it can lead to relativisation of history and oversimplified assertions.

The reviewer of Dorota Głowacka’s and Anita Jarzyna’s books emphasises the intuition of both scholars in terms of recognising a distinct category within the Holocaust studies, which allows for not only sympathising with the Shoah victims because of “relational imagination” but also counting it among other genocides (such as that of Canada’s indigenous people). In both projects, imagination does not equal making things up or confabulating; the phenomenon of
imagination, as the reviewer proves, lies in inventing a new language of sensitivity, which would go beyond the frames of acknowledging one event (in this case, the Shoah). Głowacka postulates a necessary (from the perspective of the dynamically expanding field of genocide studies) reversal of the established direction of flow of knowledge and memory from the centre to the peripheries, originating in colonial policies, and its replacement with a different system (which can be called a wandering one, borrowing Achille Mbembe’s expression); such a new arrangement would undermine the previous tendency and render “multidirectional memory” (a notion by Michael Rothberg) valuable. While both authors of the reviewed books work in different academic fields, their research is unified by the category of imagination, which both transcends historical and literary currents, and makes it possible for seemingly disproportionate  phenomena (such as torture and exclusion of women as agents) to interfuse; for such phenomena, the Shoah would be an event foundational à rebours (and thus providing an opportunity to rebel, to object, and to construct a new subject).

The text is a comprehensive and contextual discussion on Alina Mosak’s book entitled Żydowska Warszawa – żydowski Berlin. Literacki portret miasta w pierwszej połowie XX wieku. It attempts to place the book in the context of both widely understood Jewish studies and urban studies. The text also discusses the book in reference to the author’s previous works and activities, directly related to the caesura of the Shoah and to Central Europe as a place of specific urban phenomena. Finally, after Alina Molisak, it reminds of rich literature documenting the pre-Shoah life of both capitals, seen from different perspectives.

In her latest book Sendlerowa. W ukryciu [Sendler. In Hiding], Anna Bikont reopens the discussion in Polish literary studies on the notion, borders, and new horizons of biography. Bikont does not reproduce well‑known facts from previous publications devoted to the heroine or stories heard. She presents Irena Sendler in a new light, above all as a woman, a pre‑feminist, a wife, and a social worker. Basing on previously unknown sources, documents, and strengthening the narrative with numerous photographs, Bikont in a sense creates a synthesis of Sendler’s life and activity.

The text is a critical review of Małgorzata Wójcik-Dudek’s W(y)czytać Zagładę. Praktyki postpamięci w polskiej literaturze XXI wieku dla dzieci i młodzieży. It refers to and briefly comments upon the issues tackled in the chapters of the book. The review analyses the book in terms of its way of describing contemporary texts on the Holocaust aimed at the fourth generation and deciphering the Shoah-related imagery; it also examines how the eponymous notions of reading (wyczytywanie) and loading (wczytywanie) of memory are realised in the book.

This paper focuses on two narratives of Israel: Paweł Smoleńki’s Izrael już nie frunie and Ela Sidi’s Izrael oswojony. These publications function as a pretext allowing us to analyse the ways in which literary representations of this country are constructed. What seems to be particularly interesting are the similar and diverting elements of both books. Their narrations rely on the social status of a storyteller, his or her motivations, and the position he or she assumes. Reading Smoleński’s and Sidi’s works results in parallel conclusions: Israel is a hardly graspable, exotic, and – in many respects – detached space.

This review of Monika Sznajderman’s autobiographical essay endeavours to show the techniques and the ethical value of reconstructing Polish and Jewish fates entangled in the history of the author’s family and her own dualistic identity. The review retells a story of Jewish and Polish relations during the war, and demonstrates how Sznajderman manages to avoid stereotypes in her work. Finally, it is emphasised that it is not the historical processes that interest Sznajderman the most, but rather the interpersonal relations.

This review of Work in Progress. Konfrontacje trzeciego pokolenia po Zagładzie, a multiauthored volume consisting of seven chapters, focuses on how the third generation after the Shoah has been read in Poland and abroad, and, in this respect, it emphasises the innovative character of the book discussed. Work in Progress is an interdisciplinary volume comprised of various perspectives; even though it tackles issues not well known in Poland, it follows recent academic trends. Undoubtedly, the merits of this publication include: coherence, surprising dynamism, distrust in stereotypical thinking, timing and its focus.

Narracje o Zagładzie 2018, nr 4. Noty o Autorach