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The equivalency canardEfraim Zuroff's text, originally published in Haaretz magazine, is a review of Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands. Snyder distinguishes six main mass murders commited by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union during the period of the Third Reich's existence. In Zuroff's opinion there are some significant differences between these tragedies. Dubious comparisons proposed by Snyder made the Holocaust...
Narrative of untangled lands Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands is an extremely ambitious project not only of historiography but also, we dare say, of historiosophy. Snyder seeks originality in shaping both the geography and the narrative of what he considers to be the central occurrence of contemporary history – mass killings of the Nazi regime and Stalinist Russia. He claims that in order to comprehend...
Incognito ergo sum: on indifference The present article is an analysis of various types of indifference of non-Jewish inhabitants of Warsaw to the plight of Jewish Poles. The words of Krzysztof Dunin-Wąsowicz, a historian and “Żegota” activist, provide the vantage point for the analysis: Dunin-Wąsowicz claimed that around 75 per cent of the inhabitants of Warsaw “were indifferent to what was taking...
Producing the 'guilt of indifference' and the category of "indifferent witness". A case study of Jan Błoński’s 'Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto'Błoński’s article Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto (1987) is regarded as a milestone for the Polish awareness of the Holocaust. Błoński tried to tackle the issue of the Polish complicity, and his narration updated an important model in the Polish culture...
Mutually illuminating planes: the silent and the distant in J.S. Foer’s 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'The paper offers an analysis of sub-renting relations in J. S. Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which are put in the context of the author’s debut novel Everything Is Illuminated. I suggest that the two novels shed light on, or “illuminate”, each other. The writer, a descendant of...
"Aftermath", after-Gross and the fans of PolishnessAftermath was released in the late 2012. Its director, Władysław Pasikowski, had previously been famous for his violent action films with strong male protagonists. He has also written some of the most sexist dialogues in the history of Polish cinema, as well as a number of lines, often obscene, which have become catchphrases and slogans...
"Objectivity fetish." Our Class by Tadeusz SłobodzianekOur Class was received in Poland with enthusiasm. The author was praised for his courage and his voice was considered a balanced part of the Jedwabne pogrom discussion, taking place in Poland since 2000. Why this enthusiasm now, when the publication of the Neighbours was received without it? What changes to narration about Jedwabne provided...
Souvenir, Talisman, Toy or phantom JewsThe exhibition Souvenir, Talisman, Toy, prepared by Erica Lehrer and shown in Cracow’s Ethnographic Museum in Summer 2013, deals with the phenomena of Jew figures production and currently extremely popular the "Jew with a coin" image. The phenomenon bears full characteristics of folk art. However, it is Holocaust that took place in Poland during the...
Reply to Krzysztof PersakThis is a reply to the review of author’s book Miasta śmierci. Sąsiedzkie pogromy Żydów [Cities of death. Jewish pogroms by neighbors] penned by Dr Krzysztof Persak in Zagłada Żydów (2016).Odpowiedź Krzysztofowi PersakowiOdpowiedź na recenzję książki autora, Miasta śmierci. Sąsiedzkie pogromy Żydów, pióra dra Krzysztofa Persaka, zamieszczoną w czasopiśmie „Zagłada Żydów” (2016).
“It’s not a matter of choice.” Aleksander Smolar interviewed by Konrad MatyjaszekKonrad Matyjaszek’s interview with Aleksander Smolar focuses on the contemporary Polish intelligentsia, identified as a social group and a social milieu, and on this group’s self-image produced in relation to antisemitism, understood here both as a set of violence-based public activities and practices, and as an excluding...
Homecoming. A case studyThe study concerns the homecoming story of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, Szlomo Himelfarb, who returned to his home town of Solec on the Vistula, and his murder by local policemen. It is based on the material of so-called sierpniówki [testimonies given in 1944–1946 before summary courts for the prosecution “of fascist crimes against the civilian population and traitors of the...
Corpus Christi, Corpus Delicti: A new narrative contract. Władysław Pasikowski’s Aftermath (2012) and the invalidation of the category of the Polish Witness to the HolocaustWładysław Pasikowski’s 2012 feature film Aftermath recapitulates and works through the existing resources in documentary cinema that deals with the Polish context of the Holocaust (Claude Lanzmann, Paweł Łoziński, Marian Marzyński,...
The intelligentsia and the Holocaust. Dispersing the imageThis paper in the field of cultural memory studies addresses the workings of memory, or more precisely – a politics of memory whereby the image of the intelligentsia and its role in the Holocaust vanishes from the collective consciousness. The relative visibility of peasants denouncing Jews, murdering them and plundering their property is accompanied...
Witnesses to their own cause. The dominant Polish narrative about the Holocaust during the HolocaustAfter Dariusz Libionka’s pioneering treatise entitled Berkom Joselewiczom już dziękujemy… [Bereks Joselewiczs, goodbye and good luck...] (2009), this is the second analysis of Maria Kann’s canonical and paradigmatic pamphlet. This time the research question is: why did the Holocaust not delegitimize...
The main theme of the text is the wartime and postwar history of the area of the German Nazi extermination camp Treblinka II, seen from the perspective of the production of landscape – with a special focus on the identity aspect, i.e. the nationalization of nature and the naturalization of the nation. The argument refers to imaging conventions of nature and ethnographic photography, like the German...
The Job Was Being Done: A conversation about Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation 50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E.This article is a record of a discussion concerning Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation 50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E. The work deals with the uses of discourse and...
This richly illustrated text is a descriptive introduction to Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation, detailing the idea behind the work, the process of its creation, and its suggested interpretations. The file is concluded with a link to the film The Mystery of Forest Lakelet.
This article is a record of a discussion concerning Dominika Macocha’s video-sculptural installation 50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E. The work deals with the uses of discourse and landscapes in mechanisms of camouflaging the crimes perpetrated on Jews by Poles during the Holocaust. The author lays bare and deconstructs these mechanisms – above all the...
This letter is a response by Dominika Macocha to the discussion between Elżbieta Janicka, Konrad Matyjaszek, Xawery Stańczyk, Katrin Stoll and Anna Zawadzka about her video-sculptural installation work “50°31’29.7”N 22°46’39.1”E, 50°30’56.2”N 22°46’01.0”E, 50°30’41.0”N 22°45’49.5”E” published in Studia Litteraria et Historica 9 (2020). The discussion has enabled the artist to look at her work from...
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