April Talking. Polish flags over the Ghetto Cover Image

Kwietniowe gadanie. Polskie flagi nad gettem
April Talking. Polish flags over the Ghetto

Author(s): Piotr Forecki
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów & IFiS PAN
Keywords: anti-Semitism; nationalism; Holocaust; collective memory; Warsaw ghetto; uprising in the ghetto; Poles; Jews; symbolic elites; discourse; the Righteous; Kamienie na szaniec; the case of Krzysztof Jasiewicz

Summary/Abstract: Celebrated in April 2013, the 70th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto became a very important discursive event. The statements about the uprising made by representatives of the Polish symbolic elites clearly showed which narration about that uprising is nowadays dominant. Some of the discussions going on during that special time did not directly regard the uprising but they still co-created the anniversary-time public discourse because of their going on in April 2013. They had been occasioned by the conversation with Krzysztof Jasiewicz published in the Focus Historia Ekstra magazine, the broadcast of the German series Our Mothers, Our Fathers, the declaration of erection of a monument commemorating the Polish Righteous near the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the content of the interview Elżbieta Janicka gave to the Polish Press Agency. All those discussions not only revealed the rules of public talking about the Polish stances toward the Jews during the Holocaust, but they also showed which topics are still a taboo and outlined the map of places sacred in the Polish collective memory.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 673-704
  • Page Count: 32
  • Language: Polish