Language:
Polish
Year of publication:
2018
Titel der Quelle:
Opowieść o niewinności
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2018) 217-278
Keywords:
Bartoszewski, Władysław.
;
Moczarski, Kazimierz,
;
Krall, Hanna.
;
Andrews, Maurice S.
;
Polish literature History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Witnesses in literature
Abstract:
The author proposes an analysis of texts (and their reception) that established the order of discourse on the Shoah between 1960 and 1989. They all summon witnesses to prove the Poles’ magnanimity toward Jews. The main plexuses of this narration are as follows: heroic help offered to Jews by Poles, the common fight of Poles and Jews against the Germans, attempts to pass off the Home Army as the main ally of the Jewish conspiracy, and the de-communization of Polish aid to Jews. The texts also purport symmetries between the Polish and Jewish experience. These are symmetries of fear, crime, traitors, and victims, as well as the symmetry between Nazism and communism which binds them into a coherent whole.In this chapter, I examine the texts which defined the discourse on the Shoah in the final three decades of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL). Four texts are analyzed in detail: The Samaritans. Heroes of the Holocaust by Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewin (Polish edition 1966), Conversations with an Executioner by Kazimierz Moczarski (1977), Shielding the Flame by Hannah Krall (1977), and The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski (1986). Their reception, and the renown they continue to enjoy even today, evidence that although written against the genuine or imagined “western” opinions about Polish anti-Semitism, these books talk about the Shoah in the way Poland desired at the time.The main themes of the narrative discussed below include the heroic aid Poles provided to the Jews, the joint Polish-Jewish struggle against the German occupant, depicting the Home Army as the leading ally to the Jewish underground and denying the Polish communists’ involvement in aiding the Jews and in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Additionally, all the above texts build a symmetry of Polish and Jewish experiences—the symmetry of the horror, atrocity, traitors, and victims, and the overarching symmetry of Nazism and Communism which unites them in a coherent whole.The texts I am analyzing are about presenting an image of the Poles, an idealized version where a clear majority of Polish society empathizes with the Jews and does its best, or even more, to help them, whether operating as individuals or in organized underground structures.The final reason behind grouping these particular works together is the fact that they all call on witnesses to demonstrate the magnanimous Polish attitude to the Jews. In three cases, The Samaritans. Heroes of the Holocaust, Shielding the Flame, and The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman, the witnesses are Jews. In Conversations with an Executioner, Moczarski calls on an SS man, Jürgen Stroop, as a witness to the Polish case. In this text, I contemplate the purpose behind this literary technique.
Note:
Appeared in English in "The Holocaust Bystander in Polish Culture, 1942-2015" (2021) 117-161.
URL:
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