English
Polish
Adam Żurawin, a Hero of a Thousand Faces
Agnieszka Haska
agnieszka.haska@gmail.com Biocultural anthropologist, doctoral student at the Graduate School for Social Research of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Author of Jestem Żydem, chcę wejść. Hotel Polski w Warszawie 1943 (2006).
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0545-5250
doctoral student at the Graduate School for Social Research of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, 2008: Holocaust Studies and Materials, pages: 123-146
Publication date: 2008-12-01
Abstract
This article analyses unpublished memoirs of Adam Żurawin, a Gestapo informer, believed to have been involved in the so-called “Hotel Polski Affair”. Żurawin wrote them shortly before his death. They offer a rare opportunity to look at a German collaborator through his own eyes. The analysis is carried out from a few complementary points of view: historical (comparison with other sources), literary criticism (the poetics of personal document and self-creation), and psychological (motivations, feelings). Indeed, in his memoirs, Żurawin portrays himself as a knight-hero figure, who had never tarnished his hands with collaboration, but played a game with the Germans (and with the Poles), aimed only at saving his own family. The author tries to find what factors are involved in this self-creation
Keywords
Holocaust, sociological studies of the Holocaust, Jewish- German relations, The Case of Hotel Polski
License
Copyright (c) 2008 Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
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