Domowa Zagłada. Perspektywa postświadka w Słupie ze słów Jacka Podsiadły
Domestic Holocaust. Perspective of a Post-witness in Słup ze słów A Column of Words by Jacek Podsiadło

Summary/Abstract: This article deciphers Słup ze słów (Pillar of Words), a poem by Jacek Podsiadło, within the context of post-memory. The text analyses successively: an attempt at shortening the distance between the Jews of Ostrów (in particular Bajla Gertner, murdered in Kielce) and the poetic “I”; the construction of verbal formulas evoking the non-presence of victims while using accessible testimonies; a vivisection of the anti-Semitism of the Holy Cross Mts. province, encompassing also a personal experience of an unconscious desecration of a memory site; and, finally, Podsiadło’s original formula of joining the commemorative-mournful tradition of poetry about the Holocaust. Private experiences of a “private witness” are based on the recreation of the mentality of a home environment, an attempt at understanding sources (economic, sociological, and religious) of aversion and aggression towards the Other, and, ultimately, the inclusion of this knowledge into a re-evaluation of relations with persons closest to the author. Podsiadło links the process of settling accounts with the dire memory of the site, and the words spoken by members of his family with a search for an adequate form of commemorating the Holocaust, that could contain both the suffering of the murdered victims and the helplessness of the successors of their neighbours (sometimes executioners) who inherit both guilt and shame.

• Details
• Contents