Kitsch Affective Remembrance. Władysław Strzemiński’s “To My Jewish Friends”
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 8 (2012), Pages: 188-213
Submission Date: 2020-10-28Publication Date: 2012-12-02
https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.632
Abstract
Władysław Strzemiński’s “Moim Przyjaciołom Żydom” (To My Jewish Friends) consists of ten collages. It was created right after World War II. Strzemiński did not date or sign the works. His works are collages of drawings, photos and expressive inscriptions. The interpretation proposed in the article bases on an attempt to identify the visual material and to analyze the relations between the text, drawing and photograph and on analyzing them in the political context of Poland in the late 1940s. All photographs Strzemiński used have a documental character. But they differ in the perspective from which they were taken. I would like to ask the following research questions. What can we see in the photos? Who took them and from what perspective? What is the connection between the photographer, the photographed and the viewer? In what way does Strzemiński’s cycle problematize the notion of the observer? In the article I try to metonymically read Strzemiński’s collages taking into account their materiality, the chain of meanings they create and the loops of gazes in the photos and their trajectories. I simultaneously determine the function of the “To My Jewish Friends” cycle in the context of the historical events taking place at that time (e.g. the Nazi war criminals’ trials or the Polish debates on Holocaust memory) while treating the collages not only as a testimony but also as a call for testimony addressed to the future. I also prove that the category of an affect (especially guilt and shame) is useful in the analysis of Strzemiński’s cycle and that in fact the works base on affectiveness and that they transmit specific affects. I ask what affects are the basis for Strzemiński’s cycle and what affects arise during their viewing. I reflect on their critical potential, the possibility to deal with them and the connection with memory and remembrance. My analysis reveals the category of “affective remembrance” of the Holocaust, which opens the present and the past to the horizon of hope and subject/political change.
Keywords
Holocaust , art after 1945 , Władysław Strzemiński , Litzmannstadt Ghetto , affect , guilt , shame , testimony , memory
License
Copyright (c) 2012 Author&"Holocaust Studies and Materials"

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The journal is published under the Diamond Open Access Standard, CC-BY-4.0 Deed - Attribution 4.0 International - Creative Commons
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Luiza Nader, Polish Bystanders to the Holocaust. Study into Examples from the Scope of Visual Arts – Preliminary Remarks , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 14 (2018)
Similar Articles
- Jacek Partyka, Literary Borderline Forms (Weiss – Reznikoff – Grynberg) , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 9 (2013)
- Katarzna Stec, Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, Islands of Memory. The Landscape of the (Non)Memory of the Holocaust in Polish Education from 1989 to 2015 [Katarzyna Stec] , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 17 (2021)
- Adam Sitarek, Danuta Dąbrowska – pioneer researcher of the Łódź ghetto , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 16 (2020)
- Jan H. Issinger, Frankenstein in the Warsaw Ghetto. The History and Legend , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 12 (2016)
- Barbara Engelking, Notes by Jan Górnicki (Ber Oszer Weisbaum) , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. Holocaust Studies and Materials (2013)
- Małgorzata Pakier, Pre-history of Memory. Holocaust in Early American Entertainment Program , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 7 (2011)
- Małgorzata Melchior, The Holocaust and Polish-Jewish Relations in Sociological Studies , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 1 (2005)
- Justyna Majewska, “How would you explain…?” Jewish Intelligentsia on Polonisation and Assimilation in the Warsaw Ghetto , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 11 (2015)
- Jacek Leociak, Literature of the Personal Document as a Source in Holocaust Research (a Methodological Reconnaissance) , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 1 (2005)
- Ewa Wiatr, The Hakhshara Movement in the Łódź Ghetto in Light of Documents 1940–1941 , Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały: No. 16 (2020)
<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 > >>
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
English
Język Polski
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9987-4992
