PROFILES: Adam Żurawin – a Hero of a Thousand Faces Cover Image

SYLWETKI: Adam Żurawin – bohater o tysiącu twarzy
PROFILES: Adam Żurawin – a Hero of a Thousand Faces

Author(s): Agnieszka Haska
Subject(s): History
Published by: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów & IFiS PAN
Keywords: The Holocaust; sociological studies of the Holocaust; Jewish-German relations; the Case of Hotel Polski

Summary/Abstract: This article analyses unpublished memoirs of Adam Żurawin, a Gestapo informer, believed to have been involved in the so-called “Hotel Polski Affair”.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.

  • Issue Year: 2006
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 177-201
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: Polish