View No. Holocaust Studies and Materials (2017)

No. Holocaust Studies and Materials (2017)

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Publication date:
2017-12-03

Section: Studies

Instead of negationism. The symbolic topography of the former Warsaw ghetto vis-à-vis Holocaust narratives

Elżbieta Janicka

booka@gazeta.pl

Elżbieta Janicka, literary scholar, photographer; graduated from Université Paris VII Denis Diderot and Warsaw University; research interests: Holocaust record criticism, symbolic topography in the narration about the Holocaust, and philo-Semitic violence. Author of the following books: Sztuka czy naród? Monografia pisarska Andrzeja Trzebińskiego (2006), Festung Warschau (2011), Janicka & Wilczyk. Inne Miasto (2013, together with Wojciech Wilczyk), and Przemoc filosemicka? Nowe polskie narracje o Żydach po roku 2000 (2016, together with Tomasz Żukowski). Works in the Institute of Slavic Studies and the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0945-6886

Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. Holocaust Studies and Materials (2017), pages: 212-261

Publication date: 2017-12-06

https://doi.org/10.32927/zzsim.717

Abstract

A comparative analysis of the two monuments erected on one of the streets in the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto, the Umschlagplatz monument (1988) and the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East (Pomnik Poległym i Pomordowanym na Wschodzie) (1995), shows how the equation of Nazism with Stalinism, if not with communism, has become inscribed in the symbolic topography of that place. The stake in this operation is the ‘Holocaustisation’ of the “Polish fate,” epitomised by deportations into the interior of the USSR and the massacre in Katyń. The anticommunist discourse with a still un-defused anti-Semitic potential (the myth of Judaeo-communism, the double genocide theory) constitutes the overall narrative framework. The result is the rationalisation (presentation as a well deserved punishment or self-defence) of the stances of the majority of Polish society and its behaviour toward Jews during the Holocaust. Instead of upsetting the heroic-martyrological narratives about the dominant group’s past, the increasing knowledge about the facts leads only to their mutation and strengthening. The context of this phenomenon is the politics of memory adopted by Poland and the Baltic states on the European forum. Its dynamic consists in shifting the limits of the European memory compromise, that is, in rationalisation of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in an attempt to preserve one’s image as the hero and victim.

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Janicka, E. (2017). Instead of negationism. The symbolic topography of the former Warsaw ghetto vis-à-vis Holocaust narratives. Zagłada Żydów. Studia I Materiały, (Holocaust Studies and Materials), 212-261. https://doi.org/10.32927/zzsim.717

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                            View No. Holocaust Studies and Materials (2017)

No. Holocaust Studies and Materials (2017)

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Data publikacji:
2017-12-03

Dział: Studies