During the Holocaust, Polish bystanders were witnesses not only to Nazi crimes but also to their own collective violence towards Jewish neighbours. This book shows how these memories continue to be distorted and silenced in Polish culture.
Considering the ways in which Polish culture displays symptoms of a suppressed and violent memory while obstinately refusing to see the meaning of such symptoms, the author shows how the narrative of the Holocaust, in threatening the self-image of the community, causes a continuous anxiety and thus compulsive and neurotic reactions. Through analyses of a wide range of literary, journalistic, commemorative and cinematic texts, Forgetting Polish Violence Against the Jews sheds light on a set of narrative and discursive models connected with social practices, which serve to discipline individuals – especially Polish Jews – while generating pressure to defend both habits of silence and also an idealized self-image of the Polish Christian majority.
This book will appeal to scholars with interests in memory studies, cultural studies, Holocaust studies and psychoanalytic studies.