Irena Grudzińska-Gross - Böcker

What do we remember from our national past and why? What are the dangers of history being (mis-)appropriated by politicians? Past in the Present provides a critical analysis of recent disputes over Polish historiography. The author uses theories of collective memory as a guideline, and the Polish-German borderlands as his leitmotif. Western academic currents and long-standing (and often forgotten) Polish intellectual traditions serve as backdrop. Throughout his work – with topics ranging from Golo Mann and Stefan Czarnowski to the «other side of memory» and the «political cult of the fallen» – Traba advocates modernization and «polyphony» in the construction of a new Polish history.

Polish Literature and the Holocaust (1939–1968) scrutinizes literary and documentary testimonies produced during or after the extermination of Jews in the Second World War and rooted in that historical, political, and anthropological context. Whether someone wrote a text during or after the war influenced the nature of what was communicated. Hence, the authors divided this publication to separately cover two periods: 1939–1944/45 and 1945–1968. This publication overviews belles-lettres, personal document literature, and press publications. Almost all texts were written in the Polish language. The genre category constitutes the basic compositional criterion. The individual parts of our publication discuss poetry, narrative prose, personal document literature, and the press discourse.

Focused on the struggle to survive by the Jewish Poles stranded in the Polish countryside during the Holocaust, case studies collected in this volume are based on research carried out at Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance. Where possible, they are also complemented by Jewish survivors’ testimonies dispersed throughout the world. There are at least two leitmotifs recurring throughout all texts: What are the social correlates of the anti-Jewish violence undertaken by Polish neighbours without German initiative and even knowledge? Are there certain types of social relationships more subject or prone to this kind of violence? What was the role of peasantry, social elites, and Catholic church in inciting and perpetrating it? Was this violence influenced by the Holocaust, or was it a separate form of genocidal violence?

This volume is a collection of papers written over the course of forty years. It examines political attitudes, patterns of political behavior, and institutional framework of transition to democracy in Poland. Its contents have been shaped by and provide commentary on the often-dramatic political developments in Poland: the emergence of the massive liberation movement “Solidarity” in 1980–81; the dissent against the communist regime in the 1980s; the struggles to pave the roads toward consolidated democracy in the 1990s; and the problems with adaptation to European liberal values in the 21st century that led to democratic backsliding. In conclusion, it presents the cultural and structural background of the cleavage between the proponents of open society and its enemies.