First pages and contents of the 5th issue of Narrations of the Shoah.

An introduction to the 5th issue of Narrations of the Shoah.

A conversation with Professor Bożena Shallcross on poetry and/of the Shoah.

“A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto” and “Campo di Fiori” are the most acclaimed Polish poetic works on the Holocaust. They have been read as texts on the collective anxieties; the article assumes this interpretative position as well. It begins with a reference to the concreteness of war, that is, an attempt to understand the array of scenes and phenomena that underlie the poetic images. In fact, literary accounts and testimonies of Polish Jews suggest that the general context includes the problems of the Polish violence towards them and collective responsibility incorporated into the plan of extermination inaugurated by the Nazi Germany. In Miłosz’s poem, the unwanted awareness of cooperation and contribution to the Holocaust resurfaces as anxieties (represented by the “mole-guard”), whose invasion is followed by the collapse of the symbolic order and domesticating images. Present yet invisible to the society, the knowledge of Polish violence thus functions as the Lacanian Real. Polish perspective on the death of Jews is put forward in “Campo di Fiori.” Against the traditional readings of it as an account of “apathy,” this text juxtaposes the event of burning the heretic on stake by Christian inquisition with the gaze of a “poor Christian” focused on the burning ghetto. Both figures share the exclusion of dying people who establish the limits of Christian and Polish community; simultaneously, the dying occupy a “dangerous place,” one that is destined to be annihilated in the realm of foundational myths of identity. In the  times of the Holocaust, constructing such a limit happens to be a sentence legitimising the actions undertaken by the Nazis.

This article aims at exploring how the experience of the Shoah reorients a Jewish birthplace with regard to its symbolic and signifying potential, and, thereafter, conceptualises its impact on the identity. Precisely, this text attempts to describe and define the specificity of a birthplace after the Shoah, relying on Rajzel Żychlińsky’s poetry, still a marginal author writing in Yiddish. As it is shown, birthplaces depend on the duality which resurfaces at the precise moment of a homecoming: they are both spectral and real; this last fact is analysed in the text along with the project of dispersed identity, which the aforementioned binary inaugurates.

This article aims at reading “Uchodźcom” [“To Refugees”] in the context of Polish-Jewish literature. A forgotten poet of the interwar period in Poland, Lola (Leonia) Szereszewska (1895–1943, born Lola Rotbard) is mostly unknown to readers and academics; she was, however, a respected author in after World War I. She published five volumes of poetry and poetic prose: Kontrasty [Contrasts] (1917), Trimurti. Fantazje historyczne [Trimurti. Historical Fancies] (1919), Ulica [The Street] (1930), Niedokończony dom [The Unfinished Home] (1936), Gałęzie [Branches] (1938), all in prestigious publishing houses. Reading her poems allows us to investigate the universal processes of exclusion and alienation.

This text is devoted to Nelly Sachs’s “Ihr Zuschauenden,” published in a volume entitled In den Wohnungen des Todes (1947). Beginning with a comparative reading of English and Polish translations (including those by Zbigniew Herbert and Ryszard Krynicki), this article distances itself from the frequently used category of a witness, understood as a passive observer of the Holocaust, and proposes to focus on the complex figure of the spectator of the Shoah. Furthermore, the symbolic language (Fromm) of Sachs’s poem is analysed as well, as the article describes its connections with Judaism and German culture. The figures of a turtle, a well, and – more importantly – a violet and an oak seem to allude not only to romanticism, but also to Shakespearean tropes. Significantly, an oak might also symbolise the German genesis. Such links paradoxically merge the sense of childhood nostalgia (“a lullaby”) and German natural landscape (“a violet,” “an oak”) with irretrievable loss caused by the Shoah. The last part of the article is dedicated to the reception of Sachs’s works, which, unnoticed at first, turned out to be the paragon of the Holocaust literature in the 1960, and then were appropriated and reduced to a school canon by the German culture she problematised so well in her works.

This article is devoted to Stefánia Mándy’s “Egy halott álmaiból” (“From the Dreams of the Dead Woman”), a text that has met little attention so far. Facing the experience of the Shoah, the Hungarian author presents a poem that consists of both poetic and narrative fragments. In search of a language capable of telling or describing her own experiences adequately, Mándy decides to apply surrealism to her memories of a camp, contributing to the unique work that departs from the literary decorum.

Investigating Erna Rosenstein’s poems containing partial accounts of her parents’ murder after their escape from the Lviv ghetto, this article proposes a reading founded on two categories – forensics and shock – and therefore departs from the principles put forward by historical narratives (including the meticulous reconstruction of facts and pedantic devotedness to their organisation typical of this genre, constructing such a story whose integrity would satisfy the reader whereas moral framework would set formal limits). Forensics – a strategy that emphasises the role of material traces – is related to the clarity of a process and the rise of a community. Intuitively, Rosenstein applies a quasi-crime story narrative to her poetry, which allows it to cross the distance usually separating the victims of the Shoah from a reader belonging to an entirely different reality. The presence of a mystery makes it possible for the murdered to become close to us once again thanks to the medium of a wounded body. Shock, in turn, is a category inherent in any attempt of reaching the unthinkable (that is, the events that have not been lived through or experienced directly). Moreover, it employs affective stimulation which engages a reader in an
ethical way. This article consists of three parts, whose division reflects the necessities of scrutinising Rosenstein’s relation to surrealism, exploring her strategy of influencing a reader by means of affect and mood, and probing her status of a precursor, visible in the autonomy granted to the nonhuman actants or her strives for domesticating entropy.

For Wróblewski, Aragon – whose famous cry “I hear you, voices of the killed” is derived from the poem entitled “Autumn Night” – has become a figure of comparable imagination. This article juxtaposes Andrzej Wróblewski’s art with the work of Louis Aragon, a French poet and novelist, making it possible to recognise their shared poetics of war. In fact, both of them perceived language as a device shaping social imagery, searched for new forms of artistic expression,
used metaphors and allegories extensively, and fought for a new and peaceful dimension of art.

This article focuses on Seweryn Pollak’s poetry, despite him being known first and foremost as an essayist and translator. Although meeting mixed and negative reviews (including his own), Pollak’s poetry is not only a space where personal and fascinating accounts, memories, conversations with the loved ones, and farewells collide, but also the precise genre which the author chooses to talk of his Jewish ancestry, which is left unmentioned in his narrative works, including those addressed to his family and friends. Among Pollak’s poems, there are texts devoted to the Shoah that actualise the sense of danger and alienation; these painful recollections, although dictated by fear, happen to be the poems where self-reflection becomes sharp and thorough, while
the poetic persona – predominant.

Searching for an insightful perspective on Pollak and his work, this article turns to his captivating handwritten texts with a special emphasis put on the collections of letters exchanged between him and his wife, Wanda Grodzieńska.

This article is devoted to two poems by Seweryn Pollak that focus on the extermination camp in Bełżec. When Pollak finished working on the aforementioned texts (in the 1970s), this place was still unknown, commemorated in a fragmentary and misleading way (precisely, the memorial did not mention the Jewish people were exterminated in Bełżec). Interventionist, Pollak’s works call for truth, and by that they formally resemble his firm stands against violence and lies (including the year 1968, when the state power was abused). Pollak’s poems follow his views and the ethos of a translator. Being one himself, the poet  patiently listens to the reproaches in other languages.

Although deceptively similar, “Bełżec” and “Z Bełżca” [“From Bełżec”] are poems that differ in a very peculiar way. The perspective of a visitor focusing on the topography of a place is replaced with that of a participant who suffers along with the victims. It is by all means a curious case; Pollak – a Jewish poet who survived the Holocaust – decides to take the responsibility for commemorating “the great family that was burned.”

The main aim of the article is to analyse the cultural phenomenon of Drohobych (now part of Ukraine), a small city where Bruno Schulz – a great European/Jewish/Polish writer – lived and died during the Second World War. The first part of this text contains reflections on literary visions of Drohobych (written by e.g. Andrzej Chciuk, Yurii Andrukhovych, Henryk Grynberg). In the second part of the article, the author proposes an interpretation of the volume of selected  poems written in 2014–2016 by a Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan and titled Drohobych (Drohobycz, translated into Polish by Jacek Podsiadło). All those writers treat Drohobych as “Bruno Schulz’s place,” full of his traces and created by his prose.

This article focuses on Tomasz Pietrzak’s Pospół [The Common], which correlates the memory of the Shoah with Silesian tropes. The traces of tragic past – which still inhabits the reality – are visible in on-going social and psychological conflicts, and in the attempts to integrate the memories that rely on the liminal events. As it is shown, the memory of the ultimate event is presented in Pietrzak’s works as a process. Its first stage is concerned with inscribing the Shoah
in a regional folk tale, making it possible to distance oneself from the traumatic yet already transmitted past. Furthermore, this variant relies on the interrelation between the ultimate event and nature. The poet refers to the Slavic fest of dziady, which not only brings the dead back to life in a very peculiar manner, but also encourages us to familiarise with and understand the past. The next stage places the Shoah in the environmental and geological contexts. Recalling the tragic past relies on the author’s dependence on a landscape which accumulates the remnants preserved in the soil. In the course of its analysis, the article comments upon a “turn to museums” in re-thinking the Shoah, which is supposed to be the last transformation of memory, anticipating the outbreak of yet another war.

A text by Jean Améry – an Austrian writer of Jewish descent – translated by Katarzyna Kończal.

The article is devoted to Leo Lipski’s short story, entitled “Miasteczko” [“A Small Town”], while its argument focuses on the traces and figures of subjectivity, yet those departing from the classical readings. Moreover, this text connects them with the issues of spectral transmission and prosthetic memory, visible in Lipski’s phantasmatic description of the eponymous small town. It is shown that the relation between experience (also a traumatic one), narration, and the linguistic
structure of subjectivity can be rethought in Lipski’s works by means of memory studies, and Maria Török and Nicolas Abraham’s psychoanalytical theory.

This article focuses on Monika Muskała’s Między „Placem Bohaterów” a „Rechnitz”. Austriackie rozliczenia [Between the Heroes Square and Rechnitz. Settling the Austrian Cases] with regard to Elfriede Jelinek’s “Rechnitz (The Angel of Death)” included in it. Moreover, it shows how Jelinek’s play has been adapted in Polish theatres and discusses other publications dedicated to the Rechnitz massacre of March 1945 (including Martin Pollack’s and Sacha Batthyany’s books). Various materials regarding Jewish people being forced to work in Burgenland and its territories are recalled in the article, which also calls for perceiving the Rechnitz as one of many crimes that took place in the last stage of World War II: not a unique case (this issue is tackled in Walter Manoschek’s research), but the Endphaseverbrechen instead.

This article focuses on the writing process of Juliusz Krzyżewski’s “Idée fixe” and the Shoah connotations of this poem. As it is shown in the text, the Winogórowie – a Jewish family – and the Mrozińscy – a Polish family – had been friends whose contact and mutual help did not cease when the Winogórowie were ghettoised in Falenica. It is argued that this situation was made possible by the forest separating Międzylesie from Falenica. In this forest, the poet, who later inscribed himself as a witness in “Idée fixe,” met girls escaping from the ghetto. Not only does the author of this article ponder upon the question why Krzyżewski has left these events unmentioned for so many years, but also he attempts to present not just the poet, but the poetry as a witness.

A diary of Jerzy Kamil Weintraub. The manuscript is to be found in the collection of the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw, Poland.

An afterword to Memoir by Jerzy Kamil Weintraub.

Jan Tomasz Gross is one of the most significant figures in the 21st century Polish culture. His works, The Neighbors predominantly, boldly state the diagnosis of Polish “obsession of innocence.” What is he like? What has affected his life and academic choices? How does he perceive Poland, the rest of the world, and himself, and how is it reflected in the way he talks? This article attempts to construct a “dialogic” portrait of the Polish sociologist in a broader context, focusing
on Aleksandra Pawlicka’s captivating book: …bardzo dawno temu, mniej więcej w zeszły piątek… Jan Tomasz Gross w rozmowie z Aleksandrą Pawlicką [“…long ago, last Friday, more less…” Jan Tomasz Gross in Conversation with Aleksandra Pawlicka].

This review focuses on Marta Tomczok’s collection of essays, which illustrates with numerous examples not only who attempts to appropriate the Holocaust and its aftermath in contemporary popular culture, but also how and why this is done. According to Tomczok, around 2010 we experienced a significant cultural change affecting our reception of the Holocaust: it ceased to be valuable yet untouchable legacy (“deposit”) and turned into capital (“commodity”), which can be
ideologically, politically, economically, pedagogically, or ludically exploited. The reviewed work both demonstrates its author’s engagement in the discussed  matters, and, at the same time, shows its innovative and inspiring potential.

This text reviews Karolina Koprowska’s Postronni? Zagłada w relacjach chłopskich świadków [Bystanders? The Shoah in Peasant Accounts]. By means of Hilberg’s triad of perpetrator–victim–witness, the review analyses the shifts in perception of bystanders, inaugurated by Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and two texts: Jan Błoński’s “Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto” [“Poor Poles Look at Ghetto”] and Jan Tomasz Gross’s The Neighbors. Moreover, this analysis emphasises the fact of growing academic interest in the “peripheries of the Shoah,” taking place in the early 21st century, and investigates recent publications in Polish Holocaust studies that postulate the re-definition of the witness as a cultural category. According to the review, Koprowska’s book can be devoted into two parts: theoretical one and analytic one. The former gathers different conceptualisations of a bystander, introduces the reader to the situation of Polish countryside in the times of the Shoah, and describes the strategies of bystanders, who are referenced as locals inherently belonging to the topography of a peasant landscape. The latter – and more important – part is dedicated to the category of silence, but also to that which leaves something unsaid. Koprowska distinguishes three types of such a trope: the repressed story (exemplified by Paweł Łoziński’s Miejsce urodzenia [Birthplace]), the strategy of “looking but not seeing” (exemplified by the applications to “Describe my countryside” competition), and descriptions abundant in metaphors and generic links to fairy tale (Tadeusz Nowak’s oeuvre). The conclusions of the review are supplemented by the reference to Mordechaj Canin’s Przez ruiny i zgliszcza. Podróż po stu zgładzonych gminach żydowskich w Polsce [Through Ruins and Remnants. A Journey through One Hundred Jewish Communities in Poland after the Holocaust], which explores the positions of Polish peasants regarding the Shoah.

BIographical notes.