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WAS POPE PIUS XII “HITLER’S POPE”?

Author(s): Florinela Naciu-Rușcea (Giurgea) / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 16/2019

The role of Pope Pius al XII-lea (Eugenio Pacelli) during the World War II is a highly controversial one, as a result of the fact that the archives of the Vatican are still closed. For many years, this Pope was accused of lack of reaction regardind to the Holocaustřs deportations and exterminations, and he was even called „Hitlerřs Popeŗ. The problem turned out to be a sensitive issue for the Papacy after the war, and remain so even in our days. At present, the Papacy tries a rehabilitation of him, a very important step in that direction being the announcement of the anticipated opening of the documents, in order to clarify the role of the Pope Pius al XII-lea during the World War II, decided by Pope Francisc, and conferences which are dedicated to the Papacy of those terrible years.

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Naruszenia pamięci o Holokauście w dziedzinie sztuki

Author(s): Jakub Witt / Language(s): Polish Issue: 5/2021

Dziedzictwo martyrologiczne związane z Holokaustem bywa przez niektórych artystów obierane jako temat ich dzieł (szeroko rozumianej) sztuki. Motywacje twórców mogą być różne: od najbardziej szczytnych, takich jak oddanie czci i wzniosłe upamiętnienie, przez przestrogę, przypominanie o zbrodniach nazistowskich, inne społecznie ważne wartości, terapię traumy Holokaustu, krytykę określonych postaw czy obowiązującej narracji historycznej, zwykłą bezmyślność lub poszukiwanie rozgłosu, aż po nienawiść, antysemityzm czy negacjonizm. Choć działalność artystyczna dysponuje poszerzoną legitymacją do operowania na granicy obowiązującego porządku społecznego, do którego zaliczają się również dobra prawne w postaci pamięci narodowej czy kultu zmarłych, nie powinno dochodzić do przekraczania tej granicy. Autor przywołał wybrane przykłady dzieł sztuki, próbując dociec intencji ich twórców i stwierdzić, czy doszło do naruszenia pamięci o Holokauście. Wprowadzenie ścisłej karnoprawnej ochrony dziedzictwa martyrologicznego i pamięci narodowej byłoby trudne, pojęcia te nie mają bowiem definicji normatywnej, a ich wartościowanie może zależeć od subiektywnych przekonań. Każdy przypadek naruszenia pamięci wymaga indywidualnej oceny i nie sposób przyjąć zobiektywizowanych kryteriów jej dokonywania, czego wymagałyby zasady prawa karnego.

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Violations of Holocaust Memory in Art

Author(s): Jakub Witt / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2021

Artists sometimes choose the martyrial legacy of the Holocaust as the topic for their works of (broadly defined) art. The motivations of the artists may vary from the most noble, such as reverence and full-throated commemoration, through warnings, remembrances of Nazi crimes, other socially significant values, therapy for trauma suffered during the Holocaust, criticism of certain attitudes or current historical narration, simple unthinkingness or the search for publicity, to hatred, anti-Semitism and denialism. Even if art has a scopious legitimacy to operate on the edges of the binding social order, which also includes legal goods such as national memory or cults of remembrance of the fallen, there still exists a border that should not be crossed. In the present article, the author cites selected examples of works of art in an attempt to determine the intentions of their creators and whether or not the memory of the Holocaust has been violated. It would be difficult to implement a form of strict legal protection of the martyrial heritage and national memory because these concepts do not possess a normative definition and estimations of their value may depend on subjective beliefs. Each case of a violation of memory requires individual evaluation, and it is impossible to adopt objective criteria that would be conducive to the stipulations of criminal law.

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“Polenfeldzug”: Nazi Crimes during the War against Poland in 1939 and their Place in German Memory

Author(s): Stephan Lehnstaedt / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2020

German crimes committed in Poland during the years 1939–1945 have not been forgotten in present-day Germany. But the so-called “Polenfeldzug” plays a strangely marginal role in memory. This is surprising insofar as it not only represented a drastic break from previous policy towards Poland, (Lehnstaedt, 2017) but also constituted the “prelude to the war of annihilation,” as Jochen Böhler termed it (Böhler, 2006; Böhler, 2009b). A war of annihilation not from 1941 but already in 1939. The Second World War was a crime against humanity from its very beginning.

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Polenfeldzug: nazistowskie zbrodnie z okresu wojny z Polską w 1939 roku i ich miejsce w niemieckiej pamięci

Author(s): Stephan Lehnstaedt / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2020

Choć w dzisiejszych Niemczech zbrodnie dokonane przez Niemców w Polsce w latach 1939–1945 nie odeszły w zapomnienie, to tzw. Polenfeldzug nadal zajmuje zaskakująco marginalne miejsce w niemieckiej pamięci. Zastanawiające, ponieważ było to nie tylko wyraźne zerwanie z wcześniejszą polityką Niemiec wobec Polski (Lehnstaedt, 2017), ale także coś, co Jochen Böhler określa jako „prolog do wojny na wyniszczenie” (Böhler, 2006; Böhler, 2009b), która zaczęła się nie w 1941, a w 1939 roku. II wojna światowa od samego początku była zbrodnią przeciwko ludzkości.

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The Dogs Bark, the Carnival Moves On... Revisiting Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust

Author(s): Peter Beilharz / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2022

Modernity and the Holocaust is now thirty years old. How should we respond to the book, its controversy, and its history or context? In this essay I offer three steps as a way into this labyrinth. First, I review the core claims of Bauman’s book (1989). Second, I use my four-volume edited collection of essays on his work (2002) as a decade check on its reception. Third, the new volume, Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust: Heritage, Dilemmas, Extensions (2022) is brought into play as a third optic or time slice. I conclude that the book is a classic, which means we should still read it and use it as a marker, but also that the debate has out of necessity moved on. As Bauman used to say, “The dogs bark, the carnival moves on”.

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Two Schools of Thought on the Holocaust: Snyder v Bauman

Author(s): Katarzyna Chmielewska / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2022

This article describes two approaches to the Holocaust, identified with the names of Zygmunt Bauman and Timothy Snyder. In this dyad, Bauman stands for the culturalist, sociological approach focussed on identifying the social conditions in which otherness is produced and tracing the significance of modernity and bureaucracy for the Shoah. In contrast, Snyder puts aside the notion that anti-Semitism and modern statehood played a crucial part in the Holocaust. The author also identifies contemporary adherents of the two interpretations in Poland.

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Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust and the Unexplored Research Perspectives in Studies about the Holocaust in Polish Lands

Author(s): Kamil Kijek / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2022

By reading Zygmunt Bauman’s famous study critically, this text attempts to show how both the brilliant analyses, observations, and intuitions contained in Modernity and the Holocaust and its errors and distortions can still serve as important guideposts for further studies of the Holocaust in Polish lands and in Central and Eastern Europe even today, some thirty years after publication. What remains absent from our understanding of the Holocaust in this region is a broader and deepened historical perspective, taking into account the preceding decades as well as the challenges of peripheral modernity in this part of Europe and its impact on relations between Christians and Jews both before and during the Holocaust.

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The Instrumentalisation of the Right to Reparation and Dealing with the Past between Germany and Poland

Author(s): Simon Andre Klein / Language(s): English Issue: 30/2022

Dealing with the past is an essential part of transitional justice. It combines the four main pillars: the right to know, the right to justice, the right to reparation, and the guarantee of non-recurrence. Dealing with the past indicates that a significant amount of time has passed since the crime and injustice. Therefore, the problem of forgetting and modifying history deliberately or unconsciously forms the core of the instrumentalisation of dealing with the past. On the one hand, unconscious forgetting or modifying is usually the result of a non-responsible educational system (youth and adult education); on the other hand, deliberate modification of the past is driven by the desire to reach an aim which morally cannot be supported by its measures. One can observe governmental desire to modify and therefore instrumentalise history to secure the government’s power, divert attention from domestic issues and thus shape national pride/patriotism which is built on a selective historical memory. This article highlights the development of German and Polish relationships in the context of reparations for World War II and a selective history spread by the German movement called ‘Prussian Claims Society’ that fights, using selective Nazi analogies, to reclaim former German property from Poland represented by the Polish government. The movement also wants to create a selective history to divert attention from the national separation of the population. The aim of the article is to show how Germans and Poles handle the topic of reparations for World War II.

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Pamięć o Zagładzie w powieści Ewy Lipskiej Sefer

Author(s): Grażyna Barbara Szewczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 13/2022

The subject of theoretical considerations and textual analysis is the memory and layers of time in Ewa Lipska’s novel Sefer (2009). The author of the article reflects on the weaves of memory in the life of the protagonist, who is “Viennese and the citizen of the world”, and answers the question of what the traumatic memory was which burdened his psyche and the independent development of his personality. The theme of memory connects the plot threads, the past and the experience of the present. Memory is also a glue that merges two different, and at the same time close to each other, cultures, Polish and Austrian, signaling their intertwining in the world of “global values”.

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„Rowy leśne” i miejsca, których „w ogóle nie ma”. Harcerski Alert Zwycięstwa 1965 jako przyczynek do badania pamięci o Zagładzie

Author(s): Katarzyna Grzybowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2022

Organized in cooperation with the Council for the Protection of Monuments of Struggle and Martyrdom, the nationwide ‘reconnaissance’ conducted by the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association was held in 1965. It was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Polish People’s Republic by recognizing its achievements and commemorating those who had died in the fight against Nazism or had fallen its victims. The purpose of the alert was also to supplement the ROPWiM’s records of the places of national memory with new, previously uninventoried and unknown locations on a wider scale. The three-day intense ‘reconnaissance’ resulted in the drafting of thousands of reports which were sent to the ZHP Headquarters. Among the reports there were also those concerning the Holocaust, namely reports on execution and burial sites. The alert’s special value consists in the fact that the teams had to 􀏐ind places in their immediate vicinity (up to eight kilometers from their school). Consequently, they interviewed the local witnesses. In the reports created during the campaign, one can find traces of hesitation and linguistic incongruence when the report authors were referring to unmarked mass graves. The hand-drawn maps prepared by the scouts, which were included in the reports, are also highly valuable. This rich source material should be analyzed while bearing in mind the political and propaganda activities accompanying that campaign. Their recognition can be aided by reading the surveys conducted during the reconnaissance. The analysis of this material can constitute a step toward understanding the dynamics of the formation of places and non-places of memory and the local processes of remembering.

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„Nie powinniście postrzegać tego jako wyniku naszej lekkomyślności lub tchórzostwa”. Testamenty Fajwisza Kamlarza i Abrahama Zajfa, uczestników buntu w obozie pracy przymusowej dla Żydów w Koninie

Author(s): Anna Styczyńska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2022

12 August 1943 saw the outbreak of a revolt of a group of prisoners of the forced labor camp for Jews in Konin. Having setting the barracks ablaze, the prisoners committed suicide. Prior to the revolt, Fajwisz Kamlarz and Abraham Zajf, members of the Jewish Council in the camp, wrote farewell letters. Penned in Yiddish, their testaments recount the experiences of Kamlarz and Zajf and their families. These documents are an important source for research on the active resistance offered by Jews during the Holocaust and on the situation of the Jewish prisoners of forced labor camps in Wartheland.

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Tożsamościowe ucieczki we wspomnieniach członkiń i członków Gwardii Ludowej

Author(s): Katarzyna Kwiatkowska-Moskalewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2022

This article presents and compares the strategies of hiding the Jewish identity of members of the communist resistance movement (the People’s Guard/People’s Army). It uses the example of the wartime memoirs of Barbara Sowińska (1912–2004) and Gustaw Alef-Bolkowiak (1916–1979). They both grew up in Jewish homes, but their experiences in Polish schools were key for the development of their hybrid identity. In the fall of 1939 they both fled across the River Bug, but in 1941 they did not manage to flee into the interior of the Soviet Union. They returned to Warsaw, where they soon joined the infant People’s Guard. After the war, they played a significant though secondary role in the construction of the new political system. They both wrote best-selling memoirs about the period when they had fought in the communist resistance movement, where they hid their Jewish origin. However, they chose different camouflage strategies, the discussion of which constitutes the essence of this article. The basic source materials are the following two books: Stanisława Sowińska’s Lata walki [the years of struggle] and Gustaw Alef-Bolkowiak’s Gorące dni [hot days], which are juxtaposed with archival documents (party resumes, testimonies written for the communist party history archive, testimonies, etc.), and later testimonies and manuscripts, created in exile or for a foreign audience. The comparative analysis of their content facilitates highlighting the self-strategies of escape: both during the occupation and in communist Poland.

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Kto, kiedy i dlaczego? Ucieczki polskich Żydów przed Niemcami do Związku Radzieckiego jesienią 1939 i latem 1941 r. w perspektywie porównawczej

Author(s): Markus Nesselrodt / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2022

Using the example of five biographies of Polish Jews, in his article the author analyzes the motives and ways of the escapes from the Germans. The sources are journals, letters, memoirs, early reports, and interviews. Analyzing the motives and circumstances of the escapes, the author compares two stages. The first one was just after the beginning of the German and Soviet occupation of Poland in September 1939 and the other one began after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. This comparison shows that despite the many differences, the similarities in the escapes’ circumstances were more numerous. In both cases, the following factors constituted a matter of life and death: the timing of the escape, the geographical proximity to the front line, the financial resources, the familial factors that accompanied the making of the decision to escape, and, last but not least, the age and gender.

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Wymiar edukacyjny muzealnej aplikacji mobilnej: przypadek Żydowskiego Muzeum Galicja w Krakowie

Author(s): Maria Bajak,Iryna Manczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 40/2022

Information and communication technologies are widely used in the activities of museum institutions. Among them, mobile applications play a special role, as they can improve and diversify visiting the exhibition, including increasing the involvement of the public visiting cultural institutions. Such solutions also enable the implementation of various undertakings and educational projects. The key objective of the study is to identify the ways of using mobile applications in the educational activities of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow. The article focuses on the possibilities offered by the analyzed technological solutions in educational activities on Jewish heritage. The results of qualitative research are presented in the further part of the study. The discussed topic was discussed as a part of the case study method extended with the results of an in-depth interview conducted with a representative of the Galicia Jewish Museum.

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Eliyana R. Adler, Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union

Author(s): Lidia Zessin-Jurek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2022

Review of Eliyana R. Adler, Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union, Cambridge–London: Harvard University Press, 2020, 433 s.

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Reprezentacje Zagłady w kulturze polskiej (1939–2019). Problematyka Zagłady w sztukach wizualnych i popkulturze, red. Sławomir Buryła, Dorota Krawczyńska, Jacek Leociakred

Author(s): Justyna Kowalska-Leder / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2022

Review of: Reprezentacje Zagłady w kulturze polskiej (1939–2019). Problematyka Zagłady w sztukach wizualnych i popkulturze, t. 1–2, red. Sławomir Buryła, Dorota Krawczyńska, Jacek Leociak, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, 2021, 672 s.

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„Zawołani po imieniu”, czyli Krzywda i Sprawiedliwość

Author(s): Justyna Kowalska-Leder / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2022

This article analyzes the exhibition Called by Their Name, which opened in Warsaw in 2020. It commemorates the ethnic Poles who were murdered by the Germans during the war for helping Jews. Through a detailed analysis of the exhibition, the author of the text reveals the assumptions and objectives of the Called by Their Name Program, carried out since 2019 by the Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor, which the media call “Polish Yad Vashem.”

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Prawnicy kontra zbrodniarze

Author(s): Filip Gańczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2022

Review of: Filip Gańczak - Joanna Lubecka, Niemiecki zbrodniarz przed polskim sądem. Krakowskie procesy przed Najwyższym Trybunałem Narodowym, Kraków: IPN i Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej, 2021, 392 s.

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The Gaze of the Implicated Subject: Non-Jewish Testimony to Communal Violence during the German Occupation of Lithuania

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The Gaze of the Implicated Subject: Non-Jewish Testimony to Communal Violence during the German Occupation of Lithuania

Author(s): Violeta Davoliute / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2023

The outbreak of communal violence against Jews catalysed by the German invasion of the USSR was long neglected by scholarship due to biases against eyewitness testimony and the opacity of local events to outside observers. A growing number of studies on the topic have recently emerged, drawing from the eyewitness testimonies of Jewish survivors and previously inaccessible Soviet archives. This article analyses the lesserknown audio-visual recordings of interviews with non-Jewish witnesses to communal violence in provincial towns and villages of Lithuania. Collected decades after the events, they relate the same cruelty and destruction as recalled by Jewish survivors. As insider accounts from the local, non-Jewish community, they disclose manifold and divergent subject positions in the face of extreme violence. Marked by a forensic mode of discourse that accentuates individual agency and responsibility, they diverge from the prevailing apologetics of national narratives of the period. Instead, they reflect an immediacy of apprehension rooted in the intimate topographical setting of rural Lithuania under German occupation, a local memory not yet assimilated to national narratives of heroism and suffering. Finally, they express the memory of mutual surveillance, intimidation, and coercion that would endure for decades after the end of the war in these locales.

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