English
Polish
Invariable Right to Great Death. Otto Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. Commentary
Tadeusz Bartoś
tbartos@ah.edu.pl BioTadeusz Bartoś - philosopher, professor at the Aleksander Gieysztor Academy of Humanities, program director of the College of Philosophy and the History of Ideas. He published, amongst others, Metafizyczny pejzaż (2006 Wolność, równość, katolicyzm (2007), Jan Paweł II. Analiza krytyczna (2008), W poszukiwaniu mistrzów życia (2009), Koniec prawdy absolutnej (2010), a book-conversation with Agata Bielik-Robson, Kłopot z chrześcijaństwem. Wieczne gnicie, apokaliptyczny ogień, praca (2013) and the novel Monk. The Story of a Life That Never Was (2019). He runs the blog: www.tadeuszbartos.natemat.pl and the website tadeuszbartos.pl.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8641-1529
Aleksander Gieysztor Humanistic Academy in Pultusk
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 10 (2014), pages: 864-873
Publication date: 2014-12-01
Abstract
As a child Otto Kulka was in the “family camp” (Familienlager) in Auschwitz. Now, many years later Kulka recalls those times. The camp was the place where he matured, got to know the world, had his first contact with great literature, and experienced the happiest moments of his childhood. Kulka discovers that he is still in a way living in Auschwitz, that he had never left that “metropolis of death.” Regularly returning there in his dreams, he reflects on his attitude toward the ubiquitous death, which he perceived as something irremovable, a kind of perpetual, imperative law being fulfilled before his eyes. Knowing no other world, paradoxically Kulka saw death as a manifestation of the operation of justice.
Keywords
death, Auschwitz, city, dream, high culture, adaptive strategy, monotheism
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Copyright (c) 2010 Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały
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