Klimat Zagłady (w perspektywie powieści Pawła Huellego, Tadeusza Konwickiego, Andrzeja Kuśniewicza i Piotra Szewca)
A Climate of Annihilation (in Novels by Paweł Huelle, Tadeusz Konwicki, Andrzej Kuśniewicz and Piotr Szewc)

Summary/Abstract: This article suggests possibilities of reading novels by Tadeusz Konwicki, Andrzej Kuśniewicz, Piotr Szewc and Paweł Huelle through the prism of environment-oriented studies on the Shoah. Where Polish narratives of the Holocaust are concerned, Tomczok proposes, the years 1986 and 1987 saw not only a breakthrough in terms of politics and worldview, but also a shift in writers’ perception of climate change and the rapid degradation of the environment. Building on studies by Eelco Runia and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Tomczok reads natural disasters as metonymies of the Shoah – metonymies that point to the extermination of the Jews while also reflecting on contemporary threats to the natural environment. Tomczok’s proposition to relate these two perspectives draws on Harald Welzer’s Climate Wars: What People Will Be Killed For in the 21st Century. The article also contextualizes selected novels by the above-mentioned writers with Polish climate research conducted in the 1980s at the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management – National Research Institute.

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