Kaja Kazmierska (PhD University of Lodz) is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology of Culture, University of Lodz. Her publications include Polish War Experiences and Ethnic Identity: An Analysis of Eastern Borderland Narratives (1999) and the Polish language edition of this book, Biography and Memory: The Generational Experience of the Shoah Survivors (2008).

The author has faced quite a task: of bringing together and, simultaneously, meeting the requirements of many various perspectives characteristic of sociology, psychology/social psychology, anthropology, narratology and generally discourse theories, and–on the other hand–history, in its inevitable entanglement in the perspectives of other social and cultural studies, transcending today’s traditional historiography, which tries to answer the question, “how was it?” I am convinced that this book will generate a keen interest among researchers from various fields; it has the makings of resonating with a wider, non-academic audience as well.