Читать книгу Reading (in) the Holocaust - Malgorzata Wójcik-Dudek - Страница 17

In reflecting on the Polish fourth literature about the Holocaust, we should focus on two essential questions: “What are its purposes?” and “What should it be like?” Of course, such questions enmesh texts for children in ideological and aesthetic suspicions. Yet “Project Postmemory” should abide by a set of principles, and in this particular case the writer’s creative freedom can be subjected to a certain restraint in order to make sure that broadly conceived propriety is observed, a criterion which anyhow turns out to be very flexible in fact.

Admittedly, Holocaust literature for young readers has attracted considerable scholarly attention; however, as a relatively novel development represented by a limited number of contemporary literary texts, it has not yet been comprehensively examined in one, methodical monograph. Still, several researchers have displayed a considerable commitment to such investigations, producing a range of shorter but compelling studies in which multiple Holocaust-related issues are addressed. Obviously, a real memory boom is observable in publications for a young readership which depict the Warsaw Uprising or the Second World War in general⁷²; they add up to an opulent, diversified and, most importantly, continuous body of texts which make it possible to construct a coherent narrative.

Post-Holocaust literature for children makes an impression of serving as a preparatory stage for the encounter with school readings about the Holocaust. Of course, the ascription of such an utilitarian function to “that” literature and literature in general is hardly a novel or surprising discovery. Nevertheless, texts ←36 | 37→for children seem to have a slightly different and more important role as well. They contribute to evoking the sense of lack, comprehended as nostalgia for what is irretrievably lost, which in and of itself may be viewed as a blueprint of remembering. In this framework, the trace should be the paramount category of postmemory, as the trace proves that what is not there now was there once. The work of the trace is never done because the trace requires constant movement, transmission and continuous narrative which enable it to bear witness to the past.

The problem is that, in the history of Polish memory about the Holocaust, there have been moments when interest in the Holocaust subsided nearly to the point of non-existence. These faultlines of memory, demarcated by the timeframes of 1948−1968 and 1968−1970,⁷³ entrapped the post-war generation of readers, who were not provided with any Holocaust education. These were the parents of the third generation, the generation that is now comprised of forty-year-olds, who learned about the Holocaust partly at school, but most probably outside it and who are today getting actively engaged in reclaiming that lost memory. Nonetheless, a hiatus in the intergenerational dialogue still remains, while the category of the trace has been made hardly tenable as a result of the gigantic destruction of Jewish culture effected by the Nazis on the occupied territories and by the policies that the USSR-dependent Polish state adopted towards Jews, which culminated in 1968.

The fourth literature attempts to emplot the Holocaust narrative and, consequently, to “sort out” and organise memory,⁷⁴ though what the reader navigates is rather the space of the imaginarium of the Holocaust. It is understandable, considering that only two of the books which I discuss below were written by witnesses, whereas the remaining ones belong in the narrative of the “second” and even the “third generation.”⁷⁵ Sławomir Buryła suggests that Polish researchers ←37 | 38→of Holocaust literature should first attend to the topoi of the Holocaust, which he meticulously enumerates in his article “Topika Holokaustu.”⁷⁶ Although I was deeply inspired by this article, I did not build on it extensively. One reason for this was that, as I was working with only a handful of texts, the frequency of motifs turned out to be limited. Another reason was that I was exploring literature for children, which expectedly did not contain some of the topoi listed by Buryła. Last, but not least, had I closely followed his guidelines while examining the fourth literature, the outcome would probably have been an unbearable composition more akin to a dictionary than to a coherent narrative.

That is why in my study of the imaginarium of the Holocaust, I chiefly paid attention to explicit repetitions and reiterations of motifs, images and metaphors. This study yielded an account of the literary representations of Janusz Korczak, observations about the oft-employed narrative patterns, a depiction of space and the topoi of mother and child. By demarcating these areas, I was able to discern other phenomena relevant to postmemory. I can only hope that I have managed to capture and adequately articulate them all. Straying from the title, I commence my narrative of the Holocaust by discussing Jan Brzechwa’s Akademia pana Kleksa [The Academy of Mr Inkblot], which was published directly after the war. This was the only choice I could possibly make because, in my view, Akademia actually incorporates the foundational myth of the Holocaust narrative addressed to young readers. I only hope that my readers will share my fascination with the trilogy by Brzechwa and condone this narrative inaccuracy of mine. This book does not offer a complete survey of texts about the Holocaust written between the Academy and the beginning of the 21st century, because the Holocaust, if mentioned in them, is usually relegated to the peripheries of their main thematic concern, that is the Second World War.⁷⁷

←38 | 39→

With a few exceptions, most pre-2000 books for a young readership dwell first and foremost on Polish history and martyrdom, whereby they either entirely pass over or, at best, marginalise Holocaust-related issues. In fact, earlier texts for young readers only rarely featured a Jewish protagonist. In an acutely insightful essay written in 1966, Joanna Papuzińska recounts the process of stereotyping the Jew in pre-war works for children and young adults. She demonstrates that young-adult readers were afforded no opportunity for a neutral literary encounter with Jewish culture because before the war they were encouraged to read anti-Semitic texts (with Eugenia Kobylińska’s novel Rysiek z Belmontu [Dickie from Belmont] standing out as an infamous example thereof), which ultimately were not included in the canon, and after the war everyday Jewish themes were overshadowed by the Holocaust. Even though the war was an important turning point in the reception of Jewish motifs, it indisputably fixed the stereotype of “the Jew as one who is beaten.”⁷⁸

To get a closer idea of typical Holocaust motifs, I propose taking a short glimpse at the texts produced in the immediate aftermath of the war and throughout the 20th century which I will not explore below, instead focusing on literature written over the last fifteen years. The post-war novels Wojtek Warszawiak [Wojtek the Varsovian] by Andrzej Perepeczko and Wrócimy razem [We’ll Return Together] by Maria Niklewiczowa clearly imply that the Holocaust was never the plot axis in literature for a young readership, and Holocaust victims (who are often treated with compassion or offered help in defiance of lethal risk) and/or witnesses⁷⁹ were consigned to the margins of the narrative world. It is precisely ←39 | 40→because the Jewish theme is absent from the national pantheon of heroic twins or valiant teddy bears⁸⁰ that special attention is due to Anna Kamieńska’s novel Żołnierze i żołnierzyki [Soldiers and Toy Soldiers], which is as brilliant as it is ignored by schools.⁸¹ Woven into the texture of the novel is a “Jewish thread” which accompanies the protagonist and irregularly surfaces in the narrative. Although it appears intermittently, its intensity is invariably harrowing, so that the passages concerning the Holocaust will stick for ever in the reader’s memory. The murder of Mr Seidel, a Jewish artist who has forged papers and hides “on the Aryan side,” is the climax of the novel. Mr Seidel is shot dead in his own study next to an easel on which there is an unfinished portrait of his mother, who has ←40 | 41→remained in the ghetto. At the moment of his death, the artist is playing the Dąbrowski Mazurka (the national anthem of Poland), which attests to his “Polish Jewishness,” a well-established device known from Master Thaddeus.⁸² Stach, the novel’s protagonist, who witnesses the crime by chance, vows that he will forever remember the victim.

The list of mandatory Holocaust readings should not omit books which shift the Holocaust to the foreground. One such text is Maria Zarębińska’s unfinished novel Dzieci Warszawy [The Children of Warsaw], which tells a story of Polish kids who feel responsible for Szymek, a fugitive from the ghetto, and help him survive on the Aryan side. Maria Kann approaches the Jewish motif in an equally engaging way. Notably, Kann wrote Na oczach świata [Before the Eyes of the World], a brochure which informed Polish society of the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and appealed to Poles to help Jews, which she herself did by hiding fugitives from the Jewish Quarter.⁸³ Kann’s books produce an extraordinary effect which could be called the communality of space. As one of few authors, she portrays the community of suffering of Jews and non-Jews, abolishing all divisions between them. The depiction of space in Niebo nieznane [Unknown Sky] is particularly evocative in this respect. Undergoing historical transformations, Długa Street in Warsaw turns into a dramatic and simultaneously democratic palimpsest whose narrative is spun by the residents of Krakowskie Przedmieście and Nalewki alike.⁸⁴

The space of Długa Street brims with Polish-Jewish history, whose discourse is not built around the our-vs.-foreign opposition, but is founded on the similarity of the fates of people on either side of the wall. Kann resorted to the same device in her brilliant novel Sprawa honoru [A Matter of Honour], which offers a synthesis of problems that persistently recur in Polish-Jewish narratives. The book is written with remarkable honesty, starting from the inclusive presentation ←41 | 42→of the entire spectrum of attitudes of Polish society to Jews and ending with the structuring of the texts underpinned by the concept of a mirror reflection, which results in the portrayal of similarities and differences between the Polish and Jewish characters of the novel. The ghetto wall⁸⁵ can be construed as the axis of symmetry of the world the novel depicts, a world which is divided into the Aryan and Semitic parts by the oppressive system, but which at the same time is united by human solidarity imaged in the tunnel through which aid can be extended to Jewish friends. The ghetto uprising, deportations and hunger belong to the Jewish narrative of Rut and Jurek, while minor sabotage, the Pawiak prison, razzias and street executions form part of the Polish narrative of Łucja and Leszek. The two strands are woven into a unified tale about the past, as each of them refuses to appropriate Polish or Jewish memory, which results in the elimination of all divisions. The imperative to retain memory in its communal shape is most emphatically expressed in Jurek’s letter to his Polish friend:

You can’t even guess how much we were comforted by the thought that somebody was waiting for us on the other side, that they worried about us and wouldn’t let the memory of what we’d achieved die along with us.

Thank you for everything!

In the worst moments, I took refuge in the memories of “our times,” our childhood days.

Farewell, Leszek. […]

Remember me. Your Jurek.⁸⁶

Undoubtedly, the concept of memory has been inextricable from Holocaust literature since its very beginning. To see how this concept works in contemporary literature for a young readership, I have examined the following texts: Arka czasu [Rafe and The Ark of Time] by Marcin Szczygielski, Kotka Brygidy [Brigid’s She-Cat] and XY by Joanna Rudniańska, Bezsenność Jutki [Jutka’s Insomnia] by Dorota Combrzyńska-Nogala, Ostatnie piętro [The Top Floor] by Irena Landau, Wszystkie moje mamy [All My Mothers] by Renata Piątkowska, Szlemiel [Schlemiel] by Ryszard Marek Groński, Wojna na Pięknym Brzegu [War at the Jolie Bord] by Andrzej Marek Grabowski, Jest taka historia [There Is a Story] Beata Ostrowicka, Pamiętnik Blumki [Blumka’s Diary] by Iwona Chmielewska, Po drugiej stronie ←42 | 43→okna [Across the Window] by Anna Czerwińska-Rydel, Zwyczajny dzień [An Ordinary Day] by Katarzyna Zimmerer, Ostatnie przedstawienie panny Esterki [Miss Esther’s Last Performance] by Adam Jaromir, Wszystkie lajki Marczuka [All the Likes of Marczuk] by Paweł Beręsewicz and the Mr Inkblot trilogy by Jan Brzechwa.⁸⁷

I believe that these books for young readers can effectively serve as an introduction to later reading practices involving the junior and senior secondary school “canon,” which should not be reduced to a catalogue of texts about the Holocaust. Rather, it should be augmented with a historical and cultural context of Polish-Jewish co-presence, which may encourage young readers to include the category of the trace into their individual and cultural experiences of the past. Only then will the history of Jews – and not only of the Holocaust – cease to be a footnote to Polish history, becoming an integral part of it instead.

If this indeed happens, Masłowska’s macabre “twist” on the canon – in her “over dead bodies, dead bodies, dead bodies” – will stand as a challenge that postmemory poses to literature and education. And then, poets will appeal in vain to open windows and air rooms⁸⁸ because even nurseries will have already been infected with the virus of Auschwitz.⁸⁹

←43 | 44→

1 Dorota Masłowska’s Między nami dobrze jest (literally: Things are Good Between Us) has been translated into English by Artur Zapałowski as No Matter How Hard We Tried, or We Exist on the Best Terms we Can and published in (A)pollonia: Twenty-First Century Polish Drama and Texts for the Stage, eds. Krystyna Duniec, Joanna Klass and Joanna Krakowska (London: Seagull Books, 2014). The quotation here does not come from this translation.

2 Aleksandra Ubertowska, “Historia bez Ojca. Postmemorialne kobiece narracje o wojnie i Holokauście,” in Aleksandra Ubertowska, Holocaust: Auto(tanato)grafie (Warszawa: IBL, 2014), pp. 182–210, on p. 197. Throughout this book, quotations from non-English sources are provided in translation by the translator of this volume, if not indicated otherwise.

3 Written in 1938, “Locomotive” is an extremely popular children’s poem which set the standard of Polish poetry for children for many years. The rhythm, rhymes and onomatopoeic devices used in it perfectly capture the movement of a speeding train. The poem would later be referenced by Stanisław Wygodzki, a Polish poet of Jewish descent, who lost his wife and daughter in truly tragic circumstances (realising what was awaiting them at Auschwitz, all of them took luminal on the train from the Będzin ghetto to the camp; Wygodzki himself survived). His bitter poem “Locomotive,” which alludes to Tuwim’s popular pre-war text, is a heart-rending elegy for his lost child.

4 Masłowska (born in 1983) uses the topos of the train, one of the most popular images shaping Poland’s historical landscape. In Polish culture, the train is associated both with the Holocaust (as the Nazi “technology” of the Holocaust accorded a very special role to railways) and with the year 1968, when Polish citizens of Jewish origin were forced to leave the country. An estimated twenty thousand people emigrated from Poland then. The enforced exodus was symbolised by the Gdańsk Station in Warsaw, from which trains had been departing to the Treblinka extermination camp during the war. The train topos also features profusely in the tradition of Polish martyrdom linked to Soviet oppression. The train route to Siberia has been re-cast as a symbolic Calvary. Masłowska’s rhythmical reiteration of “dead bodies, dead bodies, dead bodies” insists that the history of Poland is founded on suffering and death.

5 See Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago, IL, and London, UK: Chicago University Press, 1992).

6 Aleksandra Boroń, “Holocaust i jego reprezentacje w przestrzeni pamięci i tożsamości,” in Aleksandra Boroń, Pedagogika (p)o Holocauście. Pamięć. Tożsamość. Edukacja (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013), p. 93.

7 Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London and New York: Verso, 2000), p. 150.

8 Finkelstein’s book provoked some quite sharp responses, for example from Alvin H. Rosenfeld. See Alvin H. Rosenfeld, “The End of the Holocaust,” in Alvin H. Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011), pp. 238–270.

9 Berel Lang, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), p. 123.

10 Berel Lang, The Future of the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 175.

11 Hayden White, “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth,” in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 37–53, on p. 37.

12 Linda Hutcheon, “Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the Intertextuality of History,” in Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction, eds. Patrick O’Donnell and Robert C. Davis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 151–170.

13 Hayden White, “The Practical Past,” in The Practical Past (Flash Points), ed. Ed Dimendberg (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014), pp. 3–24, on p. 19.

14 Hayden White, “Figural Realism in Witness Literature,” Parallax, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2004), pp. 113–124, on pp. 117–118. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals. DOI: 10.1080/1353464032000171145. Accessed 11 Apr. 2019.

15 Kellner, Hans, “Etyczny moment w teorii historii,” in Historia: O jeden świat za daleko, trans. and ed. Ewa Domańska (Poznań: IH UAM, 1997), pp. 71–100, on pp. 81−82.

16 See Dorota Wolska, “Doświadczenie,” in Modi memorandi. Leksykon kultury pamięci, eds. Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska and Robert Traba, in collaboration with Joanna Kalicka (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2014), pp. 94–99.

17 Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Poetics Today, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2008), pp. 103–128, on p. 106.

18 Małgorzata Pakier, “ ‘Postmemory’ jako figura refleksyjna w popularnym dyskursie o Zagładzie,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, No. 2 (2005), pp. 195–208, on p. 196.

19 See Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Jedwabne – historia jako fetysz.” Gazeta Wyborcza (16 Feb. 2003).

20 See James Young, At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 3−4.

21 See Saryusz-Wolska and Traba, eds., Modi memorandi.

22 Shoshana Ronen, “Od zmagań z bestią nazistowską w piwnicy do zmagań z tą bestią w nas samych,” trans. from English Stanisław Obirek, trans. from Hebrew Michał Sobelman, in Porzucić etyczną arogancję: Ku reinterpretacji podstawowych pojęć humanistyki w świetle wydarzeń Szoa, eds. Beata Anna Polak and Tomasz Polak (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Wydziału Nauk Społecznych UAM, 2011), pp. 81–112, on p. 94. Ronen also comprehensively discussed this theme in her book Polin – a Land of Forest and Rivers: Images of Poland and Poles in Contemporary Hebrew Literature in Israel (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2007), pp. 246–247. According to Avner Holtzman, David Grossman’s writing is ground-breaking in that he gives up on portraying the Holocaust in order to explore the impact of the Holocaust on the next generation. See Avner Holtzman, “Holocaust w literaturze hebrajskiej,” trans. Tomasz Łysak, Teksty Drugie, No. 5 (2004), pp. 142–152, on p. 145.

23 According to Przemysław Czapliński, generation 1.5 founded the literature of “belated confession.” See Przemysław Czapliński, “Zagłada – niedokończona narracja polskiej nowoczesności,” in Ślady obecności, eds. Sławomir Buryła and Alicja Molisak (Kraków: Universitas, 2010), pp. 337–381, on p. 359.

24 In his polemics with Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, Czapliński stressed that “only our own suffering, to express which we are looking for adequate means, enables us to lend our expression to the suffering of others.” Przemysław Czapliński, “Zagłada – niedokończona narracja,” p. 378. At this point, it is helpful to recall Jean-Luc Nancy, who rejected the prohibition of representing the Holocaust, at the same time abiding by the ethical injunction to bear witness to the truth. See Jean-Luc Nancy, “Forbidden Representation,” in Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the Image, trans. Jeff Fort (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2005), pp. 27–50.

25 Przemysław Czapliński, “Zagłada i profanacja,” Teksty Drugie, No. 4 (2009), pp. 199–213, on p. 212.

26 See Michał Głowiński, “Oczy donosiciela,” Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, Vol. 2, No. 10 (2014), pp. 853–860, on p. 857; Sławomir Buryła, Dorota Krawczyńska and Jacek Leociak, eds., Literatura polska wobec Zagłady (1939−1968) (Warszawa: IBL, 2012).

27 Przemysław Czapliński, “Przesilenie nowoczesności. Proza polska 1989−2005 wobec Wielkich Narracji,” in Narracja po końcu (wielkich) narracji. Kolekcje, obiekty, symulakra, eds. Hanna Gosk and Andrzej Zieniewicz (Warszawa: Elipsa, 2007), pp. 34–55, on p. 46.

28 According to Lech Nijakowski, grand narratives have profoundly affected the “mentality” of Poles, whom the mythologisation and heroisation of the past helped continue resisting assimilation over several generations. Lech Michał Nijakowski, Polska polityka pamięci. Esej socjologiczny (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne, 2008), p. 139.

29 The Polish titles of literary works cited in this book are accompanied by an English translation, which does not always mean that respective texts have actually been translated into English. To help the reader distinguish between translated and not translated works, different punctuation marks are used. Specifically, the titles of translated texts are parenthesised, while the titles of those which have not been translated are square-bracketed.

30 Bartłomiej Krupa, Opowiedzieć Zagładę. Polska proza i historiografia wobec Holocaustu (1987−2003) (Kraków: Universitas, 2013), p. 364.

31 See Michael C. Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997). Based on historical events, Steinlauf divides Polish memory into a series of periods and discusses them in consecutive chapters of his book entitled: “Poles and Jews during the Holocaust,” “Memory’s Wounds,” “Memory Repressed,” “Memory Expelled,” “Memory Reconstructed” and “Memory Regained,” (the last timeframe, which spans between 1989−1995, is tellingly accompanied by a question mark).

32 See Aleida Assmann, “Przestrzenie pamięci. Formy i przemiany pamięci kulturowej,” trans. Piotr Przybyła, in Pamięć zbiorowa i kulturowa: Współczesna perspektywa niemiecka, ed. Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska (Kraków: Universitas, 2009), pp. 101−142. For the German original, see Aleida Assmann, Errinerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Geddächtnissen (München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1999).

33 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory; Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

34 Aleida Assmann, “O medialnej historii pamięci kulturowej,” trans. Karolina Sidowska, in Aleida Assmann, Między historią a pamięcią, ed. Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2013), pp. 127−143. This volume is a collection of Assmann’s texts translated from German. For corresponding ideas, cf. Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

35 Pierre Nora, “Czas pamięci,” trans. Wiktor Dłuski, Res Publica Nowa, No. 7 (2001), pp. 37−43; Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de memoire,” trans. Marc Roudebush, Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring 1989), pp. 7–24.

36 Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 6.

37 Scholem considered Eichmann’s execution ill-advised and claimed that, with such a criminal, the death penalty had produced an illusion of law and wrongly suggested that the Holocaust could be comprehended and find closure through punishing the guiltiest individuals.

38 Robert Szuchta, “Refleksje o nauczaniu historii Holokaustu w polskiej szkole,” in Tematy żydowskie, eds. Elżbieta Traba and Robert Traba (Olsztyn: Wspólnota Kulturowa Borussia, 1999), pp. 259–272.

39 This model also underlies the educational practices of Israeli schools, where teaching about the Holocaust begins in the earliest grades. Older children are expected to subdue emotions and acquire an intellectual grasp of the events, while adolescents are encouraged to link their emotional and intellectual experiences to the historical narrative with the support of teachers. This does not mean, however, that Holocaust education is an already settled issue in Israel. On the contrary, the Israeli memory of the Event is by no means an expression of national unity, which results in multiple curricular arrangements.

40 Bogusław Śliwerski, Współczesne teorie i metody wychowawcze (Kraków: Impuls, 2010), p. 363.

41 Admittedly things can look rather different in practice, as it is difficult to avoid the pitfalls of the “diversity festival” which favours quick and superficial contacts with the Other. They easily breed complacency, stirred by the misguided belief that we are all similar to each other. Tomasz Szkudlarek, “Postkolonializm jako dyskurs tożsamości: w stronę implikacji dla polskich dyskusji edukacyjnych,” in Spory o edukację. Dylematy i kontrowersje we współczesnych pedagogikach, eds. Zbigniew Kwieciński i Lech Witkowski (Warszawa: Instytut Badań Edukacyjnych, 1993), pp. 301–314, on p. 310.

42 Ernst van Alphen, “Afekt, trauma i rozumienie: sztuka ponad granicami wyobraźni,” an interview by Roma Sendyka and Katarzyna Bojarska, Teksty Drugie, No. 4 (2012), pp. 207–218, on p. 210.

43 Jérémie Dres, We Won’t See Auschwitz, trans. Edward Gauvin (London: Self Made Hero, 2012).

44 See Robert Szuchta, “Edukacja o Holokauście AD 2013, czyli czego uczeń polskiej szkoły może się dowiedzieć o Holokauście na lekcjach historii w dziesięć lat po ‘dyskusji jedwabieńskiej’?” in Auschwitz i Holokaust. Edukacja w szkole i miejscu pamięci, ed. Piotr Trojański (Oświęcim: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2014), pp. 23−48.

45 See Sylwia Karolak, Doświadczenie Zagłady w literaturze polskiej 1947−199: Kanon, który nie powstał (Poznań: Nauka i Innowacje, 2014).

46 See Ibid., pp. 33‒34. Karolak also lists the titles of texts read at schools between 1947 and 1990, i.e. when the Holocaust was consigned to the peripheries of Polish language instruction. They are, for example, Dzieciństwo w pasiakach (Childhood behind Barbed Wire) by Bogdan Bartnikowski, Samson and Miasto niepokonane [The Invincible City] by Kazimierz Brandys, Rozmowy z katem (Conversations with an Executioner) by Kazimierz Moczarski, Ślady [Traces] by Ludwik Hering, “Campo di Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz, “Warkoczyk” (“Pigtail”) by Tadeusz Różewicz, “Żydom polskim” (“To Polish Jews”) by Władysław Broniewski and Niemcy [The Germans] by Leon Kruczkowski.

47 See Ibid., p. 38.

48 Agnieszka Rypel, “Toposy kształtujące nacechowaną ideologicznie zbiorową tożsamość narodową i społeczną,” in Agnieszka Rypel, Ideologiczny wymiar dyskursu edukacyjnego na przykładzie podręczników języka polskiego z lat 1918−2010 (Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 2012), pp. 175–244, on p. 209.

49 What is alluded to, but not articulated explicitly, is that her migration was one of the enforced departures of Jews from Poland under a government-orchestrated campaign which reached its peak in 1968. Citizens of Jewish descent were stripped of Polish citizenship and coerced to leave the country without the right to return.

50 For compelling examples of anti-Semitism ingrained in Polish culture, see Bożena Keff, Antysemityzm: Niezamknięta historia (Warszawa: Czarna Owca, 2013).

51 I mean the perennial conflict between the imperative to bear witness and the distrust of style, as expressed for example by Elie Wiesel, whose words have already become a metonymy of the inexpressibility of the Holocaust: “One generation later, it can still be said and must now be affirmed: There is no such thing as a literature of the Holocaust, nor can there be. The very expression is a contradiction in terms. Auschwitz negates any form of literature, as it defies all systems…” Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld, A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 14.

52 Podstawa programowa kształcenia ogólnego dla gimnazjów i szkół ponadgimnazjalnych, których ukończenie umożliwia uzyskanie świadectwa dojrzałości po zdaniu egzaminu maturalnego. Annex No 4 to the Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 23rd December 2008 on the core curriculum of pre-school education and general education in particular types of schools (JoL of 15th January, 2009, No 4, item 17).

53 Between 1999 and 2016, Poland had a tripartite education system, including elementary school (6 years), junior secondary school (3 years) and senior secondary school (3 years). The Law of 14th December 2016 on the reform of education revoked this system, reinstating the prior two-tier system of elementary schooling (8 years) and post-elementary schooling (4 years).

54 In broad lines, the Matura exam is taken at the end of secondary education (in high schools and technical high schools). Students must sit written tests in three obligatory subjects (Polish, mathematics and a foreign language) and in at least one elective subject. The obligatory exams are taken at what is referred to as the basic level, while the elective ones at the advanced level, with the levels differing in terms of knowledge and skills which are expected of students. The Matura exam scores are (usually) the only criterion of admission to university degree programmes, with universities, faculties and programmes autonomously determining their own score thresholds and required subjects. Importantly, in case of Polish, students must take their Matura exam at the basic level, but can choose to take the exam at the advanced level. Reading lists for the two levels differ, as do the respective standards regarding students’ scope of knowledge, competencies and interpretive skills.

55 Published in the popular Polish weekly of the Catholic intelligentsia Tygodnik Powszechny in 1987, the essay by the eminent literary critic has ever since been an effective trigger of public debate on the moral responsibility of Poles for the fate their Jewish neighbours suffered during the Second World War.

56 Among a multitude of didactic ideas, there is also an approach in which the narrative about the Holocaust serves as an excuse for addressing other instances of genocide. See Arkadiusz Morawiec, “Zagłady,” Polonistyka. Czasopismo dla Nauczycieli, No. 11 (2014), pp. 9−12.

57 Unfortunately, most textbooks do not live up to the ambitious provisions of the core curriculum. Apparently, a diversified, if not always coherent, approach can rather be found in textbooks from before the education reform. Some of their ways of handling “Jewish themes” certainly deserve attention. In Przeszłość to dziś [The Past is Now], a textbook by Jacek Kopciński, the Holocaust is represented by Bronisław Linke’s painting Egzekucja w murach getta [An Execution within the Ghetto Walls] and Józef Szajna’s installation Ściana butów [The Wall of Shoes]. The former is accompanied by the assignment: “Explain the symbolism of this work,” while the latter comes with information about the artist’s camp experiences and an interpretation which simply states that “Perishable things remained while life perished.” The authors of the textbook Między tekstami [Among texts] explicitly refer to Theodor Adorno’s famous words by devoting two pages to “Art after Auschwitz.” Their brief survey of works of art proves the thesis about diverse approaches to representing the Holocaust. Students have an opportunity to see Władysław Strzemiński’s Moim przyjaciołom Żydom [To My Jewish Friends], Józef Szajna’s Ściana butów, a drawing by Marian Kołodziej and, finally, on the following page, Art Spiegelman’s comic book Maus and Zbigniew Libera’s LEGO Concentration Camp Set. Such an original compilation of cultural representations produces a specific tension between the narrative of the Holocaust generation (of victims and witnesses) and the narrative of the post-Holocaust generation, which attempts to fashion a new language for telling about the Holocaust, one accommodated to popular culture. The idea of confronting various narratives about the Holocaust was not picked up in other textbooks.Post-reform textbooks are slightly disappointing as most of them just tend to replicate the cultural representations which have been referenced in Polish instruction for years. The selection of works offered in the Świat do przeczytania [A World to Read] seems interesting. The textbook includes works which help incorporate the narrative of the Holocaust in a rich context of Jewish culture and history, such as Singer’s The Magician of Lublin, Amiel’s “Kartka z pamiętnika” (“Leaf from a Diary”), Krall’s To Outwit God, Głowiński’s “Przeżycie Zagłady” [“Experiencing the Holocaust”], Wiesław Kot’s “Pomnik z popiołu” [“The Monument of Ash”], Aleksander Gierymski’s Święto trąbek [Yom Teruah], Bronisław Linke’s El mole achmim, Libera’s LEGO Concentration Camp Set, Spiegelman’s Maus and “the reading of films,” encouraging the students to see Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, Steven Spielberg’s Schindler List and Roman Polański’s The Pianist.

58 Anna Ziębińska-Witek, Holocaust. Problemy przedstawiania (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2005), pp. 9‒10.

59 I refer at this point to a social campaign initiated by performance artist Rafał Betlejewski. Betlejewski took pictures of passers-by whom he chanced upon in former Jewish neighbourhoods and wrote Tęsknię za Tobą, Żydzie (I miss you, Jew) on walls as a gesture reversing anti-Semitic graffiti.

60 One of art education textbooks is also an interesting case. Spotkania z kulturą [Encounters with Culture], a textbook which is frequently selected by teachers, features two contemporary references to the Holocaust. They are Joanna Rajkowska’s Pozdrowienia z Alej Jerozolimskich (Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue) and Zbigniew Libera’s LEGO Concentration Camp Set. The authors of the textbook stripped Rajkowska’s work of the Holocaust allusions: the photo of the palm tree is described as “This installation in the form of an artificial palm tree is located in the centre of Warsaw” and is followed by the assignment: “Have a close look at the picture and read its description. Then discuss how, in your view, such art affects the appearance of the city.” Everything implies that the Charles de Gaulle Roundabout (where the installation is placed) will not enter the students’ consciousness as a space that opens up to the no-longer-existing Jewish world of Warsaw, and the plastic palm tree will be remembered just as a (possibly) kitschy embellishment in a European capital. The description of Libera’s work similarly trivialises its meanings, stating simply that it suggests a possibility of constructing a concentration camp of toy blocks, while the Pozytywy (Positives) series are photos which refer – with a twist – to the most recognisable photos representing contemporary history.

61 The expression is borrowed from Krystyna Koziołek’s book Czytanie z innym: etyka, lektura, dydaktyka [Reading with the other: Ethics, Reading, Teaching] (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2006).

62 It is difficult to predict what the reformed Polish lessons on Jewish themes will look like. As yet, the reform has only been implemented in elementary schools, and it will start applying to post-elementary schooling on 1st September, 2019. The core curriculum has been devised, but new textbooks have not yet been written. While the list of compulsory reading has been expanded, the number of books regarding Jewish themes has been reduced, as not only modern narratives, by authors such as Amiel and Fink, but also canonical texts (e.g. Błoński’s essay mentioned above) have been removed.

63 See Przemysław Czapliński, “Zagłada jako wyzwanie dla refleksji o literaturze,” Teksty Drugie, No. 5 (2004), pp. 9–22, on p. 22.

64 David G. Roskies, “What is Holocaust literature,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Vol. 21 (2005), pp. 157–212, on p. 159. Roskies refers to the classification system used by the Library of Congress in Washington.

65 In Poland, literature for a young readership is often referred to as the fourth literature (Polish: literatura czwarta). The term was coined by literature researcher Czesław Hernas, who classified literature into high, folk and entertainment. The fourth type which he distinguished was comprised of children’s literature. To avoid the deprecating overtones of the fourth literature, Jerzy Cieślikowski proposed that children’s literature should be referred to as “separate literature” (Polish: literatura osobna) in order to showcase its specific aims and storytelling practices. In this book, I use the two terms interchangeably.

66 It can be assumed that “new” themes in literature for a young readership and the interdisciplinary approach to old and contemporary texts for children were precipitated by the increasing popularity of children’s studies. While the term itself was only coined in 1991 by Gertrud Lenzer, the founder of Children’s Studies at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Polish research into childhood, whose tenets dovetail with children studies, was launched as early as in the 1960s by Jerzy Cieślikowski and his books Literatura osobna [Separate Literature] and Wielka zabawa [Great play].

67 Representations of the Holocaust in art, pop-culture and media deserve a separate study of their own. Particularly the latter two communication channels enormously affect the development of young people’s awareness of the Holocaust. See Marek Kaźmierczak, Auschwitz w Internecie: Przedstawienia Holokaustu w kulturze popularnej (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza, 2012).

68 The question arises as to whether texts about the Holocaust belong in the category of historical fictions for children and young adults. It seems that the answer is “not yet”, probably because the victims and witnesses of the Event are still alive. It would be more accurate to refer to historical novels about the war as non-fiction. This may be why Gertruda Skotnicka’s monumental study of historical prose for children and young adults does not mention texts about the Second World War. See Gertruda Skotnicka, Barwy przeszłości: O powieściach historycznych dla dzieci i młodzieży 1939−1989 (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo słowo/obraz terytoria, 2008).

69 As early as in the introduction, Dagan stresses the importance of knowledge about the past and defines the conditions for its successful transmission. Specifically, knowledge should be adapted to the age and sensitivity of children in order not to overburden them. In other words, any tale should be addressed to children who want to know. The responsibility of adults is to assess the needs of children as well as to control and systematise knowledge available through media. The educational dimension of dialogue with the child is showcased in CDs with lesson plans attached to Dagan’s two books. The ending of the tale is particularly interesting as the book, whose primary target audience were Israeli children, foregrounds armed combat with the enemy and symbolically caps the narrative about the Holocaust with a vision of a new home in Israel.

70 K. Levine: Hana’s Suitcase. A true Story. Toronto: Second Story Press, 2002.

71 Importantly, Kent’s book was published by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The publication is part of a project launched by the King Matt’s Family Education Area (the name alluding to Janusz Korczak’s popular 1922 book Król Maciuś Pierwszy – King Matt the First), which was founded by the POLIN Museum Education Centre and is committed to educating children aged 4–9 years.

72 For a detailed bibliography of such texts, see Agnieszka Sikora, “W jaki sposób mówimy dzieciom o wojnie? Charakterystyka prozy o tematyce wojennej na podstawie wybranych książek dla dzieci,” Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, Vol. 2, No. 19 (2014), pp. 25−44.

73 Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead. The two timeframes correspond to Steinlauf’s periods of repressed memory and expelled memory.

74 See Roskies, “What is Holocaust literature,” pp. 199–200.

75 Such a multigenerational reading enterprise is well exemplified in the continued endeavour to scrutinise Janusz Korczak, undertaken by women from the well-known Polish family of Mortkowicz, pre-war publishers and booksellers. Most of the works of the Old Doctor came from the printing press of Jakub and Janina Mortkowicz. Contemporary writer Katarzyna Zimmerer continues the family tradition of spreading the knowledge of his life and pedagogical ideas, with her Zwyczajny dzień [An Ordinery Day], a book about Korczak for children, being just one instance of her work. Zimmerer’s daughter starred in Andrzej Wajda’s film Korczak. Her mother, Joanna Olczak-Ronikier, wrote a monumental book entitled Korczak. Próby biografii [Korczak: Towards a Biography], her grandmother, Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczak, wrote the first post-war biography of Janusz Korczak, and her great-grandmother Janina, fascinated, as she was, with Korczak’s innovative pedagogical notions, made it her mission to have his works published by the family publishing house.

76 Sławomir Buryła, “Topika Holokaustu. Wstępne rozpoznanie,” Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski, No. 10 (2012), pp. 131−150.

77 Krystyna Kuliczkowska identifies four dominant styles of war-time narratives in Polish children’s literature: (1) stories which celebrate adventure and in this way dilute the tragic quality of war-time events (e.g. Krystek z Warszawy by Janina Broniewska, Tajemnica wzgórza 117 by Janusz Przymanowski and Kaktusy z Zielonej ulicy by Wiktor Zawada); (2) narratives in the fairy-tale convention (e.g. Mali bohaterowie by Zofia Lorenz, Porwanie w Tiutiurlistanie by Wojciech Żukrowski and O chłopcu, który szukał domu by Irena Jurgielewiczowa); (3) factual records, testimonies and “real life” accounts (e.g. Kamienie na szaniec by Aleksander Kamiński and Dywizjon 303 by Arkady Fiedler); and (4) psychological fiction dwelling on the destructive impact of war (e.g. Pałac pod gruszą by Jadwiga Korczakowska, Chłopcy ze Starówki by Halina Rudnicka, Dzieci Warszawy by Maria Zarębińska, Sprawa honoru by Maria Kann and a series of war stories by Jerzy Szczygieł). Of course, the list of books which tackle war-related themes is much longer, yet these four basic narrative tendencies are perfectly applicable to the titles which are not catalogued here. See Krystyna Kuliczkowska, W świecie prozy dla dzieci (Warszawa: Nasza Księgarnia, 1983), p. 82.

78 Joanna Papuzińska, “ ‘My’ i ‘oni’, czyli stereotypy narodowe w polskiej literaturze dziecięcej,” in Joanna Papuzińska, Dziecko w świecie emocji literackich (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe i Edukacyjne SBP, 1996), pp. 99–111, on p. 105.

79 A characteristic example is provided by Cezary Leżeński’s war-time novel series about Jarek and Marek, brave twins, sons of a German woman and a Polish officer. With a perfect command of both Polish and German, the boys become successful spies. Their improbable adventures resemble the exploits of Hans Kloss, a Polish secret agent (codename J-23) in the Abwehr, the protagonist of a cult TV series of 1965, as well as the protagonists of exceptionally popular historical novels by Henryk Sienkiewicz. In Leżeński’s novels, war is an adventure, especially for adolescent boys who for the sake of defending their motherland give up on scampish horseplay without regrets and commit to the grand cause. One of the novels, entitled Jarek i Marek bronią Warszawy [Jarek and Marek Defend Warsaw] includes a symptomatic episode in which the boys meet Józek, their Jewish peer. Józek explains to them why he has to wear an armband with the Star of David on it. Suddenly, a German officer comes along and brutally slaps Józek across the face because the boy failed to see him and bow to him. Upset, Marek threatens in his perfect German to report the officer to his superior for hitting the Jew who “belongs” to Marek.The construction of the Polish boy figures deserves some attention. The Pole is nearly impudently courageous and although he defends the victim, there is something perverse in his idea to pretend to be German. He seizes control not only of the German officer but also of his Jewish acquaintance, who in this way becomes objectified, deprived of any possibility to respond and, worst of all, doomed to victimhood. He humbly observes the order to wear the armband and calls his oppressor “Mr Governor” with an obsequiousness which does not sound ironic. The arrangement of a rebellious Polish hero juxtaposed with a Jewish fugitive victim tends to be upheld and replicated in many contemporary children’s texts about the Holocaust.

80 See Bohdan Królikowski, Ten dzielny miś. Wojenne przygody pluszowego niedźwiadka [The Brave Teddy Bear: A Fluffy Bear’s Adventures in War] (Lublin: Werset, 1995). The book is a continuation of Bohaterski Miś [The Valiant Teddy Bear], a 1919 bestseller by Bronisława Ostrowska. The fluffy toy is taken prisoner, falls into the hands of a German soldier, fights in the Polish air forces in England, turns guerrilla soldier, is jailed by the Gestapo and, finally, takes part in the Warsaw Uprising. The plot of the novel offers no opportunity to introduce the Holocaust theme. Tomi Ungerer’s popular Otto: The Autobiography of a Teddy Bear embodies an entirely different distribution of weighty war motifs, including those related to the Holocaust.

81 Joanna Kulmowa’s interesting autobiographical novel Trzy [Three] deserves to be mentioned at this point since its teenage protagonist – a Jewish girl in hiding – can be viewed as indicating that the text is addressed to adults and adolescents alike.

82 Among its important characters, the Polish national epic poem Master Thaddeus, written by Adam Mickiewicz in 1834, features Jankiel, a Jewish inn-keeper who has been perpetuated in the national imaginary not only as the assimilated Other, but also – primarily in fact – as a patriot whose wisdom and commitment to the cause of national independence make the Polish gentry blush for their own shortcomings. In one symbolic episode, Jankiel plays a cymbal concert whose music recounts the tragic history of Poland.

83 The “Quarter” (Polish: Dzielnica) was the name given to the ghetto which was set up by the Nazis.

84 The two street names symbolise two worlds: Krakowskie Przedmieście epitomises the Polish world while Nalewki stands for the Jewish one.

85 The wall whose construction was ordered by the Germans separated the ghetto from Warsaw’s Aryan-populated area. In 1940, the total length of the wall was eighteen kilometres.

86 Maria Kann, Sprawa honoru (Warszawa: Nasza Księgarnia, 1969), p. 167.

87 The next chapter examines three parts of the Mr Inkblot series: Akademia pana Kleksa [The Academy of Mr Inkblot], Podróże pana Kleksa [The Travels of Mr Inkblot] and Tryumf pana Kleksa [The Triumph of Mr Inkblot].

88 I refer here to Marcin Świetlicki’s poem “Dla Jana Polkowskiego” (“For Jan Polkowski”), which urges that grand national themes be discarded and the strategy of privacy be adopted instead.

89 The term is borrowed from Czapliński, who claims that “none of the values of contemporary life can be severed from the Holocaust.” Przemysław Czapliński, “Wirus Auschwitz,” Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, Vol. 2, No. 10 (2014), p. 884.