Abstract
In this chapter, Kapralski offers a sociological analysis of collective memory questions regarding Jewish-Gentile relations in present-day Poland. How are Poles marking, not marking, or resisting marking the Holocaust history in its changing landscapes? After describing the memory confrontations in post-1989 Poland generally, Kapralski zeroes in on the manifestations of these questions in Przeworsk, Poland. Among the struggles of carving out new lives in the uncertain realities of post-communism, competition for victim status arises between groups, playing out as battles over memory. This chapter traces the cultural, emotional, and political realities that face Poland as it confronts the weightiness of its history.
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Notes
- 1.
To illustrate, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, instituted in Warsaw in 2005 and opened officially in 2014, is perceived by many as a re-entrance of Poland’s Jewish past into Polish public memory. Critics, however, claim that this initiative, although an international project, has been framed in the official Polish narrative of a peaceful Jewish-Polish coexistence that glosses over the dark chapters in mutual relations (Matyjaszek, 2015).
- 2.
The earlier history of the landscape will be repeated here for the sake of showing the starting point of its transformation.
- 3.
Notably, during an anti-immigrant demonstration in the city of Wrocław in 2015, an effigy of a Jew was burned (Harlukowicz, Piekarska, & Czmiel, 2015); further, many web portals of Polish nationalists attribute the recent influx of immigrants, mostly Muslim, to a Jewish conspiracy (see Dlaczego żydzi …, 2016).
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Kapralski, S. (2021). The Vicissitudes of Jewish Memory in Post-Communist Poland. In: Pearce, S.C., Sojka, E. (eds) Cultural Change in East-Central European and Eurasian Spaces. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63197-0_5
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