Abuses in art, film and literature portraying the Holocaust have finally been discussed in modern human studies. The analyses show, among others, the phenomenon of the McDonaldization of the Holocaust, its political intrumentalization,
ideological manipulation and commercialization. The article tries to look critically at a different dimension of the phenomenon, hitherto undiscussed, namely the abuses in Holocaust research. The author identifies several dangers which appear
in academic discourse about the Holocaust – from “the myth of sources” to narcissistic temptations.

The paper is an attempt at outlining the esthetics of kitsch in Holocaust literature. On the basis of Abraham Moles’ and Saul Friedländer’s distinctions, the author analyses works of fiction, Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and Littel’s The Kindly Ones, indentifying elements of kitsch in them: Perpetrator’s perspective narration, stylistic excess, shocking with cruelty, artistic conformism. In the autobiographical works of Roma Ligocka and Marta Sztokfisz/Edyta Klein, the signs of kitsch mark the overly egocentric narrative perspective, as well as the camouflaging of the autofictional character of the alleged memoirs.

The author analyzes three memoirs concerning the Holocaust which have gained publicity and have been exposed as completely untrue (Binjamin Wilkomirski, Mischa Defonesca) and partially embellished. These cases have raised many questions about the relation between memory and imagination, truth and fiction as well as the motivations in borrowing of the survivor’s identity and breaking the autobiographical pact. In some respects, however, the memoirs of Wilkomirski, Defonesca and Rosenblat represent a model story about the Holocaust – precisely such as is
anticipated by the contemporary reader.

The text deals with popular cinema that touches upon the subject matter of the Holocaust and the kitsch esthetics which is either intentionally or unintentionally often adopted in such films. The main questions to which the author seeks the answer is: why do we need kitsch to create stories about the Holocaust? The author defines the term Holocaust film and then suggests a typology of Holocaust films with respect to cultural references and narrative archetypes of stories which are often used in such films. Different types of Holocaust films are presented: Christian kitsch, Zionist kitsch, pathos kitsch and magic ending kitsch. The kitsch is treated here not as a critical category but as an esthetics having its own power and positive meaning. Nevertheless, the text refers to the ongoing debate about the subject matter of kitsch its one-sided perception, on the one hand, as esthetics destroying art and sensitivity, and on the other, as a necessary and creative element of culture.

Museum exbibition is a medium consisting of multiple media but the whole is something more that the sum of its parts. Each exhibition is a kind of spectacle, a specific cultural creation, and it works according to its own rules. An exhibition is also the core of museum experience and, as such, it should be subject to multidimensional analysis. Meanwhile, the content of an exhibition and the material used in its construction are often assessed, and very little is said about it as a form of expression and the specific character of its influence on the public. In the article I analyze the exhibition in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in terms of the kitsch category. The term itself is hardly precise and it is multidimensional. Therefore I define it for the purposes of the and test to what extent it can be used to interpret goals and principles of assumptions behind historical exhibition dedicated to the Holocaust. The article is an exemplary interpretation of exhibition’s poetics and policy and it aims at demonstrating how pedagogical functions of museum exhibitions about the Holocaust may reduce its dimension to a lesson on intolerance.

The article presents the problem of Jewish cultural property appropriated during the Second World War and attempts at describing the treatment of Jewish cultural property in Poland shortly after the war, i.e. during the first wave of the restitution process. Apart from the few cases of owners regaining the property owned before the war, the author describes appropriation of “nobody’s Judaica” by state administration. It also draws attention to the necessity of research about either appropriated or damaged cultural property of Polish Jews and the post-war attempts to find and restitute it to their rightful owners or heirs.

German propaganda in the General Government directed at the Poles was based on two permanent elements: on the one hand, it was about arousing aversion towards Soviet Russia and communism, and on the other hand, stirring anti-Semitic sentiments. Attempts at using anti-Allies propaganda at the beginning of the occupation turned out to be a failure. The only „distinct” slogans that found resonance in the Polish society were related to anti-communism and their aversion towards the Jews. Visual means were of special importance to German propagandists and they used them to exert influence on the Poles. Therefore, special emphasis was put on the distribution of posters and traveling exhibitions on anti-Semitism. Polish-language newsreels showed in theaters before the main feature were even more important. In all of these cases, Polish filmmakers, painters and graphic artists employed by the
Propaganda Office played a prominent role.

The article is an attempt at reconstructing the last road of the inhabitants of Janusz Korczak’s Orphanage to the Umschlagplatz. It is mainly based on testimonials of the witnesses and analysis of the then-realities of the Warsaw Ghetto. Its aim is to establish the most probable version of the events and to eliminate products of imagination existing in collective memory until today.

The article deals with a labor camp for Jews founded by the Germans in Cerkwisko near Bartków Nowy, Karczew Commune, was transferred to the village of Szczeglacin due to the works’ extension along the river. The Jews who died in that camp performed work connected with water management which consisted of farmland draining and engineering on Kołodziejka, a tributary of Bug river. The liquidation of the Szczeglacin camp took place probably in the morning of 22 October 1942. Several hundred Jews were killed with a primitive tool – a wooden club. According to the witnesses, “when spring came,” likely in 1944, the Germans returned to the spot to conduct an exhumation of the remains in order to ultimately cover the traces. The article is based on various sources – from oral accounts, collected in 2009 in Szczeglacin and the neighboring villages, through records produced in 1947 (Josek Kopyto’s testimony) and 1994 manuscript of a peasant from Bartków Stary as well as regional publications. 

The questions of corporality, sexuality, women’s experience and their record examined in the context of camp issues and the Holocaust have only recently become the subject of attention. Gender studies play a significant role in the discussion on those issues. Existing works on the subject (i.a. the book of Bożena Karwowska Ciało. Seksualność. Obozy zagłady [Gender, Sexuality, Concentration Camps]) show that the tools of gender studies are cognitively useful, but, as it appears, their role of being particularly predestined to uncover what is marginalized or condemned to silence is overestimated. Nevertheless, apart from the dominance of the patriarchal discourse, there have always existed other reasons for suppressing the matter of corporality and sexuality both in works on KL’s and in science; social taboo (controlled not only by the male symbolical order) as well as the policy (e.g. it was possible to
write openly about rape on former female prisoners by Soviet soldiers only after censorship had been lifted) play an important role here. The fundamental value of the gender perspective lies in the firm approach towards the issues hitherto marginalized in the KL context – both by science and, to a lesser extent, literature (which is reflected by i.a. works of Pankowski and Posmysz published years ago). 

In late November 1943, in Rędziny-Borek near Miechów, a group of armed men, barged into the house of a local peasant, and from a hidden chamber dragged out six Jews hiding there. Then, having searched them thoroughly, and having taken away their valuables and cash, the victims were lined up against the wall and – one by one – shot in the back of the head. The crime, however, was not perpetrated by bandits of some unidentified “forest people”, but a carefully planned (and authorized by the District command) military operation of the Miechów Home Army structures.

The article is a case study of hiding Lila Flachs in the house of an Orthodox priest, Jan Lewiarz. It tells the story of a Jewish girl and an Orthodox priest of Polish nationality pretending to be Ukrainian siblings in a Lemko village and protected by the authority of a Ukrainian nationalist who was the priest’s friend. The confluence of the fate of a Pole, a Jewess and a Ukrainian, and their complex relations give a picture of reality with many hues of grey, with no black-white divisions. There are few stories of saving Jews by village priests that are documented so well. The wealth of sources produced at different times and by different people, allows not only a detailed examination and reconstruction of the story, but also an in-depth penetration into the relations between the protagonists, study of the influence of memory on the content and character of the story. 

The subject matter of the article is the refusal to publish Mary Berg’s (Miriam Wattenberg) diary by “The Dial Press” publishing house in 1945.

The article is an introduction to Fryderyka Brück’s diary covering notes from 7 May 1941 to 1 August 1942. The author of the diary came from a highly Polonized, welloff Jewish family living in Stanisławów. Her diary begins when she is only a carefree 19-year-old student with a peaceful life. The situation changes drastically after Germans have occupied the town. Fryderyka describes the first Nazi action conducted on Jews and Poles in Stanisławów when together with other representatives of the intelligentsia her father was arrested. One of the most tragic events reported in the diary is a bloody massacre of Jews in the cemetery when 10,000 Jews were killed on 12 October 1941. The notes cover the times of the move to the ghetto and life in the closed district. The girl describes the moment when on 31 March 1942 the whole of Brück family, except for Fryderyka, was taken and transported to the camp. At that
time, there is the longest gap in notes and later – the last hastily and carelessly written entry reporting chaotic events from four months. The main subject of the diary is not historical events but the relationship with Misiek Bachar. Therefore, the diary has the character of intimate notes, not intended to be read by third party. The narrative line is the emotional life, the author’s love adventures and sexual experiences. She always presents the events from the perspective of personal experience. Therefore, it might be said that it is an ordinary diary of an “average” teenager but this is what its power of message consists in nowadays. The intimacy and the specific naivety of the diary intertwines with the terror of historical events, not necessarily made conscious but also undoubtedly repressed cruelty of the Holocaust which will ultimately interrupt the author’s confessions.