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“… I Have Been Talking with God (You Are Smiling! He Is the Only One I Can Still Talk To!).” Prayer Lamentations in Karol Rotgeber’s Warsaw Ghetto Memoir
Jacek Leociak
Jacek.leociak@ibl.waw.pl Author BiographyFull professor in the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, head of the Holocaust Research at the Institute of Literary Research, member of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, editor of „Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały/Holocaust Studies and Materials”. Together with Barbara Engelking he is a scholarly curator of the Holocaust Gallery in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN in Warsaw. His research interests are in various forms of records of border situations (including Holocaust). Recently he published new, widened and corrected edition of Getto warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście (ed. 2, 2013, with Barbara Engelking); Tekst wobec Zagłady. O relacjach z getta warszawskiego (ed. 2 2016); Biografie ulic. O ulicach Warszawy od narodzin po Zagładę (2017); Młyny boże. zapiski o Kościele i Zagładzie (2018).
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1471-6926
Instytut Badań Literackich PAN
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 15 (2019), Pages: 274-304
Submission Date: 2020-09-02Publication Date: 2019-12-20
https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.2020.15.12
Abstract
A merchant and dental technician, Karol Rotgeber wrote his Warsaw ghetto memoir while hiding on the ‘Aryan’ side between April and June 1943. The fragments of the memoir presented here were selected mostly to show the thread of religious meditations which intertwines with a narration about the fate of the author, his family, and the Warsaw ghetto community.
Two different discourse orders clash in Rotgeber’s text: the diarist narration and theprayer-lamentation dimension. They co-exist. They do not merge or overlap, but intertwine with each other. There is no transition between them. The diarist narration is suddenly interrupted with an ejaculatory prayer, a supplication, a complaint, a call for help and revenge,a confession of faith, or an act of hope. And then, equally suddenly and without a warning, Rotgeber resumes his previous thread, comes back to the everyday life in the ghetto, a list of tortures and persecutions, to the concrete and the topography, and his private life.
Keywords
Karol Rotgeber , memoir , confession of faith , transcendence , prayer-lamentation style , ghetto , ‘Aryan’ side
References
Źródła archiwalne / Archival sources
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Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (AŻIH):302/48, Karol Rotgeber, Pamiętnik, 324/1904, Zaświadczenie dla Gołdy Rotgeber
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Źródła publikowane / Published sources
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Urzędowy spis: lekarzy, lekarzy dentystów, farmaceutów, felczerów, pielęgniarek, położnych, uprawnionych i samodzielnych techników dentystycznych oraz wykaz: aptek, szpitali, ubezpieczalni społecznych, ośrodków zdrowia, przychodni samodzielnych oraz centrali i filii Państwowej Szkoły Higieny, Warszawa: Ministerstwo Opieki Społecznej, 1939.
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Literatura przedmiotu / Content related literature
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Leociak Jacek, Tekst wobec Zagłady. O relacjach z getta warszawskiego, Wrocław: Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej, 1997 (wyd. 2 Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK, 2016).
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Copyright (c) 2019 Author&"Holocaust Studies and Materials"
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