Literackość w żydowskich i nie-żydowskich czeskich i polskich tekstach byłych więźniów obozu koncentracyjnego Auschwitz
Literariness in Jewish and non-Jewish Czech and Polish texts by former Auschwitz concentration camp inmates

Author(s): Magdalena Gardias
Subject(s): History, Jewish studies, History of the Holocaust, History of Antisemitism, Theory of Literature
Published by: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci
Keywords: Auschwitz; Oświęcim; archives; Holocaust; literary context; Russian formalism; memoirs; camp literature; testimonies; camp competitions; post-war competitions; Israel
Summary/Abstract: The subject of the monograph is the camp texts of former prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp, of Jewish and non-Jewish origin, direct witnesses of the events, originally written in Czech or Polish. This work consists of two parts: theoretical and analytical. Theoretical involves research focusing on a topic of collecting, including an overview of archival sources, the definition of the current genre framework of camp texts and the Holocaust, competitions for war (in the Czechia) or camp (in Poland) memoirs and the methodology (Russian formalism in analyze of the camp texts, elements of New Historicism, Trauma Studies, etc.). The analytical part concerns the analysis of selected texts (unpublished), including comparison of Polish and Czech texts, reconstruction of biographies of individual authors using the latest sources, selection of topos, motifs and images occurring in their texts, method of describing events and the emerging literary contexts of camp texts. The monograph refers to archival collections located in the Czech Republic, Poland and Israel. The classification of post-war camp texts available in archives was discussed in more detail, including: at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the Terezín Memorial, the State Museum at Majdanek, the National Archives, Yad Vashem, the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, Massuah, together with their comparison, especially regarding the policies affecting their acquisition, storage and sharing. The work aims to draw attention to the huge amount of unprocessed material contained in the archives and their potential.

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