Philo-Semitic Violence: Poland's Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives: Poland's Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives (Reading Trauma and Memory) 1793636699, 9781793636690

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Philo-Semitic Violence

Reading Trauma and Memory Series Editors: Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University and Nicholas Ealy, University of Hartford Reading Trauma and Memory offers global perspectives on representations of trauma and memory while examining the tensions, limitations, and responsibilities that accompany the status of the witness. This series attempts to bridge the gap between trauma studies and new directions in the fields of memory studies, popular culture, and race theory and seeks submissions that closely read literature and culture for representations of traumatic wounding, the limits of memory, and the ethical duty to depict historical trauma and its effects. Given its breadth, this series will appeal to scholars in a number of interdisciplinary fields; given the specific angle of trauma and memory, it will capture those who see ethics and responsibility as key factors in their scholarship. Such areas include: Holocaust studies; war trauma and PTSD; illness and disability; the trauma of migration and immigration; memory studies; race studies; gender and sexuality studies (which has recently had a resurgence with the #MeToo movement); studies in popular culture that take up television and films about witness; and the study of social and historical movements. We are seeking projects that question how to honor the past through close readings of literature focused on trauma and memory—which would necessarily take on international perspectives. Examples include a consideration of literature, justice, and Rwanda through a postcolonial and trauma lens; recent thinking on the phenomenon of “American Crime Story” and the resurgence of interest in the OJ Simpson trial that parallels the narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement; readings of the attempts of popular culture to address issues of historical injustice as exemplified by 12 Years a Slave and HBO’s Westworld.

Recent Titles in This Series Philo-Semitic Violence: Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives, by Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski Trauma in 20th Century Multicultural American Poetry: Unmuted Verse, by Jamie D. Barker Ethics of Witness in Global Testimonial Narratives: Responding to the Pain of Others, by Kimberly A. Nance The Latinx Urban Condition: Trauma, Memory, and Desire in Latinx Urban Literature and Culture, by Crescencio Lopez-Gonzalez Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: Forty Years Later, by Aimee Pozorski, Jennifer J. Lavoie, and Christine J. Cynn Occupying Memory: Rhetoric, Trauma, Mourning, by Trevor Hoag

Philo-Semitic Violence Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives

Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2021 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Anka Grupińska, Ciągle po kole. Rozmowy z żołnierzami getta warszawskiego [Still around the circle. Conversations with Warsaw ghetto soldiers], foreword Paweł Szapiro (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Książkowe “Twój Styl,” 2000), 30. Władysław Szlengel, “I beg your pardon / Bardzo przepraszam,” in What I read to the dead / Co czytałem umarłym, trans. Marcel Weyland, foreword John Kinsella (Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2012), 125, 127. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Janicka, Elżbieta, author. | Żukowski, Tomasz, 1969- author. Title: Philo-semitic violence : Poland’s Jewish past in new Polish narratives / Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski. Other titles: Przemoc filosemicka? English Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2021] | Series: Reading trauma and memory | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021018606 (print) | LCCN 2021018607 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793636690 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793636706 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Jews in popular culture—Poland. | Poland—Ethnic relations. | Poland—Social conditions—1989Classification: LCC DS134.55 .J36513 2021 (print) | LCC DS134.55 (ebook) | DDC 305.892/40438—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018606 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018607 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Philo-Semitic Violence Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

1

1 Interception of a Document: Po-lin by Jolanta Dylewska (2008) Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

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2 Correction of the Reality: Reenacting the Destruction of the Będzin Ghetto (2010) Tomasz Żukowski

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3 The Object and Subject of Nostalgia: I Miss You, Jew, and The Burning Barn by Rafał Betlejewski (2010) Tomasz Żukowski

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4 Purification through Separation: The Commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Bridge (1996, 2007–2011) Elżbieta Janicka

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5 A Freudian Slip: The Keret House at Żelazna Street in Warsaw (2012) Elżbieta Janicka

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Bibliography241 Index261 About the Authors

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List of Figures

Cover: Frame from Archival Footage Shot in Poland by Jews from the United States Visiting Their Hometowns—Zaręby Kościelne, 1930. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York. Frame from Archival Footage Shot in Poland by Jews from the United States Visiting Their Hometowns—Kałuszyn, 1936. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

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Historical Reenactment of the Destruction of the Będzin Ghetto— Będzin, 2010. Photo by Anna Musiałówna.56 Slogan “I Miss You, Jew” by Rafał Betlejewski While Whited Out—Warsaw, 2010. Photo by Dariusz Borowicz / Agencja Gazeta. BOR120628_020005 © Dariusz Borowicz / Agencja Gazeta.

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Symbolic Reconstruction of the Warsaw Ghetto Footbridge over Chłodna Street by Tomasz Lec—Warsaw, 2011. Photo by Franciszek Mazur / Agencja Gazeta. CHLODNA_KLADKAMAZ06 © Franciszek Mazur / Agencja Gazeta.

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Keret House by Jakub Szczęsny (2012) at Żelazna Street—Warsaw, 2012. Photo by Elżbieta Janicka.

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Acknowledgments

Our warmest thanks go to those who believed in the project from the very beginning. Mikhal Dekel encouraged us and showed us the publishing path that we wouldn’t have found on our own. Jonathan Brent noticed the book right after its Polish publication. He was the first to imagine its publication in the United States then kept us company every single day solving countless problems from major to minor. Without his indefatigable commitment we wouldn’t have been able to overcome any of them. Mikhal and Jonathan recommended our work to the publisher. Jan Tomasz Gross also gave us recommendations every time we needed. However, we remain his debtors for much, much more. Our translators were Paulina Chojnowska, Katarzyna Kaszorek, and Katrin Stoll, a dear friend who worked on the translation in the name of friendship and intellectual urgency, with the assistance of Michael Fitzpatrick. Saryta Rodriguez was an editor as relentless as enthusiastic. The American text owes her a lot. At any moment we could rely on the attentiveness and care of the staff of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. The American version of this book couldn’t have been accomplished without the trust and generous support of two anonymous YIVO sponsors. Dear All, without you this book wouldn’t have come into being. We express our deepest gratitude to you. Elżbieta Janicka, Tomasz Żukowski

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Introduction Philo-Semitic Violence Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

NARRATIVE SHOCK The year 2000—which saw the publication of Neighbors by Jan Tomasz Gross—appeared to herald in Poland a breakthrough in thinking about the attitude of the Polish dominant majority toward the Jews, anti-Semitism in general, and the Holocaust in particular.1,2 In the Polish reality, it was a second narrative shock, following that caused by Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985), the case of the Carmelite convent in Auschwitz (1985–1993), and Jan Błoński’s text Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto (Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto) (1987). The narrative shock of the mid-1980s rendered impossible the perpetuation of the belief that the Poles were the only, or main, victims of the Second World War. It is the Jews who were the main victims, both in occupied Poland and in occupied Europe. While that shock failed to produce a new narrative consensus, the issue of the attitude of the Poles toward the Jews, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust was constantly present in mainstream public debate in the 1990s. This was due to Michał Cichy’s text about murders of Jews committed by the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) during the Warsaw Uprising (1994), the fiftieth anniversary of the Kielce Pogrom (1996), the installation of religious symbols in the field of ashes in Birkenau (1996–1997), and the erection of the “papal cross” on a gravel heap in Auschwitz (1998–1999). It was precisely in this state of narrative disintegration and never-ending tensions, if not symbolic wars, that the second shock happened. Gross recounted the 1941 live burning by the Polish neighbors of the entire Jewish population of the Jedwabne town, noting that this was not an isolated incident. With the book’s publication, a fact that could no longer be ignored came to the fore: The Poles were neither passive nor helpless witnesses to the 1

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Holocaust. They were co-conspirators at best, and sometimes direct perpetrators. In their mass, they co-determined the fate of Jewish citizens. As such, they bear co-responsibility for the course and result of the extermination of the Polish Jews. The shock of 2000 initially appeared to be a constructive shock—a crisis leading to overcoming, an ending that results in a new beginning. Both the allPolish debate about Jedwabne and the establishment of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences gave rise to unprecedented development of research into the Holocaust in occupied Poland. The historiography of the Holocaust was no longer written solely abroad. Simultaneously, on an unprecedented scale, representatives of the humanities and social sciences began to address the history of the Polish Jews and anti-Semitism. This resulted in innovative analyses, inspired re-interpretations, and poignant questions posed to culture and society. ANALYZED CORPUS We were intrigued by the question of to what extent, and in what forms, knowledge developed by researchers manifests itself into social awareness. To what extent is it ignored? To what extent is it reflected in the awareness— either directly or indirectly—as a positive or negative point of reference? Is it worked through? Does it translate into sociocultural change? If yes, how, and to what extent? Among important means of both expression and shaping collective awareness are culture texts, classified as cultural and artistic events due to the fact that they evoke a response and stimulate emotions of a wider audience consisting of members of various social and economic demographics. Mass popularity enables us to discuss these events as phenomena that are at least characteristic, if not representative, of the majority culture. We were interested in phenomena observed and discussed in public debate as a sign of change in social awareness and “new opening in the PolishJewish relations,” or a new narrative about the past. Three criteria determined the selection of events to be analyzed: a declaration of non-aggression toward “critical historiography” and thus also toward the new historiography of antiSemitism and the Holocaust, a broad social response, and the positive character of emotions declared by authors and evoked in the audience. As a result, the following events were analyzed: Jolanta Dylewska’s documentary Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci (Polin. Scraps of Memory) (2008), the historical reenactment of the liquidation of the Będzin ghetto (2010), Rafał Betlejewski’s all-Polish socio-artistic project entitled “I Miss You, Jew” (Tęsknię za tobą Żydzie) (2010), the symbolic reconstruction of the ghetto footbridge over

Introduction

3

Chłodna Street in Warsaw, designed by Tomasz Lec (2011), and the Keret House in Warsaw, designed by Jakub Szczęsny (2012). RESEARCH QUESTIONS We were interested in whether one really has to do with a new narrative. We asked about integrated history: history that takes into consideration the experience of all groups that inhabited Poland—in this case, people who, in various ways, defined themselves as Jews; as well as those who were included in the category against their will by the dominant group, which turned to symbolic and physical forms of violence in order to enforce such classifications. We were curious as to whether, and to what extent, the conditions of the Polish historical narrative have changed, together with the collective imaginarium contributing to the sociocultural frame that gives sense to experience and organizes subject knowledge. Have the self-opinion of the dominant majority and its attitude to its own past and present changed? If so, how? Has the redefinition of the community happened in the face of the fact that its ethnic and religious definition, and the hierarchical and collectivist character of relations within the community, caused and legitimized violence toward the minority? What was the scope of this redefinition, if at all? We sought to investigate whether, and on what conditions, the inclusion of the voices of all those who were formerly subjected to anti-Semitic exclusion happens. How freely is the narrative about the Jewish experience, of the Holocaust and the place of the dominant majority in it, expressed? To what extent is the status of the minority voice autonomous, and to what extent is it compelled to conform to conditions imposed by the majority? PHILO-SEMITIC VIOLENCE In search of answers to the above questions, we have observed that the voice of the minority, even if introduced into the audibility sphere, is still subject to restrictive requirements, pressure, and hierarchies, which in turn are deceptively similar to the old forms of discrimination. Furthermore, definitional oppression toward the members of the minority, which transforms a subject into an object, has been neither deconstructed nor subjugated. Quite the opposite: It is alive and well. It consists in philo-Semitic violence. We define philo-Semitism as impetuously positive feelings of the majority toward a collective imagined object identified as “the Jews.” In this sense, philo-Semitism, although utilizing the opposite emotional

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vector, is structurally similar to anti-Semitism. Both originate from a common allosemitic matrix, whose functioning was described in the 1980s by Artur Sandauer.3 Philo-Semitism is, as is any objectification and negation of the subjectivity of another entity, a form of violence. In this sense, “philoSemitic violence” is a term that is, to some extent, tautological and redundant. Our intention was, however, to emphatically isolate and name this still under-recognized phenomenon. Symptoms of philo-Semitic violence in Poland form a social phenomenon of impressive proportions. Recognizing that fact was a point of departure for our research. The main subject of the analysis is the way in which the imagined object of “the Jews” is constructed. “The Jews” is a phantasm, an image created in response to the deficiencies and demands of its admirers— the dominant group, meaning the Polish majority. Our research indicates that first on the list of its mental, emotional, and moral demands is concern for its own image and self-image. The issue of anti-Semitism—particularly the position of the Polish majority within the structure of the Holocaust—remains the central issue for the image and self-image. For this reason, addressing anti-Semitism and the Holocaust arouses the strongest emotions. PHANTASMAL “JEWS” AND THE POLISH IMAGE-AND-IDENTITY TANGLE On the one hand, the collective “fixation on the Jews,” in which the Polish image-and-identity tangle is expressed, stems from the fact that the phantasmal “Jews” are a constitutive Other, based on whom the majority determines its identity. In the reality of a community that defines itself ethnically (the Polish community) or in ethnic and religious terms (the Polish-Catholic community), the phantasmal “Jews” organize the system of distinction, just as they did in the conditions of the pre-national religious community (the Christian community): The benefit from classification, that is a sense of security resulting from the strengthened sense of identity, is felt most deeply precisely when the personification of distinction is indicated. In the course of Polish history, that function has always been served by the Jews, who have been the organizer of the Polish system of distinction since the Middle Ages. [. . .] Polish political reclassifications in the 20th century always used the Jewish key (the First World War, 1918, the war in 1920, the Sanation (Sanacja), the Russian troops’ arrival, the German troops’ arrival, the return of the Russians, the Communist government, October 1956, the year 1968, etc.); today, too, repair slogans of the authorities, even if far from anti-Semitism (for example fight against corruption or the “new history

Introduction

5

politics”), are being confused with a different, dangerous type of organization based on identity hysteria and nationalism.4

On the other hand, the dominant identity of the majority group is based on an idealized image to such an extent that it appears to be exhausted in it. This does not mean that qualities like individual and collective subjectivity, readiness to acknowledge the subjectivity of different entities, sovereignty, or awareness of the consequences of one’s choices—and responsibility for them—are unknown in Polish culture. However, these qualities do not enjoy comparable sociocultural validity. They remain dispersed, and do not create an alternative to an identity based on image that is clear and has broad appeal. They have only negative mobilization capacity, which means that they are exhausted in individual, minor reactions to revealed acts of violence and do not translate into systematic reflection about culture—which could, in turn, result in a change in social practices. Critical thought does exist, but it is devoid of continuity. It does not transform into a clear and permanent canon or corpus that could be systematically verified or falsified. Furthermore, the defendants of the Polish image invariably consider each analytical undertaking to be a threat that originates from or is inspired by the outside. Geneviève Zubrzycki, a researcher into the Polish majority identity and Polish symbolic wars, analyzes the dominant majority’s fascination with everything that is considered Jewish in Poland; but she does not probe into the construction of the imagined “Jew.” Nor does she measure the phantasm created by the Poles up against the realities of the Polish-Jewish and the Jewish-Polish history. Based on the statements of the Polish participants of the “Jewish revival,” she draws a conclusion that it is a “replacement phenomenon”—a socially and culturally allowed form of expression of one’s longing for a pluralistic society.5 Our research indicates that the phenomenon includes an element that goes beyond many divisions—an element that is deeply harmonizing. The image of Poland and the Poles remains the primary symbolic stake of “the Jews,” including its most sensitive point: the Poles’ attitude toward the Jews in general and during the Holocaust in particular— because, sooner or later, the question of the Holocaust will inevitably be asked. THE WORKINGS OF THE MECHANISM What serves a crucial role in philo-Semitic violence is something that may be easily described as a proof of change: good feelings of the majority toward “the Jews”—an utterly unprecedented phenomenon. The phantasmal “Jews” are thus constructed in such a way that they become likeable, sometimes to

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such an extent that one could identify with them. The aim can be achieved in two ways. First, by describing issues that do not involve the context of the dominant culture, such as religion and traditional customs: the Torah, Hasidim’s tales, music, cuisine, paper cutting, and so forth. Second, by following the method of decontextualization of everything that indicates the dominant culture’s aggression. This is why prevailing Polish narratives about the Holocaust either completely evacuate the Polish majority to the outside of the represented world or rely on Hilberg’s triad:6 A clear differentiation between perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, in which victims and bystanders are separated by foreign violence. The anti-Semitism of the dominant group does not appear in this field of vision. Should it make itself known, however, it must remain unanalyzed, marginalized, or considered something already subjugated and thus unworthy of attention. It can be presented, for instance, as an excess of individuals or a separated group. It cannot, however, be described as a constant sociocultural norm, morally legitimized by both the dominant religion and customs considered to be natural and self-evident. Thus, decontextualization conditions a liking for the object of the representation (the phantasmal “Jews”). It organizes the field of representation and is generally obeyed by everyone who enters it. The requirement concerns the Jewish voice, too. How does it work? It verges on psychological improbability that a real person, having encountered an avalanche of the best feelings toward their inadequate image, states, “You mistake me for someone else.” It is even less probable that they reveal the rules of the game in such a situation, saying, “You instrumentalize me, acting in your own interest at my expense.” The liking for the imagined Jews de facto serves as a gag or a tool of blackmail. For the object of positive feelings usually tries to return the kindness instead of demanding that explanations be offered, and accounts be settled. Such a demand, just as a claim to equal rights and agency of the subject, would make a liking for the subject impossible. In the perspective of the dominant culture, it would put the subject in the position of the archetypal insolent, ungrateful or perhaps even revengeful “Jew.” In accordance with this principle, the liking in question eliminates the opportunity of expressing the Jewish experience in its entirety; an entirety that also determines its differentia specifica, which is the stigma created and imposed by the majority together with all of its consequences. The cultural events under analysis constitute different versions of the narcissistic self-staging of the dominant majority. It espouses such opinions about the “Jews” as confirm its own self-image. In this way, seemingly contradictory weals are reconciled and secured: the idealized image of the majority (“The Poles have never had a problem with anti-Semitism”), and a myth of progress (“Poland has changed for the better with respect to anti-Semitism”).

Introduction

7

This is how philo-Semitic violence works: It enables resistance to reject the basic pattern of exclusion on a social scale and, simultaneously, constitutes its new form. Under its cover, anti-Semitism—unthreatened in its foundations, construction, and mechanisms—can last and reproduce, just as illustrated in the case of Poland after 1989.7,8,9

QUESTION ABOUT CHANGE The absence of social change manifests itself on the level of the definition of the community, which is still founded on the ethnic or ethno-religious criterion. Such a definition has an aggressive character that is both offensive and defensive. This was explicitly proven by the debate about refugees (2015). Confronted with the refugee crisis, the European Union decided to direct the arrivals into each of its member-countries. This triggered a bottom-up and top-down hate campaign in Poland (and Hungary, for that matter). One of Poland’s political parties (Law and Justice, i.e., Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS), supported by the Catholic Church, based its anti-refugee campaign on anti-Semitic patterns that were characteristic of Nazi propaganda. The campaign propelled PiS to victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2015. Jan Tomasz Gross—who protested the countrywide explosion of hatred, deeming it a result of cultural and societal refusal to address Poles’ and Eastern Europeans’ involvement in the Holocaust10—was both stigmatized by his right-wing adversaries and ostracized by his lifelong friends from the liberal democratic mainstream (represented by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily newspaper). Poland has received no refugees. Thus, the sociocultural framework organizing experience and knowledge does not change. Neither does the dominant narrative—even if, on the level of detail, new elements appear within it. There was a time, however, when knowledge and experience appeared to gain an advantage and crack the hermetic image-and-identity shell. It happened in the period from 2000 to 2004, between the debate about Jedwabne in 2000–2001 and Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004, followed by the election victory of the camp of the “new historical politics” in 2005—which, contrary to popular belief, is not limited to one political party. Thus, the question arises as to whether the events of the years 2000–2004 were dictated solely by concern for Poland’s image under the banner “What will they think about us abroad?” Were they determined by conviction that the ability to take responsibility for one’s own country and its history is a kind of distinction—a ticket to a better world, in which one can forget this responsibility once they arrive? Or perhaps it was a potential for change that

Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

8

manifested itself in the four-year crack? We wish to believe that it was at least the latter. In our analyses, we describe mechanisms through which social energy finds an outlet not in actual change but creating and preserving the appearance of change. The semblance of change not only enables the avoidance of true change, but also serves to block or deactivate potential for change. The image, not the actual state of affairs, remains the supreme value and an end in itself. As long as collective identity is based on image, a vicious circle of denying both one’s own status as a subject and that of others ensues. This also perpetuates image-panic, which has been and probably will continue to be based on refusal to confront the reality of the Holocaust and the place of one’s own group in that reality. This ritual has occurred in Poland incessantly since 1942, if not 1941, and has not met with opposition from any cultural institution—be it the home, the school, or the Church. It can be threatened solely by emancipation of individuals as social beings who feel and think—that is, entities who are responsible for themselves and the network of relations in which they remain. Today, however, this prospect seems even more distant than in the times when the projects whose analytical balance is presented in the book were undertaken. Spring 2016

NOTES 1. Jan Tomasz Gross, Sąsiedzi. Historia zagłady żydowskiego miasteczka [Neighbors. The history of destruction of a Jewish town] (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2000). 2. Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 3. Artur Sandauer, O sytuacji pisarza polskiego pochodzenia żydowskiego w XX wieku. Rzecz, którą nie ja powinienem był napisać . . . [On the situation of the Polish writer of Jewish descent in the twentieth century. A text someone else should have written . . .] (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1982), 9–12. 4. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Légendes du sang. Pour une anthropologie de l’antisémitisme chrétien [Legends of blood. For an anthropology of Christian anti-Semitism], trans. Małgorzata Maliszewska (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2015), 632, 634. 5. Geneviève Zubrzycki, “Nationalism, ‘Philosemitism,’ and Symbolic BoundaryMaking in Contemporary Poland,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 1 (January 2016): 66–98. 6. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). 7. For survey research from 1992 see Ireneusz Krzemiński, ed., Czy Polacy są antysemitami? Wyniki badania sondażowego [Are the Poles anti-Semites? Survey results] (Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa, 1996).

Introduction

9

8. For survey research from 2002 see Ireneusz Krzemiński, ed., Antysemityzm w Polsce i na Ukrainie. Raport z badań [Anti-Semitism in Poland and Ukraine. Research report] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2004). 9. For survey research from 2012 see Ireneusz Krzemiński, ed., Żydzi—problem prawdziwego Polaka. Antysemityzm, ksenofobia i stereotypy narodowe po raz trzeci [The Jews—a genuine Pole’s problem. Anti-Semitism, xenophobia and national stereotypes: third attempt] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2015). 10. Jan Tomasz Gross, Eastern Europe’s Crisis of Shame, September 14, 2015, https​:/​/ww​​w​.soc​​ialeu​​rope.​​eu​/ea​​stern​​-euro​​pes​-c​​risis​​​-of​-s​​hame.

Frame from Archival Footage Shot in Poland by Jews from the United States Visiting Their Hometowns—Kałuszyn, 1936. Source: From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

Chapter 1

Interception of a Document Po-lin by Jolanta Dylewska (2008) Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

POSTHUMOUS INCLUSION? In Historia antysemityzmu (History of Anti-Semitism), edited by Léon Poliakov, Paul Zawadzki states: In some milieus, one can even get the impression that the sign of value attributed to Jews has changed; anti-Semitism has been replaced by some kind of philo-Semitism. [. . .] Everything indicates that after a physical death during the Shoah, a symbolical death with the exile in 1968 and a metaphorical death with the fall of Communism, the Jews, or at least their ashes, will be included in the pantheon of Polish culture.1

The idea of posthumous inclusion needs to be carefully examined. It is, for example, associated with the question of to what extent one can disregard the fact, as well as the causes and circumstances, of the death of the object of inclusion, since this inclusion is performed by the living upon the dead. Moreover, it is performed by the majority on the minority: by the group that has hitherto been exclusive onto the group it has definitively excluded. We are interested in the conditions under which posthumous inclusion in question develops. We have analyzed practices by which these conditions are defined. Noting these, we realize that wherever violence against a minority is both deeply rooted in and preserved over time by the dominant culture, rejecting models that reproduce and consolidate discrimination proves incredibly difficult. The previous forms of subordination are replaced by new ones— sometimes in defiance of the best intentions. We would like to examine this process via Jolanta Dylewska’s film from 2008, Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci (Polin. Scraps of Memory). We treat it as a 11

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testimony of inclusive intentions and practices, which are not an isolated case in present-day Polish culture. The film was received enthusiastically. It received the following awards: Golden Teeth—Audience Award of Chicago Polish Film Festival (2008); 3rd Feature Film Award of the Film and Art Festival Two Riversides in Kazimierz Dolny (2008); Krzysztof Kieślowski Beyond Borders Award of New York Polish Film Festival (2009); Golden Phoenix—Grand Prix of “Jewish Motifs” International Film Festival in Warsaw (2009); Golden Filmstrip—Award of the Film Literature Circle of the Polish Filmmakers Association (2009). Po-lin was construed both as a remedy for anti-Semitism and an invitation to join the discussion about the history of the Polish Jews on entirely new terms. It was underlined with recognition that Jolanta Dylewska had adopted a radically different standpoint from the perspective presented by Jan Tomasz Gross, who revealed the structural violence and exclusion underpinning the attitude of the Polish majority toward minorities—Jews in particular—prior to the war. In reviewers’ opinion, the director proposed a language which presents the issue in a new light, “omitting the matter of guilt, mutual grudges, anti-Semitism and anti-Polonism.”2 The anti-Semitic motif of “mutual guilt” between the Poles and the Jews before, during, and after the war is very popular in Poland and would require separate study. As examples of the “Jewish guilt,” Katyń and Stalinism (or Communism in general) are evoked.3 One of the most significant instances of such a symmetrical discourse was the statement by the Primate of Poland (head of the Catholic church) concerning the revelation of the Jedwabne massacre.4 In March 2001, Cardinal Józef Glemp announced, “It somewhat resembles the massacre in Katyń,”5 and then asked about the reason for the massacre in Jedwabne that had occurred a year later.6 As his logic was based on the anti-Semitic myth of Judeo-Communism,7 he suggested thereby that Polish crimes against Jews were a kind of a retaliation, if not self-defense.8 Back to Dylewska’s Po-lin, the same reviewer of the center-left weekly magazine Polityka, complimented the director: “Her moving film is almost all composed of meticulously restored fragments from amateur recordings, which present ordinary behaviors, fleeting carefree moments and happiness.”9 Writing for the professional monthly Kino “about neighbors who suddenly disappeared,” a celebrated cinema critic, stated: In black-and-white films, the world, which we know from Kawalerowicz’s Austeria at best, revives. [. . .] And if anyone bandies around slogans of Polish anti-Semitism, he should see the film. [. . .] Images preserved in the film, meticulously reproduced sounds, mood music by Michał Lorenc. Filled with nostalgia and tolerance, this wise film should be included in the canon of films for school students.10

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And so it happened. A reviewer from liberal democratic Gazeta Wyborcza daily newspaper observed accurately yet failed to notice the hidden meaning of his own words: “They are smiling. They do not blame anybody or want anything from us. It is we who need them for some purpose.”11 We shall now examine this picture of harmonious coexistence. COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION: QUID PRO QUO The film Po-lin is composed of accounts that belong to two communicative universes: Jewish and Polish. The same texts and pictures have different meanings in each of them. However, Jolanta Dylewska managed to create the effect of harmony by obliterating these differences. A radical change in the receiving situation escapes our attention, as do its consequences. Distortion is the price: gestures and words spoken by the Jews to the Jews have the function of a message sent by the Jews to the Polish audience—this message serves as a basis to draw conclusions about relations between the Polish and Jewish neighbors. Dylewska uses documentaries shot by the Jewish emigrants, who in the 1930s traveled from the United States to visit their relatives in Poland. These materials are family mementos. Amateur filmmakers shot them for close relatives and friends who had emigrated. The residents of Jewish towns were acquainted with the people behind the camera and knew to whom the registered images would be directed. This determined the behavior of the amateur filmmakers as well as the characters. The conventions of commemorative photography defined the subject: What registered was not so much everyday life as the atmosphere of holiday, which was the visit of long-lost relatives, friends or acquaintances, who were generally perceived as those who succeeded. Hence, the behavior of the filmed people: They show a kind interest in the camera and are well-disposed toward the cameramen. A cheerful mood affects them. Smiling, they are greeting those who will watch them across the Atlantic. They want to make a good impression; holiday mood is not favorable for thinking about problems and cares. This seemingly carefree attitude can even be observed in photographs in which the poor, beggars, or local outcasts appear. Smiling at the cameraman from the same community is one thing; but, in Dylewska’s film, this smile changes its meaning. It becomes a greeting, which the minority sends to the majority. The director does not provide archival shots with any contextual or analytic commentary. On the contrary, she seems to strengthen the communicative misunderstanding. At the beginning of the film, an inter-title appears, informing that the footage is archival. We can read, “Due to the course of history, amateur materials, shot by an unskilled hand of very often unknown authors, preserve for us scraps of the

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Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

non-existent world of the Polish Jews” [emphasis by E. J., T. Ż.].12 The word “us” means the Polish film crew, Polish viewers, and—evidently—Polish people in general. This motif returns in the conversation with the director held by the journalist from Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, “Katarzyna Bielas: The people who appear in amateur home movies shot before the war [. . .] approach the camera with a smile on their faces, looking us in our eyes [emphasis by E. J., T. Ż.]. We are struck by a friendly and cheerful atmosphere. Jolanta Dylewska: I had the same feeling when I was watching these films for the first time in various archives in the world, and it is exactly this feeling I wanted to preserve for future viewers.”13 The created message has become an important element of discussion, which has lasted in Poland incessantly since the publication of Jan Tomasz Gross’s book, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2000; English translation 2001), and which was initiated by Jan Błoński’s article, Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto (Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto, 1987). The creators of this film intentionally spoke in a public debate, calling the Jews from the archival materials as witnesses. This is a fact of serious consequences. The intergroup “act of reconciliation,” which is so willingly described by the reviewers, proves to be based on the lack of communication between the two groups. The original context of sending and receiving excludes completely the question of relations with Polish Christians. From the footage used by Dylewska, we are told nothing about opinions that the Jewish residents of shtetls held of their Polish neighbors. The creators of this film omitted this question and thus distorted the meaning of Jewish messages. Creating the illusion of dialogue while simultaneously depriving minority members of permission to speak (as Po-lin does) is just one form the message-distortion can take. Contemporary material, which surrounds the Jewish archival footage, makes the Jews seem to speak; however, they say what is put in their mouth by the Polish director, who at the same time saw to it that they could not express their actual opinions about the dominant group. The film images of shtetls and messages included in them become a part of the whole, which is absolutely controlled by the Polish narrator. The Jews become incapacitated, instrumentalized. THE HARMONY OF MEMORIES AND ITS CURATOR-HANDLER The distortion goes deeper, beyond the receiving context. The paramount perspective of the dominant group has been inscribed in the structure of Po-lin.

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We see the Jewish world through the eyes of “witnesses”—that is, Poles who knew their neighbors and who are remembering them. The archival footage does not appear immediately. The story begins with those Poles who remember the Jews, who are talking about their “disappearance” and the void they left. Dylewska introduces the archival material with the following contemporary sequence: one of two Polish women says that she does not dream about Jews anymore, although they used to return in her dreams. Then, she asks her companion about her dreams. The camera zooms in on the face of the other woman. With vacant eyes, she is staring at something distant, as though from the other world. The image follows her look. In a close-up, architectural details appear; first, they are blurred, yet a moment later they gradually become sharper. We can see doors, gates of houses, walls. Only people are absent, although the Jewish-style music, the murmur imitating the sounds of the Jewish street, and Piotr Fronczewski reading reminiscences about the Jewish residents of the town excerpted from Jewish “memorial books,” can be heard coming from off-screen. As far as the choice of the lector is concerned, the director succumbed to the persuasion: Initially, the commentary was to be read by a woman. I was thinking about Maja Komorowska [Grotowski’s and Wajda’s actress—E. J., T. Ż.], but unfortunately it happened that she was busy at that time. It was the producer who suggested Piotr Fronczewski. He said, “Jola, do you realize that the most important texts in the history of humanity were always read by men?” I did not know what to say.14

With its timbre and intonation, the actor’s cavernous, haunting voice resembles the bass voice of Anatoly Kashpirovsky, a popular Russian hypnotist and healer-celebrity. Finally, they appear: the Jews, summoned from nothingness. Approaching the camera, they are approaching “us.” They emerge from the back of the scene, timid smiles on their faces. Polish “witnesses,” in turn, are filmed in two conventions. Dylewska primarily uses documentary style: She presents the Polish characters in the places where they live and work, in a casual conversation with the reporter standing behind the camera. When she interviews them and records their memories and emotions, however (moments that are crucial for the narration), she switches to the style of a psychological film, using close-ups that fill the whole frame and having the camera focus squarely on the subject’s eyes. In an interview given to the online magazine Stopklatka, the director said, “Having finished conversations, cameraman Józek Romasz and I placed the camera in front of them and I asked them to look in the lens and think about a dear Jewish neighbor from that period. Indeed, I believe

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Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

that the lens can convey more than that which is seen.”15 With this image, Dylewska deliberately suggests a “spiritual depth” and elevates the Polish interlocutors. In addition, the director anticipates—or more accurately, establishes—the equality of Polish and Jewish memories. In her presentation, the archival footage shot by the Jewish amateur filmmakers proves to be both a materialization and a guarantee of authenticity of the Poles’ memory. The past is supposed to last in the “witnesses,” who are symbolically placed on the same side as the victims. We’ve already noted that the confirming smiles of the Jews from the 1930s footage are not addressed to “us.” Still, the Polish curator-handler knows better. When, in the Stopklatka interview, a question about anti-Semitism is asked, we are told that it was not—and still is not—a marginal problem. However, Dylewska underlines that in Polish accounts: There were more good deeds. Of course, there were also pogroms. But first of all, I made this film to bring back the Jews to collective memory. On the other hand, I made it also for those who survived the Holocaust. I thought that maybe they would be happy to hear someone—for example Józefa in the film—saying that without them, it had become empty and sad. In my opinion, it was important to let them hear these words.16

We may observe here the director’s conscious choice. Dylewska decides that she will show “that which was good.” At the same time, she implies that what she shows was a decisive factor influencing the atmosphere in Polish-Jewish towns. “Bringing back the Jews to collective memory” is thus occurring on special terms. Smiling Jews “legitimize” the director’s decision. They “approve” the Polish narrative that erases everyday violence and exclusion on the part of the dominant group. The impression of Polish-Jewish harmony of memories is strengthened by the juxtaposition of two nostalgias. The Polish nostalgia is created by Dylewska herself, and her filming technique. It consists of picturesque footage of remnants, psychologizing portraits of interlocutors, and the removal of anti-Semitic signs. The Polish nostalgia is all the easier to create, so because it does not require any revision of habits and allegiances. Dylewska’s interlocutors know that they are safe in this regard: The Polish majority ensured that the possibility of real meeting and communication between Poles and Jews was averted. A few Jews who survived ran for dear life. Those who were killed are gone forever; they do not want anything from the Poles, they do not say a word, being only a projection of those who are recollecting them. At the end of the film, one of the Polish characters repeats with melancholy,

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“Everything passes away.” This is universal wisdom, absolute truth. One can only agree with it. Panta rei. Tempus fugit. Où sont les neiges d’antan! The Jewish nostalgia is, above all, the nostalgia of “memorial books,” which were published by Area Associations (established by the Polish Jews who emigrated from Poland).17 They were created by survivors for survivors. The authors described for themselves and each other the murdered Jewish world, in which the Polish neighbors, actually, did not appear. While in the parts related to the interwar period, one finds relatively few details about the contacts with the Christian population, in the parts related to the war and post-war period, one finds significantly more pieces of information, which describe various [euphemism meaning “anti-Semitic”—E. J., T. Ż.] attitudes of the Poles. [. . .] The reading of Jewish memorial books can be very enlightening for the Polish reader, who will often be surprised by a disparate perspective or the harshness of judgments presented in the included texts. It must be remembered, however, that the majority of books were written soon after the war when the Jewish community in Poland, having experienced a lot during the Holocaust, was additionally hurt by the wave of anti-Semitism, which would culminate in the Kielce pogrom in July 1946.18

Contrary to what the above passage suggests, Dylewska doesn’t seem enlightened by her reading of Jewish memorial books. She chooses from them fragments that almost resemble a fairy-tale. This style is additionally emphasized by the ponderous and hieratic reading by Piotr Fronczewski. The fairy-tale describes “the good old days,” conveniently omitting the fact that they were good not because of the Polish majority’s kindness or decent living conditions, but simply because everyone was still alive. In Po-lin, these two nostalgias are juxtaposed, which gives the impression that they meet. However, neither of these stories crosses the boundaries of its own community. It is especially important to observe what is happening on the Polish side: While talking about the minority, the dominant group also creates the image of itself. Thus, the most important feature of this documentary about the Jews is the image it renders of the Poles. VIDEO AND AUDIO FAMILY ALBUM Dylewska inscribes the Jewish archival shooting into Polish narration about the Polish community. It has already been mentioned that this archival material appears on the screen as an illustration of the content of memories recalled by the Polish “witnesses.” The films shot by the Jewish amateurs are thus granted a special status.

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Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski

Edited from the 1930s footage, the first sequence consists of scenes in which the filmed Jews are approaching the camera from a distance. This gesture of openness and friendship is repeated as many as six times, with different Jewish characters. They perform trust and devotion while walking toward the lens, which additionally expose them to violence imposed by those who will take possession of the exposed films and use them for their own purposes. Dylewska did not perceive this danger. She abandoned the image of the minority to the majority’s mercy. The following four scenes are family frames. The elderly and the children are standing next to each other, as if posing for a photograph. The narration of Po-lin suggests that these photographs will be given to “us.” They will be included into the collection of family mementos kept by “witnesses” and then given to the film crew and the audience. The meaning of these photographs is determined by whomever owns the collection, as is the case for every family album. An album seems to be a document par excellence, since the photographs included in it are a mechanical recording of reality. However, the situation is not that simple. A collection of photographs is a cultural fact, a story which cannot be told without direction and sometimes even manipulation. Photographs define family and friend circles and, more importantly, determine the status of the album owner, who uses it to create a narration about himself. In general, it is the narration, which suits him the most and to which he aspires. It is constructed of variants of cultural clichés of status and attitudes, be it a view of a white manor house, shots from holidays in Nice at the beginning of the century, or photographs with famous personages. A family album may consist of photographs of real family and friends, yet this is not necessary. Under the banner of “Buy yourself ancestors!” more than one archive of old photographs is waiting for a new owner.19 Regardless of authenticity, the principle remains the same: The one who possesses the photographs becomes an administrator of their meanings. That person creates their own genealogy and identity on that basis. In the case of the collection presented by Dylewska, there are three important interconnected aspects of the presentation. First, the archival footage is dominated by the majority-determined narration. Second, it fits into identity clichés that are essential for this narration, such as “Polish hospitality.” Finally, it is fabricated in such a way so as not to ‟resist” curator-handlers. In Po-lin, a commemorative family photograph in the neighbors’ album seals a friendly alliance. Irrespective of their own intentions, the Jews are forced to appear in the Polish family saga about Polish origins, identity, and uniqueness in comparison with Europe: a saga of Paradisus Iudaeorum. From behind the senses squeezed into the archival footage by the Polish story, a fundamental status of the films from the 1930s in Dylewska’s Po-lin

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emerges: the status of subordination and availability. The director—a new owner of the archive—takes control over images through the act that should be called interception, if not theft. As a result, the majority obtains what it likes the most: likeable and pleased Jews who accommodatingly accept the Polish version of events. It becomes impossible to see the vast emptiness that refers to the Holocaust in (originally silent) historical footage once it is co-opted and manipulated in this way. Moreover, the shock—which forces us to recognize the mechanisms of crime and cope with its real social fact in order to “arrange [our] thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz shall not repeat itself, so that nothing similar shall happen,”20 as Adorno expressed it—vanishes in carefree self-affirmation of the Polish community. The shots in which the reality before the Holocaust is contrasted with present-day images of the same desolate places are immediately intercepted by an overriding story that is harmonious and, formally, overwhelming. To obtain an effective interception of images, the audience cannot be left alone with the footage the way the Jewish authors and owners left them. The viewers’ intellect and senses are instead continually managed and formatted. The footage from the 1930s was supplemented with a soundtrack, which is composed of all possible noises related to the specific frames. Watching the street, we can hear footsteps and the babble of distant conversations. When a horse is walking on the screen, the clatter of hooves and a neigh arise. When a railway station appears, the blast of a locomotive’s siren and the sound of a departing train emerge from off-screen. Black-and-white photographs have all of the characteristics of amateur archival material: They are fuzzy, with scratches here and there, and the film grain is large. Compared to the archival footage, the sound strikes with technical perfection. It is hyper-realistic, hyper-polished, and hyper-processed. Because of this contrast, the soundtrack stands out, becomes independent and focuses attention as a separate work that is an authorial construct. The sound “revives” the images. Reviewers noticed that Dylewska “reconstructs in detail” the world of pre-war Jewish towns.21 Tadeusz Sobolewski stressed, “Indeed, [. . .] one has the impression of direct contact with a true reality.”22 Piotr Śmiałowski wrote that: [Dylewska] decided on the technique, which is probably the best idea of Po-lin: old films are played in somewhat slow motion. They are underscored with sounds, which to some extent are harmonized with scenes on the screen. These sounds, however, are not ordinary. They are reverberant, but also a little bit deformed. [. . .] With all these elements, one can have the impression of listening to some kind of folk story, and the film itself corresponds to the images, which we create in our minds while having our eyes closed.23

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The added soundtrack constitutes a part of the “regaining the past” operation. Similarly, the slow-motion archival footage and close-ups of individual characters are important features of this operation. All of this calls attention to the assiduousness of the Poles who made the effort. The film creators’ technique connects them, as well as the audience, with the Polish “witnesses.” “We,” for whom the archival material was saved, “revive” together the Jewish world; we recover it from the dark and bequeath it to future generations. Here, the majority stages itself. The problem of people remaining silent on the screen also disappears. The impression of communing with the Jewish voice is intensified by a commentary read by Piotr Fronczewski. At the beginning of Po-lin, the following information is presented, “Those who survived, wrote MEMORIAL BOOKS—SIFREI ZIKARON. Due to these books, the commentary for this film was created.” The impression is compelling: Here, the Jewish victims receive their voices back and, together with the Polish “witnesses,” talk about the land of Po-lin. The commentary is invariably maintained in the present tense. In an interview to Stopklatka, Dylewska describes why that grammatical tense was chosen: Hanna Krall [. . .] made a brilliant correction, fundamental for the film. She asked, “How come? Why [it is written] in the past tense if they are still alive?” Due to this change, the audience may have the impression that this world still exists. Because of the present tense, these people are more alive. Maybe some viewers will have the impression that this world can be saved. From my point of view, it could be the viewers’ important emotional input to this film.24

The director’s comment reveals some problems related to memory as an instrument to make others present. Memory (the subjective) is validated by a mechanical image (the objective). Dylewska seems to think that this technique achieves objectivity, which is the past recalled in its real shape. However, the act of recalling the bygone world is, at the same time, the act of creating it. The authors of historical narration dictate the principles of this creation.25 This phenomenon was exhaustively described by Hayden White, who emphasized the crucial role of narrative conventions through which culture, society and historians perceive and organize facts. In White’s opinion, historical narrative is not so much a simple reflection of the past as a creation of its image.26 In the case of the relationship between the dominant group and the minority, the problem becomes more complicated—especially when the reconstruction takes place after the extermination of the latter, under “the Holocaust’s long shadow,” as Feliks Tych termed the post-war anti-Semitism.27

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In Po-lin, making the past “present” is an attempt to somehow put the Holocaust in parentheses. When memory gets stuck in the times before the extermination, lullabied with the belief that they can be revived, the extermination itself ceases to be a crucial turning point. The tone shifts from the necessity of reflecting on the mechanisms of genocide and behaviors of the dominant group toward the exterminated to the cultivation of memories of the Jews before the catastrophe—or, more precisely, images of them nurtured by the dominant group. This process does not require any amendment of behavior or beliefs of the majority. Dylewska is aware that she also participates in the act of “regaining” the murdered world, and she suggests that the audience has a similar role; yet she does not see this process as problematic. As a result, the characters are not protected against the power of the film’s curator-handler. Memory is used in the film to create images of the absent that conceal their prototypes and separate the audience from reality. In consequence, an illusory sense of communing with the dead arises. It is all the easier and more reassuring because they are exposed to the narration created by the majority, and do not try to question it in any way. When the story is told in the present tense, its characters may seem “more alive.” However, it is difficult to understand what this expression is supposed to mean with reference to the Shoah victims. In any case, it doesn’t change the fact that they are irreversibly killed. Memory turns here into a fetish around which a false consciousness of the dominant group crystalizes. CREATING POLISH “WITNESSES” AND “GUARDIANS OF MEMORY”: PERPETUUM MOBILE At first glance, it may seem that Po-lin takes into account traces of that which is different, Jewish. Nevertheless, it is the relationship connecting the Poles and traces left by the Jews that is important. Jolanta Dylewska defines it in one of the opening sequences about a “post-Jewish” house. It begins with close-ups of windows, doors, and walls. Then, the camera stops at doorknobs and locks. It enters the house, investigates a room with a painting on the wall. Although depth of focus causes the viewer to direct their attention to a door frame and a mezuzah affixed to it, one can guess that there is an oleograph with the Blessed Virgin Mary on the wall. The Polish owner’s voice can be heard off-screen: “In this house, the Jewish blessing remained. It was affixed to every door frame, yet only this one has survived. This is the token of this house and that has to be.” We can hear a ticking clock, which appears in extreme close-up in the frame. In the background, there is a painting of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa on

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a family altar—sharply visible now, emphasized with a change in depth of focus. The frame is in warm colors. The Black Madonna’s face is covered with blurred shapes of flowers—the essence of a “Polish house.” The voice of Piotr Fronczewski, which a moment before was reading from Jewish “memorial books,” announces solemnly, “These are the last of dozens of generations of Poles who have lived near the Polish Jews for several hundred years. They are the last witnesses who connect us with the life of Jewish people. The last.” On the screen, the intent faces of the Poles appear. Close-ups. Clocks are ticking. In just a moment, the “witnesses” will start talking about their memories. Dylewska plays with icons of identity. The trace of murdered Jewish owners and residents of the house—the mezuzah affixed to the door frame— coexists in harmony with an archetypal sign of “Polishness”: the family altar and the image of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa. The filming technique reinforces this alleged harmony. The transition is smooth, and the image is kept in an intimate and amiable mood, undisturbed. We are supposed to discover the essence of Polish attitude, manifested through preserving traces left by the deceased. The poetics used to describe such traces (“It was affixed to every door frame, yet only this one has survived”) remind us of opinions expressed by experts on prehistory (“Only fragments of Archaeopteryx skeletons have survived to our times”). Thus, the question as to what happened to the Jews and their property (movable and immovable) expires. Just like that, there was a cataclysm—which we have nothing to do with—and it claimed them. Therefore, it is a credit to the Poles that, of their own free will, they take care of terribly ransacked Jewish remnants. On the one hand, Dylewska does not mention that even in poor houses, mezuzot were usually silver; thus, they were “tasty morsels” for the Christians who plundered Jewish houses. On the other hand, we know people who are marginalized, if not ostracized by their own community because, for example, of their position as the guardians of the keys to a Jewish cemetery. Their stories are not soothing. The object of our analysis, however, is the construction of the film Po-lin. This care seems to be accepted and consecrated by the Jewish dead. The sentence, “In this house, the Jewish blessing remained” is ambiguous. On the one hand, it refers to a piece of parchment with verses from the Torah; but it can also be understood as the blessing given by the former owners—or Jews, as such—which still protects the house and its new residents. The latter interpretation is confirmed by the soundtrack. Piotr Fronczewski, who lends his voice to the Jewish community, states (to some extent, on its behalf) that we are confronted with the “guardians of memory” of the murdered Jews. “This

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is the token of this house and that has to be,” says the resident of the “postJewish” estate, establishing the status of all Poles who appear in the film as people who undertook to save the memory of Jewish neighbors and who are fully aware of their mission. The introduction of such categories as “guardian of memory” and “witness” suggests that there is a Polish-Jewish community, and that the Poles in the film were granted permission by the Jews themselves to guard their mementos, hence showing loyalty to the former neighbors. The Poles turn out to be legitimate inheritors of the Jewish heritage. Now, we can understand why that which is Polish and that which is Jewish coexist in complete harmony. Despite all differences, both communities are united by the same mission: the preservation of memory, which is subject to the passage of time. Clocks are ticking. The Blessed Virgin Mary’s gaze embraces the mezuzah with concern. The image of the Polish community and Polish-Jewish relations is constructed upon the concealment of basic facts and questions. We are looking at the “post-Jewish” house. However, we do not learn anything about the circumstances under which the house passed into the new owners’ hands. On the social scale, these circumstances are extremely important, even if Jolanta Dylewska’s interlocutors are thoroughly honest people. In the story about the Jewish world before the war, the Holocaust, and the attitude of the “Aryan side” toward the exterminated Jews—as well as the attitude of the Poles toward the Jews after the war—cannot be omitted. They cannot be omitted especially when the term “guardians of memory” is used to describe those people who live in “post-Jewish” houses. Dylewska circumvents this problem. The issue of Polish violence toward the Jews appears on the margins of the story and is not developed. First, Zionists are mentioned in the part related to social and self-help organizations established by the Jewish communities: “Since anti-Semitic feeling is increasing, Zionist scout organizations are preparing the youth for emigration to Palestine.” With the following sequence, the audience travels to Kolbuszowa. One of the residents assures, “The coexistence of Poles and Jews was perfectly normal before the war. Just look at the coat of arms of the town: it represents two clasped hands, Polish and Jewish, as well as the Star of David and the cross.” The issue of anti-Semitism arises again in the description of a market. Piotr Fronczewski declares, “From time to time, Polish nationalistic hit squads turn up unexpectedly, knocking over [stands] and beating [people].” Due to the music, a sullen mood is created. We can see present-day close-ups of bread, garlic, and carrots in the shadow. That is all. After a while, the lively, cheerful klezmer music returns and the story continues. Avoiding discussion about the Holocaust, Dylewska nevertheless raises this issue. In the contemporary language, the word “witness” constitutes one

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of the most basic terms to describe the experience of Jewish survivors. The original word proposed by Raul Hilberg for designating non-Jewish actors of the events was “bystanders.”28 However, in the Polish translation “bystander” was illegitimately rendered as “witness” (świadek), as if the position of Jews and Poles face to the Holocaust was identical.29 What is more, Dylewska uses the category of Polish “witness” with reference to the times before 1939. Polish reviewers of Dylewska’s film praised this appropriation: Avoiding pathos, one may state that the documentary Po-lin delights and attracts because it is an attempt to show the life, which used to exist. [. . .] On the other hand, the film is homage to the figure of witness [. . .]. Dylewska’s Polish witnesses are living examples of the past, the already mentioned “scraps of collective memory,” who, due to the director, return to their childhood through the archival footage in order to present their testimony.30

Dylewska is recalling the signs of the Shoah, which are objects left by the murdered. When in the “post-Jewish” house the mezuzah coexists with the icon from Jasna Góra, it means that during the war, nothing disturbing happened on the Polish-Jewish social border. In fact, the taking of Jewish property by the Poles—to use this euphemistic expression—was a massive, widespread phenomenon. It occurred in such a way that there is no room for the Poles to claim collective witness status. This makes it impossible to consider the Polish community the “guardian of memory” without additional explanations. A witness is a person who observes an incident, yet neither participates in it nor has any influence on what is happening. Applying this label to the Poles fails for three significant reasons. First, the life or death of the Jews, who were trying to save themselves, depended on the attitude of the “Aryan side,” on how much active support non-Jews would or would not lend to the Jews. Above all, however, the Jews expected passivity from the non-Jews, due to which it would have been possible for Jews to become invisible to the Germans in Polish surroundings. As Maria Nowakowska, a survivor, recounts: Those Jews who managed to get out from the ghetto as well as those who received the “Aryan” documents and had a place to live in should have survived. After that, they could lead a peaceful life, and should have done so, to the extent that Poles-not-Jews, Poles-Christians, were still alive [. . .] Why having seen a Jew, those Poles, who did not intend to denounce or blackmail him, could not keep this fact secret? [. . .] Everything you wanted from them was this silence; you wanted them to stop whispering to each other’s ear as well as to those who were favourably inclined towards Jews and would continue whispering; in the end, this whispering reached the Gestapo. [. . .] If they had been passive, almost

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all refugees from the ghetto would have survived. [. . .] After all, none of the Germans differentiated a Jew from a Pole-Slav.31

As a rule, passivity was not present. For the Jews in hiding, Polish villages and streets were deadly. Christians did not refrain from revealing them. Blackmail, theft, turning Jews in to Polish or German police stations as well as murder, or battues (acts of surrounding or cornering Jews) organized in the provinces—were common practices. Those who decided to give shelter to the Jews needed to hide them primarily from the neighbors—not foreign, occupying forces. The courage of the Righteous consisted, above all, in the opposition expressed to the norms established in their own Polish and Catholic community. The prevailing attitudes of the Polish majority contributed to the implementation of the “final solution.” A Jewish author who didn’t survive, Calel Perechodnik, wrote about a practical “tacit agreement” between the Germans as the “editor responsible” for the Holocaust and the Polish community, which made a contribution to it and profited from its consequences.32,33,34 This very community that did not allow the Jews to hide on the “Aryan side” and, at the same time, profited from their death can define itself neither as “witnesses” nor “guardians of memory.” Second, the attitude toward the Jews presented during the war did not emerge from a vacuum. It reflected the Polish cultural code, which had developed earlier. The extermination of Jews, understood as a possibility, was included in the structure of both pre-modern35 and modern anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was legitimized by the moral sanction established by the majority’s religion. Formulated in Poland before the war, the phantasms of liquidation had prepared social imagination for that which would happen in the 1940s.36 Even children had been aware of them. Criticizing the idea of the triad “perpetrators—victims—bystanders,” Elżbieta Janicka described thorough initiation into and involvement of these alleged “bystanders” of the Holocaust in the “Jewish question”—die Judenfrage—produced by and emblematic of anti-Semitic attitude and consciousness:37 With reference to this situation, the third link of Hilberg’s triad does not function. [. . .] I would suggest the term “initiated active participating observation” since “active participating observation” is not enough. It would take place in thought, word and deed as well as through negligence. In this category, I think, there is room for plurality and nuances of signs. And maybe, it also helps to understand that it was about the overwhelming majority—a majority who was decisive and who did decide that “the whole of Poland was the ghetto.”38

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These last words refer to Jan Karski’s comment, It was not that difficult to go out [from the ghetto—E. J., T. Ż.] and come back. It was difficult for the Jews for other reasons. [. . .] Let’s say that a Jew fled from the ghetto and then what? [. . .] The whole of Warsaw was the ghetto. The whole of Poland was the ghetto.39

The third reason that the “witness” label cannot accurately be applied to the Poles is that violence perpetrated by Poles against the Jews was a reason for which the latter emigrated from Poland on a mass scale after the war, after 1946 then 1956. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir uses the category of ethnic cleansing to refer to this phenomenon.40 In 1968, in the name of the State and the law, it also provoked the expulsion of between 10,000 and 20,000 citizens, for which it was enough to qualify them as Jews. Po-lin completely disregards the fact that it was not the Holocaust itself but its continuation, by the Poles, that put an end to the Jewish presence in Poland. A series of postwar pogroms, the Polish underground killing of Jews on trains after the liberation, and the not-so-unusual murders of people trying to return to their houses and elucidate the faith of their close relatives all stemmed from the fact that Jews were fundamentally unwelcome in Poland. The Holocaust was generally accepted,41 just as its material consequences were accepted. Having taken over Jewish properties, the Poles did not wish to return them—just as they did not wish for their true owners, the Poles’ Jewish neighbors, to return. Concealment is another factor due to which Po-lin is not a story about the Polish Jews, but a self-representation of the dominant group, presented as though staring nostalgically at the traces left by their former neighbors. In consequence, one can observe here a perpetuum mobile: Melancholic poetics produces innocent “witnesses” and “inheritors,” whereas innocent “witnesses” and “inheritors” produce melancholic poetics. Endlessly, we are moving in a vicious circle of images of ourselves, having no need of confronting the reality. PROCESSING THE HOLOCAUST Beyond History (Myth Making) Jolanta Dylewska consistently fails to notice the Shoah. The film starts with an explanation: “Running away from Germany, from pogroms and the plague, the Jews came to Poland. They met with hospitality and a kind reception. They said PO-LIN in Hebrew, we will rest here, and this way gave

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Poland its Jewish name. That is what a 13th-century legend says.” When the inter-title changes, we read, “There were 3,500,000 Jews living in Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War, which constituted ten percent of the residents of the Republic of Poland.” The story behind the “sudden disappearance” of the Jews, as a reviewer of the film said in Rzeczpospolita newspaper,42 is presented from a particular perspective. It is the thirteenth century, and the Jews are fleeing from Europe when they find hospitality in Poland. We recognize the image and ourselves in that image. It is the well-known and popular figure of Paradisus Iudaeorum: Jewish paradise. In the majority self-representation, the figure of Paradisus Iudaeorum serves important functions. Psychologist and psychotherapist Łukasz Biedka interpreted it in the following way: The Poles wish to see their country as an oasis of tolerance over the centuries, a country without stakes. (The fact that it was a country with much fewer stakes is not enough: it has to be “without stakes,” as we were taught at school.) Because of its name combined with the anti-Semitic content on the foundation Paradisus Iudeaeorum website, we receive a clear message: Poland was a haven for the ungrateful Jews, and the Poles served as angels in it.43

In Dylewska’s film, nothing disrupts this belief because we do not learn anything about the 700 years of the Jews’ life in Poland. The use of the paternalistic discursive figure of hospitality, otherwise completely ahistorical, could suggest something is wrong here; but, in the Polish majority discourse, it goes hand in hand with the topos of Paradisus Iudaeorum and, as such, is not considered suspicious. As a matter of fact, the formula of “hospitality” is an element of a nationalistic and exclusionary, xenophobic discourse whereby the state is to be considered the property of the dominant ethnic group.44 After the Jedwabne debate the word “hospitality” is used with reference to Polish-Jewish relations by otherwise reserved historians in an ironic function. For instance: “Much worse, [. . .] [the] list of ‘helpful Poles’ includes even one Michał Kozik who [. . .] was said to have saved ten Jews. In fact, Kozik sheltered three Jews, whom he killed with an axe, in the late fall of 1944, when they ran out of money to pay for their shelter [in the Polish original: for his hospitality].”45 The film’s narration, however, convinces the audience that the image emerging from the archival documentary photographs and the recollections of the “witnesses” reflects a centuries-old harmonious coexistence between guests and hosts. It is Europe, the violence of which has manifested itself in the form of Germany from the beginning, that destroys the idyll.

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Far Away from Here (Extra-Territorialization) The inter-titles that familiarize the viewers with the Polish-Jewish history contain hidden constitutive assumptions on which Dylewska’s story is based. Violence against the Jews in Poland is of an external character. Poland and the Poles have nothing to do with it; and, in this sense, they stand apart from Europe. They are an exception to the anti-Semitic norm incarnated by Germany, which has been hostile to the Jews since the times of the Crusades. Therefore, one could conclude that what happened after 1939 was an instance of interference in the world of neighborly coexistence—an instance of alien violence that did not match the local reality. There is even more. The text read by Piotr Fronczewski contains a legend about Rabbi Elimelech, which reads as follows: In the 1760s, a young Elimelech and his brother Zushya were traveling from town to town as beggars in order to learn humility according to the then Hasidic custom. They came to a small town. Although they were hungry, they could not eat. Although they were exhausted, they could not sleep. They were overcome by a feeling of unspeakable fear and the deepest sadness. They left the town in the middle of the night and never returned. The name of the town was [dramatic pause] Auschwitz.

The Jews were deported from all of the shtetls that we see in Po-lin; a considerable number of them were killed on the spot. At the same time, the Polish environment performed terrible acts; we know about them from testimonies of the survivors and recollections of some Poles. However, Jolanta Dylewska reduces the Holocaust to one symbol: Auschwitz. This leads to territorial restriction of the extermination. That holy men did not feel fear in other places and could eat and sleep in them implies that nothing disturbing was to happen in these other towns. The monstrosity is restricted to a strictly German place—one that is both culturally separated from its Polish surroundings by a German-sounding name and geographically separated from the places that are mentioned in the film. The odium by no means concerns the Poles; in a story constructed in such a way, the role of “witnesses” is reserved for them, being someone who is physically and symbolically separated from the crime. The viewers, and today’s inhabitants of the “post-Jewish” towns, can rest easy. Fate and “Sudden Disappearance” (Predestination) The story about Elimelech and Zushya is a part of a larger whole. Dylewska inscribes her tale into the rhythm of nature (the day, week, and season) and into the natural cycle of human life. The narration about shtetls, after

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the introductory recollections of the Poles about their Jewish friends and neighbors, starts with the beginning of the day. The towns come to life. We observe their everyday existence in several ways. The end of the week and the Sabbath are coming. Everyone stops working. The rhythm of the year means the rhythm of holidays: Hanukkah, Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. The story ends with the topics of dusk, winter, death, cemeteries, and eternal life. However, the signs of the Holocaust have already appeared. They appear for the first time in the story about Moishe Fuksman. An “ardent follower of the zaddick from Lubavitch,” he was “surrounded by an aura of sanctity.” “Both the Jews and members of the Orthodox and the Catholic Church” were coming to him for a blessing. The story ends with the following sentence: “Only ten years and ten months more.” We can hear gusty wind in the background. The motif returns three times afterward; memento mori will be repeated in the very same form when the film mentions misfits. Finally, the ending of the part devoted to holidays includes material from the 1930s, presenting children walking in single file. The narrator talks about their future. He mentions their names and ends with the following words: “They have ten years more ahead of them.” The thrice-repeated announcement of the catastrophe suggests a decree of fate looming over the people in the archival photographs. The sound of the wind, as if taken from the Gothic poetics of eeriness and fear, makes the viewers involuntarily feel cold. Simultaneously, it places the Holocaust within the range of meanings connected with nature: with natural disasters, such as a whirlwind; or with winter, as the time of death. The Shoah is put on a par with events whose causes lie beyond the human world, in the sphere ruled by forces neither individuals nor whole societies can influence. In Divine Order (Trivialization) Dylewska adds one more context: the religious—or to be precise, the Hasidic—one. The parable of Elimelech was placed inside a story about great zaddicks and cemeteries. The world of Hasidim is the world of communion with God and the dead. Saint zaddicks are intermediaries: they are halfway between God and people. Death only increases their power, as it brings them closer to heaven; but, at the same time, it does not take them too far away from humans. We see ohelim built over their graves and scraps of paper with requests and intentions (kvitlech) left there. The narrator assures us that “no one left a zaddick unheard.” Death, including the Holocaust, becomes a part of the divine order, allowing it to diverge even further from definite social facts. Those two ranges of meanings overlap in the story about Rabbi Elimelech. We hear the wailing of

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the wind, see stumps of grubbed-out bushes in the neglected Jewish cemetery, and the camera focuses on the ash left after a burned-out bonfire. Elimelech and Zushya sense the Shoah in a metaphysical way, as an excess of the supernatural evil written in God’s plans. The next sequence is devoted to cemeteries. The Jewish understanding of death is supposed to be summarized in the following words: “On hearing about someone’s death, they pronounce a special blessing ‘Blessed be the just judge!’ When they talk about the dead, they say, ‘they rest in the world of truth.’ They call the cemetery ‘the house of life,’ ‘a good place,’ and consider it a sacred place. Apart from people, they bury old, torn books and leaves from holy writ there.” The narrator refers to Ester Chaja, who talked to the dead. We can see contemporary pictures of Jewish cemeteries maintained in a sophisticated and picturesque style. The wind is wailing. The cemeteries at which we look refer to two orders. First, they talk about the natural death of those who died before the Holocaust. Second, they are signs of the extermination and traces of the community that is gone. In Dylewska’s film, this difference is blurred. If the legend about Elimelech places genocide in the supernatural order, the religious understanding of death is extended to the Shoah as well; but, in the context of gas chambers, it is impossible to accept the quoted words, “Blessed be the just judge!” It is likewise impossible to adopt a perspective that treats death as a gate leading to a new, better life; or that it is just a stage in the sequence of generations. This is made all the less bearable by the persistence of a Polish voice in control of the narration. Out of Context (Universalization) The religious and supernatural context allows definitive abstraction of the Holocaust from social facts. The image of the melancholically beautiful and picturesquely abandoned cemeteries moves the Shoah into the sphere of universal transiency. It is summarized by one of the Polish “witnesses,” as follows: “It looks as if one has taken a nap, woken up, and there is nothing left. Those years, it seems that it was a year ago, and it is already . . . everything passes away terribly and forever. [The camera films a toil-worn, restless hand.] Everything forever gone.” It is difficult to argue with that; but the Polish Jews in Poland “passed away” differently from “everything.” The difference between the dominant group, even if only considered as witnesses, and the exterminated is so dramatic that it is impossible to reduce Jewish deaths to the common denominator of universal transiency. This difference must be ignored if the Polish community wishes to avoid questions about its own behavior. The threat of searching for the truth about what happened on the boundary of the ghetto and the “Aryan side,” and about what

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it means for “us” today, is averted. Instead, Po-lin offers an ostensible, false confrontation. The way in which the universalization mechanism works can be explained with the history of Rachela Szemesz. One of the Polish women says, “During the occupation, I was working in the post office . . . in Kolbuszowa. I remember that I was going to work one day and saw a . . . a handicapped Jewish woman led by Twardoń, that is the then Kolbuszowa County governor. [. . .] And I just felt he was taking her to die.” A canonical scene from the ritual of catching the Jews and leading them to execution—in broad daylight, and on public display. The woman from Kolbuszowa describes precisely what historians term ritual, scheme, scenario, or routine of murders and executions.46 Dylewska’s interlocutor is very moved. We can see that she touches upon her most painful memories; but she is not allowed to end her story. The director consistently avoids the topic of Polish anti-Semitic violence as a phenomenon or even social ritual surrounded with numerous instances of rationalization and justification. The excerpt about Twardoń is by no means connected to a censored mention of the pre-war anti-Semitism. Dylewska does not ask whether there is any relationship between Polish-Jewish relations in the times about which she talks and the later death of Rachela Szemesz. Instead, she shows us the Kolbuszowa coat of arms. Then we move to films from the 1930s. The ghostly voice of Piotr Fronczewski asks, “Will it be Rachela Szemesz? Rachela Sun?” The scene ends with one of the three memento mori mentioned in Po-lin: “She is still standing here.” A close-up of part of the archival photograph is accompanied by the sound of the wind. Dylewska does not ask who Twardoń was. The Polish-sounding name of the executioner does not make her suspicious, and it is not explored in the film’s narration. The theme that would have destroyed the harmonious tale is immediately lost because the event was shown in the context of fate—not that of human agency. “WE DREAM ABOUT THEM SMILING”: FRIENDSHIP UNTIL DEATH, FRIENDSHIP AFTER DEATH In the part about death, Dylewska again places the Polish “witnesses” in direct proximity to the victims. On the one hand, she confirms their role of the “guardians of memory,” while on the other, she introduces them as those who are watched over by dead Jews. The description of Yom Kippur ends with an image of a rabbi who blesses men and women. The narrator says: “And remembering that the Book of Life and the Book of Death have just been opened in heaven, they repent their sins and ask God Most High to forgive

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them their weaknesses and failings and write their names down in the Book for a good, new year.” Archival photographs disappear; the camera fixes on a window. The windowpane reflects the trees. Cut. There are people glancing at us from the archival tapes as if they were looking at the window that we saw a moment ago, waiting for something. A matzevah with the motif of an open book appears together with the last phrase about the Book of Life. The camera focuses on it, and we can see cracks on the stone and a finger of the hand that holds the book. In the next take, one sees a Polish woman who recalls her Jewish friend and then next “witnesses” in a similar role. One of them talks about a friend he dreamed about. In his dream, “he was smiling, content.” “So, I say, perhaps he’s smiling,” he ends. With the faces of the “witnesses” and archival photographs arranged alternately, the audience has the impression that they are vivid images from the speakers’ retrospection. A Polish woman talks about a poor Jewish girl. We see a poor Jewish girl—most probably a different one—waving to the viewers from an archival film. Just like one of the friends mentioned by the “witnesses,” a talented violinist. It appears that the Polish “witnesses” constitute the Book of Life for which the Jews were praying on Yom Kippur. According to the “witnesses” in Po-lin, they dream of victims of the Shoah surrounded by an optimistic atmosphere. Jolanta Dylewska emphasizes this message even more with the construction of the film. Dreams about the murdered are rarely pleasant. This way, the Poles enjoy a considerable privilege. First, because Polish and Jewish neighbors were on such friendly terms that the “sudden disappearance” of the Jews did not change anything. Since the “witnesses” were their friends—and still maintain their friendship as the “guardians of memory”—the dead express their gratitude to them. Second, death is no longer such a horrible event in the religious image of the world, immersed in the story about Hasidim and presented as the Jewish point of view. If the dead now live “in the world of truth,” and if the Jews call the cemetery “the house of life” and “a good place,” the Holocaust can be rationalized and accepted. Hence, the assumption that the murdered friend is “perhaps smiling” on the other side. The view is expressed outright by another “witness,” who states: “I know that those souls know about us, see us and remember us. And that they still live, in a better world.” The “better world” absolves this world. Faced with eternity, everything that happened here—in the victims’ lifetime, just before their death, and after their death—is pushed into the background. The statement about the “better world” summarizes the part about Hasidic saints, who now take the Polish community under their care. In the perspective adopted in Po-lin, within the boundaries of narration created by the dominant group, the dead Jews give their Polish neighbors the best reference. This

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is why contemporary photographs of Jewish cemeteries may, or even must, be so sophisticated and beautiful, impeccably arranged and filled with warm light. It is the image of the dominant group—not the Jewish tragedy—that is their main topic. In Po-lin, one sees a disturbing image of a zaddick’s ohel standing on something like a parking lot and maneuvering area. A trained eye will notice that it has taken the place of a Jewish cemetery or actually that the cemetery is still there (because the dead remain where they have always been), only without its external signs. A non-forewarned—or skillfully anaesthetized— eye will not understand or even record the view. We use the medical category of anaesthetization not without reason. In his work about the buildings of old synagogues transformed into factories, warehouses, or pubs, Wojciech Wilczyk pointed out that the category of the innocent eye is a misunderstanding in the case of Polish society and culture.47 Jan Bułhak recommended taking photographs of roadside crosses: “This is how our native photography will teach us how to begin with material, artistically perceptible things and gradually reach further to find the soul of the earth and the soul of man.”48 Polish native photography (polska fotografia ojczysta) was the exact copy of the German Heimatphotographie advocated by Paul Schultze-Naumburg and embraced by the Nazis as part and parcel of the state aesthetic propaganda. In Jolanta Dylewska’s work, emphasis is placed on matzevot blended into trees, which are strikingly similar to crosses blended into trees in Krzysztof Hejke’s photo album Polesie (Polesia).49 Poles receive an image of the Polish land taking in the Jewish dead, which is an image of their own selves presented in a way in which they would like to see themselves. This imagining also allows the Polish audience to disregard the social phenomenon of postwar devastation of Jewish cemeteries, accompanied by the ingenious utilization of stolen matzevot. 50

JEWS AS THE MYTHICAL “JEW” Relocation to Reservations (Separation and Folklorization) Who are the Jews of whom the Poles have such fond memories? In Po-lin, constructing the image of the Jews begins with music. Composer Michał Lorenc employs motifs that are culturally recognizable as signs of traditional “Jewishness”: the klezmer fiddle and dulcimer, for instance. Music in Po-lin is illustrative and emotional. It suggests moods to the audience and makes affirmative reception easier than a critical one. The soundtrack places images in the sphere of folklore, treating them as icons of identity. “Jewishness” is thus closed in a field of cultural otherness that is reserved especially for it.

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Familiarization with Jews includes marking a separate place and forming a boundary between that which is Polish and that which is Jewish. Acceptance of otherness goes hand in hand with separation. Tightly bound with religion, folklore is perceived as the basis of Jewish understanding of the world, social rules, and, most of all, identity. The Jewish community is thus left outside history, adopting an invariable essence. Its life circles around religion and traditional jobs. This directs our attention to the inside of the ethnic and religious community. The world of trade, craft, and services does not actually cross the boundaries of the minority subculture found in shtetls. The Jews create a separate universe, which has little in common with the rest of society and the changes it undergoes. The above happens at the cost of an escape from historical and sociological facts. The image of the Jewish community is uniform and stereotypical. We fail to recognize the complexity and diversity of the pre-modern Jewish world. We lose sight of most phenomena connected with modernization, including the functioning of the Jews within a modern society. As members of a homogeneous and separate community, the Jews do not present any demands to the Polish majority, since they do not try to enter the public sphere—where one could not avoid questions about equal rights. The conviction that the majority has a tolerant attitude can remain intact because there is no mention of injustice against minorities inside the sphere considered by the majority to be its own. The end of the nineteenth century brings with it the birth of Jewish political parties and new emancipation movements. The old world and its social beliefs are shaken by the Revolution of 1905 and the October Revolution. The 1918 creation of nation-states in Eastern Europe accompanied by pogroms in Poland, the 1920 recognition of the anti-Semitic Yid-Communism myth by the Polish state (see official propaganda and internment camp for Jewish volunteers during the Polish-Bolshevik war), the 1922 Warsaw pogrom and assassination of the first Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz as a “Jewish president,” the 1924 reforms, the 1926 coup d’état, and the 1935 death of military leader Józef Piłsudski are among important turning points that concern the Jews and other national minorities of the Polish Republic much more than they do the dominant group. The 1930s bring the end of shtetls in their traditional form. The modern market and the State create a sphere in which business entities and citizens are at least formally equal. As a result, people develop aspirations that reach beyond the boundaries of traditional communities. This is where the issues Dylewska does not wish to discuss are situated. In the 1920s and 1930s, anti-Semitic acts of violence were common and increasingly intense. The Polish state pushed the Jews to the position of at best second-class citizens. It used increasingly overt methods to remove

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them from politics, economy, and culture. The appearance of the Jews in any sphere of public life was commonly considered “overrepresentation” by the non-Jews. Anti-Semitic aggression stemming therefrom was indicative of the struggle over the shape of the society, its consciousness, and its identity. An increasing number of Jews did not see any reason not to participate in the common sphere on equal terms, and strived to do so as lawyers, physicians, political activists, party members, workers, scientists, public intellectuals, performers, athletes, and more. Dylewska decides not to notice the sphere in which the Poles and the Jews meet—and in which Polish culture reveals its attitude to Jewish citizens of Poland. The director creates an image that sanctions boundaries marked for minorities by the dominant group. The Jews remain colorful residents of an “exotic world” and do not try to be present in places reserved for the Poles by the Poles. This happens despite archival materials, in which modernity can be clearly seen. It is proved by the authors of the footage—that is, emigrants themselves. Those people were leaving in search of upward mobility, which was impossible in Poland due to anti-Semitism.51 The perspective of the oppressor, unproblematized in Po-lin, may be illustrated with an external statement by an excluded who adopted the point of view of the majority (in his case, the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia) and discovered a different world after he had been forced to leave Poland: “I had contact with many professors at American universities and, much to my surprise, found out that many of them were Jews and either they themselves or their parents were born in Pińsk, Białystok, Rymanów, Włocławek or other similar Polish town or city. It shows how great, completely unrealized intellectual potential was hidden in provincial masses of the Polish Jews.”52 The reactions of the residents of shtetls also tell us about their aspirations: they are happy about the incomers’ prosperity, look at their fashionable clothing with surprise and consideration at the same time and imitate their lifestyle themselves. One notices a difference between the generation of grandparents (traditional clothes, bearded men, women in wigs) and their children and grandchildren, who clearly aspire to the new cultural patterns and, as a result, to equality promised by modernity. “Nice” Reverse of Anti-Semitic Cliché Polish collective memory, recorded and reproduced in Po-lin, goes beyond sectioning off a special area for the Jews in both the Poles’ imagination and in physical settings; it also constructs a special description of “the Jew.” The image of the minority is, first and foremost, a result of beliefs and practices of the dominant group. The consciousness of the majority uses that image in such a way that it does not disturb its high opinion of itself but, if need be,

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does justify violence. The image concerns negative stereotypes that appear very seldom in the film; but it also concerns beliefs about awe-inspiring features treated by Dylewska as symptoms of kind remembrance. Dylewska’s interlocutors appreciate the Jews’ piety and solidarity, as well as their complete forbearance under the various kinds of discrimination they face from the Poles. “Here, in the land of Po-lin, lie those who departed from this world in grace. Admors,53 teachers and masters, who supported our world, saintly and pure, learned and pious, princes of the Torah. Many followed and follow them.” Po-lin is rich in similar descriptions. We see people leaving a synagogue, boys and elderly men in traditional clothes, with beards and side locks. The standardized image of the “Jew” is complemented by a series of explanations of Jewish religiousness, especially the Hasidic version. The Jewish community compels admiration, but it is a peculiar type of admiration. Dylewska’s interlocutors appreciate in the Jews those features they find lacking in the Polish community. The Jews respect their religion more than the Poles do; they respect it to the extent that the Poles should respect their religion. This view is supported by the conviction that each group should care about its cohesion. Such an image of the “Jew” confirms Polish society’s belief that there is a fundamental difference between their world and the Jewish world, and a subsequent necessity to consolidate a Polish-Catholic community in opposition to strangers. Piety, understood as a guarantee of tight group boundaries, acts as a distinctive feature. Jewish piety is, at the same time, of an ambivalent character. Apart from being “positively” valued, it remains a component of the anti-Semitic caricature and a potential source of the phantasmal Jews’ ominous power. The conviction about Jewish solidarity is based on similar reasoning. That topic was developed by one of Dylewska’s interlocutors, who clearly referred to collective myths about the Jews. He says: There was one, you know, who used to go to the station, to the train, to pick up guests. They called him Męczyje [Tormenter]. Męczyje because he was overworking horses to death. So, they, you know, gathered in the synagogue and bought him a horse [smacks] super! And he’d ride it for a month and end up overworking it again because he wasn’t feeding it. You think they condemned him?! They bought him another one! So, he overworked that one, too! Would we do something like that here? Never! That’s what it’s like here! There was solidarity between them!

We see archival footage of good-looking, bearded Jews, perhaps local elders. We can guess that the people on the screen coordinate the community solidarity among the Jews.

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The cliché that we see in Po-lin—illustrated with an absurd, overdrawn example—is an anti-Semitic cliché: they support one another and are loyal to one another, to the limits of common sense—and beyond. Their intra-group solidarity is a guarantee of prosperity and—implicitly—the foundation for the alleged strength of the Jews in their relations with the outer world. According to such reasoning, Jewish solidarity becomes an argument for such solidarity among the Poles. Lack of Polish solidarity, about which Dylewska’s interlocutor complains, is dangerous because it contributes to the Poles’ supposed defeats by the Jews. The last part of that reasoning, which is at the same time a complement to the anti-Semitic cliché, does not appear in the film; but it remains obvious for every competent user of the Polish language. The phantasm of Jewish solidarity serves as justification for alliances established by the majority against the Jews. What appears as the strangest element of that reasoning is that Dylewska adds no critical commentary to this implication whatsoever. Furthermore, she ingenuously confirms it with an image of portly, seemingly prosperous men. Moved from the sphere of fiction to the world seen with our own eyes, the phantasm is made objective: The viewer can now see that what the Polish “witness” says was true. In Po-lin, the Jews, presented in an alarmingly anachronistic form, were sent to a museum; but the museum does not store memory of their actual life. Instead, it guards the majority’s opinions about the Jews’ power and threats that power could pose. The “positive” image of the “Jew,” produced by the dominant group and presented by Dylewska as pleasant memory of the murdered ones, constitutes a part of the anti-Semitic cliché. Admiration does not mean affirmation of otherness here, but a de facto justification for violence and exclusion of the Jews as strangers—if not enemies—from the sphere reserved for the Poles. Folklore, gabardines, beards, and side locks place the “Jew” in a reservation: They separate the Jewish figure from the present time and from real life. They move it to the sphere of legend, where the essence of the stranger is revealed: The Jewish figure may be admirable, but it is also dangerous to the majority. Sacralization of Exclusion Due to the sanctity attributed to the Jews, their image created by the majority is unchangeable. The commentary in Po-lin often adopts a biblical tone; one hears about “God-fearing, learned, and righteous men,” “gentle and humble women, dedicated to their families with all their hearts,” and “humble, devout and brave women.” Dylewska complements the patriarchal set of imaginings about Jewish women with a scene of laughing young girls. We hear them giggle while birds twitter. Apart from honorable matrons, we also have sexual

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objects: charming “Shulamites.” Both elements ideally match each other because they are in fact two faces of the same stereotype. Any attempt at analysis or criticism proves futile against the myth of sanctity and the sacrum, the dignity of patriarchs, and the film’s respect for the eternal, patriarchal order. It also makes it all the less possible to analyze or criticize the Polish collective memory, which transmits this exalted picture to posterity. Sanctifying the image of the Jews, however, means sanctifying everything behind that image. It seals the majority’s convictions and the division of roles and spheres and cannot be separated from the sacralization of the dominant group’s practices. Thus, the dominant group reinforces its power over the minority. Separation of the Polish and Jewish communities is accompanied by sham meetings. The function of such a meeting is perfectly performed by culinary philo-Semitism. For instance, Dylewska’s interlocutors talk among themselves at length about the taste and preparation of Jewish food. As a compliment, they emphasize that they have never managed to make Jewish specialties taste as good as food prepared by their erstwhile Jewish neighbors. Their fondness for cholent or kugel and suggestions about sitting at the same table are supposed to serve as proof of friendship. Judging from other elements of the narrative, this friendship, however, did not exist. For knowledge of cuisine does not mean knowledge and memory that would leave a place for the Jewish voice in the majority discourse. Instead, the belief in an essential difference of the Jews is brought to the fore. “GOOD JEW” AND HIS APPLICATIONS “The Jew” Will Forgive You Everything The Jews in Polish recollections prove to be extremely polite, attentive, and kind toward the Poles. The following account, given by a cultured woman from Słonim, exemplifies this attitude: It was nineteen thirty-six, thirty-seven, the Poles started organizing themselves, thinking they must “de-Jew” trade in those borderland towns a little bit. And a huge commotion really broke out in Słonim. The Jews were very worried about that. The Kosmowskis came with capital, decent goods and opened a huge craft shop. I know that my parents used to buy things in a kind of semi-wholesale shop run by Mr. Meszel. We would get some kind of discounts there. Mom wanted to support Polish trade. So, with real sorrow and some kind of embarrassment, mum went there and said, “Mrs. Meszel, I have to go over to the other one.” So, the latter started crying bitter tears, but said she understood.

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This account clearly depicts an act of anti-Semitic violence. The “Don’t buy from the Jews!” campaign started by the Poles was a form of exclusion of a group of fellow citizens only because they were Jews. The aim of the economic boycott was to deprive the Jews of livelihood and, as a result, destroy the economic foundation of their existence. It is impossible to live without income in any capitalist society. What results are poverty, hunger, or emigration (which requires both physical strength and financial resources). In Po-lin, the event is retold with the use of such a language that the brutality of the situation is lost. The categories on which the anti-Semitic outlook is based are socially obvious: The Poles are the Poles, and the Jews are the Jews—with an obligation of group solidarity. The Jews are a problem; they are “the Jewish question,” which cannot be tolerated. What dictates the rules of conduct for the Poles in this case is force majeure in the form of a categorical imperative: If trade remains in “Jewish hands,” then one “had to” “de-Jew” towns. The anti-Semitic motif of small-town trade being “controlled” by the Jews appears several times in Po-lin with no critical comment. The Poles supposedly had no choice. This time, the cultured anti-Semite finds aid in the Polish language, with its derivational potential and a vast store of diminutives. They “had to” “de-Jew”—“A little bit.” We do not learn how much, so we might conclude that “a little bit” does not refer to the extent to which the economic boycott would actually be limited. This phrase serves as a euphemism. In reality, anti-Semitic violence was elemental and unrestrained. “And a huge commotion really broke out in Słonim,” says the cultured lady. A “huge commotion” to “de-Jew a little bit?” The Jews are “worried” about the situation (another euphemism), but they are not “a little bit” worried; they are “very” worried. Perhaps they should have been only “a little bit” worried, proportionally to the scale of the “de-Jewing” process planned by the Poles. Combining the terrifying “de-Jewing” with the relativizing, diminishing, belittling, and infantilizing “a little bit” sends a message that lets the aggressor feel comfortable while the victim of violence is seized by fear. Similar “reservedness” could be heard after the Holocaust, in chief of state Władysław Gomułka’s speech in June 1967, which started an anti-Semitic hate campaign and purge of the country. Gomułka was clearly saying that not all Jews have cause for concern. It was obvious to both the minority and the majority that he meant all Jews. But from the point of view of the Poles’ self-assessment, Gomułka’s wording sounded better than speaking about the matter openly. Force majeure remains force majeure. “De-Jewing” has nothing in common with anti-Semitism, of course. It is about patriotism, which is self-evident, and about measurable product quality. Polish commerce is unrivalled. The shop run by the Kosmowskis is huge, has capital and “decent goods,” which makes it different from the “semi-wholesale shop”

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described with a note of contempt whose owner was giving “some kind of discounts.” Economic boycott, as suggested by the anti-Semitic stereotype, thus means the end of the proverbial “Jewish junk” (tandeta). As far as images are concerned, we move from wretched streets in archival footage to an elegant trade street. A group of workers puts telephone cables on poles in the foreground. We can see shop windows: H. Brański offers goods sold in ells, and Wł. Szejkierc (a Pole, judging from his first name) trades in wine and vodka. There is no language in the world of Polish memory that allows for talk of the Jews’ persecution outside of the anti-Semitic stereotype. A Polish account from Kałuszyn: The Jews claimed that they could easily elect a mayor of their nationality, but my father later explained to me that the supreme authorities would not approve of a mayor of the Jewish faith anyway. From my parents I learned about a custom that prevailed probably not only in Kałuszyn (and that looks quite peculiar today). According to the custom, a newlywed policeman presented his wife to all Jewish traders. Since from then on, she could take whatever she needed from them for free but only for her own use. For the traders, it was a better deal than paying fines for dirt in their shops and especially for repeated trading on Sundays (customers were then let in through the back entrance).54

What is worth attention in the above-quoted fragment is the rationalization and underestimation of anti-Semitic violence. The ban on trading on Sundays was in fact one of the anti-Semitic discriminatory laws adopted in Poland in the 1930s. A lot could be said about sociocultural construction of “dirt” and “junk.”55 Of course, the proverbial “Jewish dirt” and “Jewish junk” didn’t stop policemen’s wives from feeding and supporting their families with products taken from Jewish shops. In the account given by the lady from Słonim, the problem does not consist of violence but of the honest and polite treatment of Jewish neighbors. Exposing oneself to discomfort is the price of being honest and polite on the matter: “Real sorrow and some kind of embarrassment” show high moral sensitivity and emotional gentleness because, after all, one could equally well do without all of that courtesy toward Mrs. Meszel when faced with the objective necessity for an economic boycott. Thus, the lady from Słonim’s mother is more than agreeable. The moral is clear: The Poles can be sorry about the Jews’ suffering, but they have no other choice than to inflict the pain they inflict on them. To paraphrase the words of wisdom by Roman Dmowski: They are Poles, so they have Polish duties.

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In Po-lin, the motifs of the Polish “Don’t buy from the Jews!” campaign are clear to both sides and require no commentary. As a “rule of coexistence,” they are respected by the minority, too. The Polish woman must; the Jewish woman understands and shows mental support to the Pole in that difficult situation. The Pole feels “real sorrow.” The Jew weeps. As one can see, it was not only the Poles who suffered. It is beyond all doubt for Jolanta Dylewska that, being the victims of discrimination, the minority understood, respected, and approved of rules established by the dominant majority, as there was no alternative. The director illustrated the story told by the lady from Słonim with an archival photograph of an elderly Jewish woman who stands on the threshold and looks at the camera sympathetically. She smiles warmly. Her white blouse radiates with light. Recalled in the Polish memory, the “good Jew” agrees with the Poles’ anti-Semitism and holds no grudge against them for it. So many Polish phantasms. In fact, the Jews—as the victims of injustice and violence—knew that they were more and more openly and commonly denied the right to live in Poland. They were well aware of their defenselessness. They knew that, regardless of the cost, they must cultivate good relations with the members of the majority because, in case of an escalation of violence, a lot could depend on that—including life and death. So, they resorted to mimicry so as not to annoy their persecutors and, if possible, one day be accepted by them. “When Poor, Ask a Jew” Traces of similar mimicry and attentiveness can be found in other Polish accounts. The sequence that ends with the story from Słonim introduces the topic of the Jews in trade. One of the Polish “witnesses” says, “They called Poles ‘goyim.’ [. . .] But what does ‘goy’ mean? It insults the Poles!” In reality, goy is a Hebrew word designating a person who is not Jewish, but the tone of voice and the behavior of the “witness” prove his ferocity and satisfaction: He has just told the truth about the Jews to people who want to whitewash them. His companion alleviates the situation: “But you could go there, buy on credit, they waited and, well, they always helped you.” The stories about Jewish kindness are supposed to be a response to the accusation of “insulting the Poles.” The aggression that can be clearly heard in the “witness’s” words about the allegedly offensive “goy” is ignored. Dylewska treats it as a description of reality and wants to answer it with a counterexample. For that, she chooses the following story, told by a man from Kurów:

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When my father was building a barn and ran out of metal sheeting for ten square meters of the roof, he went to the Społem cooperative. But the cooperative didn’t want to give him the money. So, he went to a Jew and said, “Moshek or Yosek, I need ten square meters of sheeting but have no money now. Won’t you help me?” “Mr. Wójcicki, I’ll always help you. You are a responsible man. I know you; we know you, please, take it. When you finish and when you have the money, you will give it back.” Ha!

We reach the same misunderstanding again. What the majority takes as proof of friendship and good neighborly relations is here a sign of deep, ever-present violence against the minority. The very lack of symmetry in courtesy can itself provoke anxiety. The Jew treats the Pole with respect and “Mister’s” him, while the Pole calls the Jew by his first name, in the diminutive form. Moreover, as everybody knows, trade is not the domain of sentiments. If the Społem cooperative did not want to give Mr. Wójcicki credit, it apparently had its reasons. One might suppose that, in such a small town as Kurów, the staff of the cooperative knew its customers as well as the nice “Moshek or Yosek.” A suspicion is aroused that, from the economic point of view, the Jewish trader acted recklessly; but Dylewska’s narration hides both the recklessness of his behavior and the reasons behind it. However, the true reasons for the “friendly” (as remembered by the Pole) behavior of “Moshek or Yosek” are practically evident. What we learn from Po-lin about the reality of the 1930s is enough to understand that the generous shop owner did not want to expose himself to hostility. It was safer to give the Pole the goods for free than to expose oneself to his revenge in the times of pogrom. This kind of survivalist goodwill-seeking has been a well-known strategy in the Diaspora for centuries; but the reasons behind it may lie deeper than mere survival instinct. During the economic boycott, the Jewish shop had to fight for customers. So, this owner took a risk not considered worth taking by the Społem cooperative. The Jews were left with the least profitable segment of the market; uncertain credit was one of the last remaining opportunities for earnings. Violence inflicted by the majority forces the minority to submit to rules that are unfavorable to it. Instead of friendship, as Dylewska would have us believe, extortions like the one described in the Kurów man’s story are evidence of coercion. “When poor, ask a Jew,” as the Polish proverb goes. However, friendly Poles don’t want to remember its entire formula: “When poor, ask a Jew. When it gets nice, the Jew can kiss your ass.”56 Respectively, in the narration of Po-lin, reality is superseded by the myth of harmonious coexistence, the effect being that it is impossible to note discrimination. Dylewska presents violence in such a way that it passes for neighborly relations. The minority

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must put on a brave face when it is hurt, just as Mrs. Meszel did. In view of the Polish story about the good neighborly atmosphere, each attempt by the Jews to demand their rights would be viewed as the mythical Jewish ingratitude and insolence—that is, in a word, aggression. The majority, including the Po-lin creators, places the Jews at a false crossroads: anti-Semitism or “friendship”—only that “friendship” rests on the condition that the Jews consent to anti-Semitic violence. Patriotic Jew versus Jewish Communists All of this leads to a false tone heard in the dulcimer music that accompanies various scenes throughout the film, discreetly recalling the concert given by Jankiel in Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz. (Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania: a tale of the gentry during 1811–1812 is a Polish Romantic national epic poem that presents a collection of images constitutive for the Polish identity. Jankiel is an emblematic figure of a Jew who is a Polish patriot.)57 The majority expects Polish patriotism from the Jews; but, in light of the Po-lin narrative, that expectation is tantamount to demand for submission to the rules of the majority. The Poles and those Jews of whom the Poles speak well reach agreements in special, symbolically marked moments (for instance, in the case of aversion to Communists). The cultured lady from Słonim says: During the last year, I was living in Berka Joselewicza Street at the Łęcewickis’ place, who were Jewish. We took two small rooms, and the third one behind the kitchen was taken by the mother of Mr. Łęcewicki. She was an old lady, and they had a conflict. The young ones were already sympathizing with Communism. And that blind, deaf grandma would tell me, “Listen, check if the Sabbath is coming. If candles at the rabbi’s are already lit.” [. . .] So I considered it my bounden duty. I would go out and say, “Mrs. Łęcewicka, the candles at the rabbi’s are already lit.” “Oh, thank you,” she would pinch my cheek and quickly light her candles. And the young ones were already. . . . She said, “They’re Communists! They’re Bolsheviks!”

The stereotype of Jewish Communism overlaps with the conflict between the older, religious generation and the younger, more secular generation. Communism is akin to Jewish destiny for Dylewska’s interlocutor. She claims that the young ones were “already” sympathizing with Communism. Their choice only confirms that which is preordained and inevitable. In the stereotype, the Jews are strangers who have developed and espoused an alien ideology—one that is hostile to the Poles.

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The dominant gaze produces it is own reality. The narration consistently returns to faith and folklore as a thread constitutive for the image of Jews. The existence of non-differentiated political parties is mentioned only once: when the film tackles the issue of Jewish self-government institutions. By contrast, in a fragment about Kałuszyn Communists are singled out and examined as “young dissenters from the faith” who “once a month meet under the Warsaw Bridge and listen to the skinny comrade Eidele from Warsaw read a brochure with a summary of Marx’s Capital.” Insignificant, barely visible political minority within a minority takes center stage.58 Significance and visibility are in the eye of the beholder. The main role of the phantasm of Yid-Communism (żydokomuna) is to legitimize the idea of an ethnically and religiously understood nation and the right wing representing it. This right wing acts as the only socioculturally legitimate authority in the Polish state.59 As a result, considering the aversion to Jewish Communists, the meeting between the Poles and those Jews who deserve good remembrance seems suspicious, to say the least. In the majority-controlled narrative, the “good Jew” figure adopts its only acceptable form: that of someone who confirms the dominant group’s opinions—including its fears of, and prejudice against, Jews. By accepting the stereotype of Jewish Communism, the “good Jew” agrees with the division into “us” and “them,” according to which it is the Poles who have the right to decide about common issues. The “good Jew” accepts the position of someone who cannot be fully trusted. Dylewska does nothing to restore the Jewish Communists to the collective memory, or those Jews in general who tried to enter the majority community on equal terms. There is no place for them in the narrative of Po-lin. Thus, there is no element that would force re-assessment of the bias and practices of the dominant group. Instead, Dylewska’s interlocutors praise the patriotism of the Jews. “I was taught history by Mr. Tau,” says a resident of Kolbuszowa with emotion. “He was a Jew. A great historian, he really taught me to love my fatherland. His lectures on history were very beautiful.” In the light of what we have already said, the Jewish and the Polish love of fatherland mean something completely different. For the majority, Polish patriotism means approval of the status quo it has established. It consists of solidarity reduced to ethnic Catholic Poles, the boycott of Jewish trade, the image of a “good Jew” who gives credit when a Polish shop refuses it, hatred toward Jewish Communism, and so on. It is all accepted in an unreflected way, as is always the case of sociocultural obviousness. From the perspective of the Jews, Polish patriotism most often meant identification with an idealized image of Poland, which was produced and maintained insistently at the expense of complete blindness to reality. It could also be an act of faith and hope that one day, everything will be all

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right and that one will finally have a chance to feel at home in one’s own country. In extreme cases, it could consist of consent to the status quo, recognizing anti-Semitism as rationally justified and well deserved. Symptoms of this “patriotic syndrome” could be seen most often and with the highest intensity among Jewish intelligentsia to which Mr. Tau belonged. In all but its most extreme form, patriotism among Polish Jews included a dream of equal rights, of a fundamental change in relations between the two groups. Uttered by a Pole, the praise of a Jewish patriot did not provide for such a change. Therefore, the story about Mr. Tau sounds false; it not only obscures discrimination, but also consolidates it. Just in case, we receive no information in Po-lin about the wartime fate of the fervent Polish patriot from Kolbuszowa. The Jews, so fondly spoken of by Dylewska’s interlocutors, do not present any demands. They do not show even a trace of protest, dissatisfaction, indignation, bitterness, resentment, or aggression toward the dominant group. They feel comfortable in Polish culture; it does not pose any serious problems to them. In this beautiful Polish story, anti-Semitism is no longer a social institution subordinating the minority to the majority, while subjecting the former to constant violence. It becomes instead an incident similar to an argument between neighbors; it does not significantly alter or shape neighborly relations. Whether the figure of the “good Jew” is the culmination of or the supporting structure of the Polish story demands separate research; but the philo-Semitic structure could not persist without the “good Jew,” whose functions include demonstrating the Poles’ morality, absolving them, denying accusations of anti-Semitism while granting consent to anti-Semitic conduct, condemning “bad Jews,” and legitimizing the majority’s version of history. ZVI KAMIONKA The role Dylewska assigned to Zvi (Cwi) Kamionka, the only living Polish Jew featured in the film, is deeply disturbing. Zvi Kamionka appears at the end of Po-lin, and he says astonishingly little. (We mean here the film character of Zvi Kamionka, which we distinguish from its real counterpart.) We shall now examine how the director introduces and constructs that figure. The sequence about cemeteries and death ends with a sentence that sums up and complements the picture of the Jews presented in the film. Piotr Fronczewski declares, “In Jewish cemeteries in the land of Po-lin, only stones are witnesses to the fact that the humble, devout and brave women and God-fearing, learned and righteous men that lie here.” We are confronted, yet again, with the majority’s imagination: The Jews are religiously orthodox, safely

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enclosed in their own world—and dead, too. There are no more shtetls. The Holocaust is the end of the story about the land of Po-lin. We have already analyzed the way the director presented the Shoah. Uttered by the last of the Polish “witnesses,” words about everything passing away forever echo pictures of neglected cemeteries. We hear the wind in the distance, the same as in the previous three harbingers of the Holocaust. We then see Zvi Kamionka, who says: In 1942, when the Germans were liquidating the ghetto in Kałuszyn, they were systematically bringing a hundred Jews here each time, shooting them, taking new ones, those new Jews were digging common graves and burying the dead, and thus, they killed two thousand Jews. My relatives lie here, eighty people altogether on my father’s and my mother’s side. My father’s name was Kamionka, and my mother’s name was Hepner. [Pause] Yes, those two families. They are buried here.

That is all. Dylewska does not ask about anything else. We learn only about the victims’ burial site—and that it is the Germans who perpetrated the murder. Zvi Kamionka is standing in a huge, abandoned lot. We can see townhouses, outbuildings, and a greenhouse nearby. We guess that he is standing on his relatives’ burial site, but there is no trace of those murdered in the field of vision: no stone, no monument, no commemorative plaque. That fact remains unnoticed by anyone in the film. The director does not ask the survivor, the only Polish Jew in the film who is alive, what he thinks. She asks about neither his memories from before the war nor what he experienced during it. No one even asks when and why Kamionka left Poland after the war. The film’s narration focuses on something else: It suggests uniformity of the Polish and the Jewish memory. We can see the panorama of Kałuszyn right before the appearance of Zvi Kamionka’s silhouette. The picture is different from but similar to the one at the beginning of the film. Then the camera was approaching the ground, symbolically descending to the mass graves to summon the spirits of the dead. It was triggering memories of the Polish “witnesses.” It stopped precisely at the level from which the same place was filmed by an amateur cameraman in the 1930s. We see a flash of light, as if the film jammed up for a moment, and we are suddenly in that world. Before Zvi Kamionka appears, the camera is traveling down until we can see grass in the place where the dead were buried in close-up. The sign of descending toward the graves and awakening the memories of the living is exactly the same. And exactly the same archival materials illustrate both the Polish and the Jewish memory. We notice pleasant archival images on the screen: Kałuszyn, 1936.

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Allow us to make a digression: There was a pogrom in the nearby Mińsk Mazowiecki in June of the same year. The Mińsk pogrom lasted a whole week: A motionless crowd observes burning houses. No one comes to help. Where is the fire brigade? Jewish houses and shops are burning. It is the “Mińsk pogrom.” Judka Lejb Chaskielewicz shot Jan Bujak, his former superior from the 7th Regiment of Lublin Uhlans stationed in Mińsk. Why? For some personal reasons. But the legend was spread in town that Bujak died when he was walking out of the church and that it was revenge for his participation in activities undertaken to retake trade from the Jews (he was running an officers’ mess). It is a miracle that no one died, even though there were several dozen people beaten and several dozen burnt, plundered and vandalized houses too. A miracle or . . . exercises. Because if the 7th Regiment was not in the training ground but in the town instead.60

The Jews’ tragedy, relentless in its schematic repetitiveness, will happen there and in other places in a few years. Those who were planning to save themselves knew perfectly that it would not be easy; they were fully aware of what would happen to them. Adam Kamienny from Kałuszyn wrote in his diary in 1944, “We will be hunted and pursued day and night. No one will let us under his roof or offer us a piece of bread. Even if someone wanted to do it, they refrained out of fear that a neighbor would notice and inform on them. We will have to hide in woods like wild animals, exposed to murder by bandits, who seemed to be teeming everywhere.”61

In Barbara Engelking’s book entitled Jest taki piękny słoneczny dzień . . . Losy Żydów szukających ratunku na wsi polskiej 1942–1945 (It is such a beautiful sunny day . . . The fate of the Jews seeking refuge in Polish villages in 1942–1945), there are many stories precisely from here of Jews hiding, turned in, shot on the spot, or sent to gendarmerie or blue police stations— Paweł Goźliński wrote in Gazeta Wyborcza.62 In the very same text, the author considered Po-lin a “perfect documentary.” Po-lin. Kałuszyn, 1936. We hear gusts of wind and see the faces of Jews who pose in front of the camera, smiling. Whole multigenerational families—like Zvi Kamionka’s family of eighty people. The footage pauses with a close-up of Mr. Kamionka’s face. Cut. Instead of the face of an athletic man in a short jacket standing in front of the camera here and now, we see a face with all the attributes of an Orthodox follower of Judaism preserved on a black-and-white tape—there and then. A living man with a name and a surname is reduced to the image of the mythical “Jew,” replaced with or rather translated into an

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anonymous icon. That’s not all, folks: Now we see a black-and-white Jewish girl waving from the screen. She is waving to “us” Poles, to “us” Christians, direct heirs to the king Casimir the Great. When the sequence about Zvi Kamionka ends, we see the same panorama of Kałuszyn as in the beginning of the film; only this time, the camera moves upward. The narrative comes full circle. Mentioned in the recollections, the non-existent world then returns to oblivion. The last—and quite long (almost a minute)—take begins with a silhouette of Zvi Kamionka and the following caption: “Zvi Kamionka, Israel. One of the few saved Jews from Kałuszyn.” The passive form (“saved”) is puzzling, to put it mildly, when used with reference to a man who owes his survival only to himself.63 The camera looks on from a height and moves further upward. Zvi Kamionka turns and walks away. At first, we see him in a cobblestoned square; then, he becomes smaller and smaller, until he finally disappears into the general outline of the town. The panorama of Kałuszyn grows wider. A church tower appears among houses, in the central part of town—seemingly another Freudian slip. The film crew reads the names of the slaughtered. First, each of them reads individually; then, their voices overlap and merge. The picture darkens until it is black. Emotion. A living man, who descends from the inside of the pre-war shtetl, appears in Po-lin. He has an excellent memory. He can easily tell us about everything. Alone. In person. In Polish. Without a translator. However, he is not allowed to speak on the aspect that constitutes the subject of the film. He talks about something else: war and death—although the director declared that she was not interested in the war or death, but in the pre-war time and life. That astounding choice cannot be justified. It is hard to resist the impression that the way in which Zvi Kamionka was directed is a strategic element, a pièce de résistance, of the story built by Jolanta Dylewska. The author of Po-lin assigned to him the role of legitimizing the majority’s narrative. The construction of Zvi Kamionka’s figure presented in the film, together with the place in which that figure appears, reinforces the illusion that there is no difference between the Polish and the Jewish memory. It thus confirms the last words of the commentary, which enclose the Jews in traditional, religious seclusion. This happens despite Zvi Kamionka himself not being a Hassid. Zvi Hersz Kamionka is a man with secular higher education who became a soldier in the Israeli army after he left Poland in 1950.64 The film figure of Zvi Kamionka, as presented by Dylewska, legitimizes the description of the Holocaust presented in the film, as well. Dylewska does not ask the character about any of that which it is impossible to ignore in a story about Polish and Jewish memory. It is not enough to state that the Jews from Kałuszyn were killed by the Germans; to shoot 2,000 people is

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a difficult task. It demands cooperation from many—for example, to make sure that the victims do not run away. What were the Polish inhabitants of the town doing then? It is well known that the local voluntary fire brigade took part in the liquidation of the Kałuszyn ghetto.65 Fire service was an institution that built a terrible reputation elsewhere during the Shoah, too. A trace of it may be found in the Kałuszyn Polish sources: “Members of the Voluntary Fire Brigade passed the [. . .] patriotism test during the Second World War.”66 To continue with the questions silenced by Po-lin: Did any robberies take place in Kałuszyn during the deportation of the Jews, just as in other Polish towns? What happened to the property of the eighty people from Hepner and Kamionka families? Did anyone try to save themselves? Did anyone survive? Were the escapees hunted in Kałuszyn, as they were in other places? Was there any place to hide and, if not, why? Did people report those who were hiding? What did the local parish priest think about it? What happened in Kałuszyn after the war? What does Zvi Kamionka think, and how does he feel, about all of that? Since we do not hear any of those questions, we can assume that the creators of the film, together with the dominant majority, are not interested in what their Jewish neighbors—both the dead and the living ones—experienced, felt, or thought. The Polish memory of the Holocaust is supposed to be the memory of ethnic, Catholic Poles. The Holocaust is to be remembered as the end of the Jewish presence in Poland, caused by external violence. If the memory of the Jews differs from the dominant majority’s version of events, it has no right to enter the sphere of the majority consciousness. It is something external, strange, and unnecessary. Zvi Kamionka, who is our contemporary, is presented in Po-lin as an envoy from the actual and symbolic abyss, to which the Polish majority has sent the Polish Jews. After he serves his designated role, he is supposed to return there. The name of Zvi Kamionka appears in the closing credits after the names of the Polish “witnesses”—separate from them and, at the same time, joined to them with the conjunction “and.” A caption at the bottom of the screen identifies Zvi Kamionka as a stranger from a far-away country— just a foreign guest who visited the cemetery. The character walks away, leaving the Germans with the blame and responsibility and the Poles with the roles of “witnesses” and “guardians of memory.” The Polish majority does not need the real Zvi Kamionka; in fact, that he disappears so quickly and discreetly, without protest, suits its interests well. The image in which Zvi Kamionka’s figure disperses in oblivion conveniently confirms the Polish majority’s melancholy reflections, as presented throughout Po-lin. That melancholy, denying involvement and abdicating responsibility, is made all the easier by the fact that Zvi Kamionka seems to not want anything from the majority: neither the restitution of property, nor

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bringing the thieves and murderers to court, nor even a revision of collective notions that might challenge the Poles’ view of themselves. NOTES 1. Paul Zawadzki, “La Pologne” [Poland], in Histoire de l'antisémitisme (19451993) [History of anti-Semitism (1945–1993)], ed. Léon Poliakov (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 247. In the quoted statement by Paul Zawadzki, an uncritical—and de facto legitimizing—use of anti-Semitic myth of Communism as genuinely and essentially Jewish phenomenon (żydokomuna) attracts attention. 2. Janusz Wróblewski, “Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci. Świadectwa koegzystencji Żydów i Polaków na Kresach Wschodnich” [Po-lin. Scraps of Memory. Testimonies to the coexistence of Jews and Poles in the Eastern Borderlands], Polityka, November 10, 2008, http:​/​/www​​.poli​​tyka.​​pl​/ku​​ltura​​/film​​/2733​​16​,1​,re​​cenzj​​a​-fil​​mu​-po​​-lin-​​rez​ -j​​olan​t​​a​-dyl​​ewska​​.read​. 3. Elżbieta Janicka, “Pamięć i tożsamośc w przestrzeni dawnego getta warszawskiego / Memory and identity in the Former Warsaw Ghetto Area,” Herito, no 13 (2013): 66–81. 4. Tomasz Żukowski, “Mówić, nie mówiąc za wiele. O dyskusji w sprawie Jedwabnego” [Talking without saying too much. About discussion on the Jedwabne matter], Bez Dogmatu 47 (Winter 2001): 25–27. 5. Józef Glemp, “Jedwabne—wina sprawiedliwie uznana” [Jedwabne—guilt fairly admitted], in Przeciw antysemityzmowi [Against anti-Semitism], ed. Adam Michnik (Kraków: Universitas, 2010), 570–73. 6. Tomasz Żukowski, “Panu Bogu świeczkę i diabłu ogarek” [Having one face to God and another to the devil], Midrasz 50, no. 6 (June 2001): 40–42. 7. Anna Zawadzka, “Żydokomuna. Szkic do socjologicznej analizy źródeł historycznych” [Yid-Communism. A sketch for sociological analysis of historical sources], Societas / Communitas 8, no. 2 (2009): 199–243. 8. Elżbieta Janicka, “Instead of negationism. The symbolic topography of the former Warsaw ghetto’s vis-à-vis Holocaust narratives,” Holocaust. Studies and Materials 4 (2017): 212–61, doi: 10.32927/zzsim.717, https​:/​/za​​glada​​zydow​​.pl​/i​​ndex.​​ php​/z​​z​/art​​icle/​​downl​​oad​/7​​​17​/67​​6​/129​​9. 9. Janusz Wróblewski, “Po-lin. Okruchy,” http:​/​/www​​.poli​​tyka.​​pl​/ku​​ltura​​/film​​ /2733​​16​,1​,re​​cenzj​​a​-fil​​mu​-po​​-lin-​​rez​-j​​olan​t​​a​-dyl​​ewska​​.read​. 10. Barbara Hollender, “O sąsiadach, którzy nagle zniknęli” [About neighbors who suddenly disappeared], Rzeczpospolita, November 5, 2008, A20. 11. Tadeusz Sobolewski, “Film z tamtego świata” [Film from the other world], Gazeta Wyborcza, November 8, 2008, 13. 12. “Plunięcie w wieczność. Z Jolantą Dylewską rozmawia Katarzyna Bielas” [Spitting into eternity. Katarzyna Bielas talks with Jolanta Dylewska], Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, November 8, 2008, 11. 13. Idem.

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14. Agnieszka Dębogórska, “Historia polsko-żydowska. Rozmowa z Jolantą Dylewską, autorką Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci” [Polish-Jewish history. Interview with Jolanta Dylewska, the author of Polin. Scraps of Memory], Stopklatka, accessed November 7, 2008, http:​/​/www​​.stop​​klatk​​a​.pl/​​wywia​​dy​/wy​​wiad.​​asp​?​w​​i​=502​​37. 15. Idem. 16. Idem. 17. Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Adam Kopciowski, Andrzej Trzciński, eds., Tam był kiedyś mój dom . . . “Księgi pamięci” gmin żydowskich [My home used to be there . . . “Memorial books” of Jewish communities] (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2009). 18. “Księgi pamięci gmin żydowskich” [Memorial books of Jewish communities], Kultura Enter, February 2009, http://kulturaenter​.pl​/0​/07sn01​.html. 19. Allan Sekula, “The Traffic in Photographs,” Art Journal 41, no. 1, Photography and the Scholar/Critic (Spring, 1981): 15–25, http:​/​/mac​​aulay​​.cuny​​.edu/​​eport​​folio​​s​/ lkl​​ichfa​​ll13/​​files​​/2013​​/09​/S​​ekula​​-The-​​Traff​​i c​-In​​​-Phot​​ograp​​hs​.pd​​f. 20. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. Ernst Bash Ashton (London: Routledge, 2015), 365. 21. Piotr Kletowski, “Do ciebie, człowieku!” [To you, man!], Tygodnik Powszechny, June 15, 2008, 32. 22. Tadeusz Sobolewski, “Film z tamtego świata,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 13. 23. Piotr Śmiałowski, “Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci” [Polin. Scraps of memory], Kino, no. 10 (October 2008): 91. 24. Agnieszka Dębogórska, “Historia polsko-żydowska,” Stopklatka, http:​/​/www​​ .stop​​klatk​​a​.pl/​​wywia​​dy​/wy​​wiad.​​asp​?​w​​i​=502​​37. 25. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in NineteenthCentury Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). 26. Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). 27. Feliks Tych, Długi cień Zagłady. Szkice historyczne [Long shadow of the Holocaust. Historical sketches] (Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1999). 28. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, victims, bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1993). 29. Raul Hilberg, Sprawcy, ofiary, świadkowie. Zagłada Żydow 1933-1945, trans. Jerzy Giebułtowski (Warszawa: Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, Cyklady, 2007). 30. Joanna Ostrowska, “Polsko-żydowskie okruchy pamięci. Po-lin Jolanty Dylewskiej jako świadectwo zapomnianego świata” [Polish-Jewish scraps of memory. Po-lin by Jolanta Dylewska as a testimony to the forgotten world], Res Publica Nowa, no. 5 (May 2009): 72. 31. Maria Nowakowska, Moja walka o życie, czyli wspomnienia Żydówki warszawskiej [My struggle for life, or the memories of a Jewish girl from Warsaw], memoir no. 142, quoted in: Andrzej Żbikowski, afterword to Bunt w Treblince [The revolt at Treblinka], by Samuel Willenberg (Warszawa: Biblioteka “Więzi,” 2004), 182–83.

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32. Calek Perechodnik, Spowiedź. Dzieje rodziny żydowskiej podczas okupacji hitlerowskiej w Polsce [Confession. A History of a Jewish family during Nazi occupation in Poland], ed. David Engel (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ośrodek Karta, 2004). 33. The English translation of Perechodnik’s masterpiece is based on the highly unreliable first Polish edition; cf. Calel Perechodnik, Czy ja jestem mordercą? [Am I a murderer?], ed. Paweł Szapiro (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ośrodek Karta, 1993); Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer? Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman, edited and translated by Frank Fox (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). 34. Tomasz Żukowski, “Savoir-vivre: Ironic Strategies in Calek Perechodnik’s Confession,” Special Issue, English Edition, Teksty Drugie, no. 2 (2013): 166–81, http:​/​/tek​​stydr​​ugie.​​pl​/fi​​le​/fm​​/Issu​​es​/Te​​ksty_​​Drugi​​e​_201​​3​_s​.e​​.vol.​​2​_Hol​​ocaus​​t​_in_​​ Liter​​ary​_a​​n​d​_Cu​​ltura​​l​_Stu​​dies.​​pdf. 35. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Żydzi u Kolberga” [The Jews in Kolberg’s work], in eadem, Rzeczy mgliste. Eseje i studia [Vague things. Essays and studies] (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2004), 66–67. 36. Maria Janion, “Spór o antysemityzm. Sprzeczności, wątpliwości i pytania” [Controversy over anti-Semitism. Contradictions, doubts and questions], in eadem, Do Europy—tak, ale razem z naszymi umarłymi [To Europe—yes, but with our dead] (Warszawa: Sic!, 2000), 144–45. 37. Theodor W. Adorno, “Anti-Semitism for What?,” in Theodor W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality, Studies in Prejudice Series, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 619. 38. Elżbieta Janicka, “Mord rytualny z aryjskiego paragrafu. O książce Jana Tomasza Grossa Strach. Antysemityzm w Polsce tuż po wojnie. Historia moralnej zapaści” [Ritual murder under Aryan paragraph. On Jan Tomasz Gross’s book Fear. Anti-Semitism in Poland after the war. The history of moral collapse], Kultura i Społeczeństwo, no. 2 (2008): 238. 39. Jan Karski, “Widziałem” [I saw], ed. M. Cichy, Gazeta Wyborcza, October 2–3, 1999, 15. 40. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Ethnographic findings on the aftermath of the Holocaust through Jewish and Polish eyes,” in Jewish Presence in Absence. The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944–2010, ed. Feliks Tych and Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2014), 935. 41. Dariusz Libionka, “ZWZ-AK i Delegatura Rządu RP wobec eksterminacji Żydów polskich” [The Armed Combat Union of the Home Army (ZWZ-AK) and the Government Delegation for Poland in the face of the extermination of Polish Jews], in Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945. Studia i materiały [Poles and Jews under the German occupation 1939–1945. Studies and materials], ed. Andrzej Żbikowski (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej—Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2006), 15–139. 42. Barbara Hollender, “O sąsiadach, którzy nagle zniknęli,” Rzeczpospolita, A20. 43. Łukasz Biedka, “Pomiędzy poczuciem wstydu a poczuciem dumy— psychologiczne zabiegi wokół narodowego wizerunku w debacie historycznej” [Between a sense of guilt and a sense of pride—psychological efforts around the national image

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in a historical debate], paper presented at the 9th conference of the Israeli-Polish Mental Health Association, Nazareth, November 6–8, 2008. TS in the authors’ archive. 44. Katarzyna Chmielewska, “Sprawozdanie z badania gimnazjalnych podręczników do wychowania obywatelskiego” [Report on research into secondary school citizenship education textbooks], in: Wyniki monitoringu podręczników gimnazjalnych do języka polskiego, historii, i wiedzy o społeczeństwie (wychowanie obywatelskie i wychowanie do życia w rodzinie) z perspektywy zawartego w nich obrazu mniejszości etnicznych, religijnych i innych [Results of the monitoring of Polish, history and civics (citizenship education and family life education) textbooks from the perspective of the presented image of ethnic, religious and other minorities], ed. Tomasz Żukowski, (“Otwarta Rzeczpospolita”—Stowarzyszenie przeciw Antysemityzmowi i Ksenofobii [Warszawa: Open Republic—Association against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia], Warszawa, 2004), TS in the authors’ archive. 45. Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 50. 46. Idem. 47. Wojciech Wilczyk, Niewinne oko nie istnieje / There is No Such a Thing as an Innocent Eye, introductions by Jacek Michalak, texts by David Peleg, Adam Mazur, Eleonora Jedlińska, Eleonora Bergman, interview with the author by Elżbieta Janicka (Łódź: Atlas Sztuki, Kraków: Korporacja Ha!Art, 2009). 48. Jan Bułhak, Polska fotografia ojczysta. Poradnik fotograficzny [Polish native photography. Guide on photography], author’s illustrations (Poznań: Czcionkami Drukarni S. A. "Ostoja", n.d. [1939]), 28. 49. Krzysztof Hejke, Polesie [Polesia] (Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2009), 162–63. 50. Łukasz Baksik, Macewy codziennego użytku / Matzevot for Everyday Use (Wołowiec: Czarne, 2012). 51. Alina Cała, ed., Ostatnie pokolenie. Autobiografie polskiej młodzieży żydowskiej okresu międzywojennego ze zbiorów YIVO Institute for Jewish Research w Nowym Jorku [The last generation. Autobiographies of young Polish Jews of the interwar period from the collection of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research] (Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1997). 52. Józef Hurwic, Wspomnienia i refleksje. Szkic autobiograficzny [Recollections and reflections. Autobiographical sketch] (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Comer, 1996), 171. 53. Admor—a word connected with Hasidic tradition, an acronym for “Adonainu, Morainu, VeRabbeinu” (“Our Master, Our Teacher, and Our Rebbe”). It means a founder of a Hasidic dynasty and/or an outstanding spiritual leader, a great zaddick. 54. Janusz Tazbir, “O Kałuszynie i—sitarzach” [About Kałuszyn and sieve makers], Rocznik Kałuszyński, no. 5 (2005): 13. 55. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 1966). 56. Tadeusz Markiel, “Gniewczyna w czas wojny” [Gniewczyna in times of war], in Tadeusz Markiel, Alina Skibińska, “Jakie to ma znaczenie, czy zrobili to z chciwości?” Zagłada domu Trynczerów [“What does it matter if they did it out

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of greed?” Destruction of Trynczer’s house] (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, 2011), 47. 57. On the position of Jankiel in the world of the poem, see Chapter 3.4. “Whom do I miss?” and Chapter 4, part “The Pianist (2001): Dislocated Reconstruction.” 58. August Grabski, ed., Żydzi a lewica. Zbiór studiów historycznych [Jews and the left. The collection of historical studies] (Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2007). 59. August Grabski’s statement in Żydokomuna [Yid-Communism], a film informed by critical theory and directed by Anna Zawadzka (2010). 60. Paweł Goźliński, “Ostatni seans w Kałuszynie” [The last screening in Kałuszyn], Gazeta Wyborcza, April 1, 2011, 21. 61. Barbara Engelking, Such a beautiful sunny day . . . Jews seeking refuge in the Polish countryside, 1942-1945, trans. Jerzy Michalowicz (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2016), 35. 62. Paweł Goźliński, “Ostatni seans w Kałuszynie,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 21. 63. Translator’s note: the author of the source text uses a passive form of the transitive verb ocalić which can be translated as “to rescue,” whereas the right word is ocaleć: “to survive.” The equivalent of “ocaleni Żydzi” is “Jews rescued,” whereas one should talk about “ocalali Żydzi”: “Jewish survivors,” “Jews who survived.” 64. Zvi Kamionka’s e-mail to Elżbieta Janicka, August 16, 2011. 65. Władysław Chróścicki, “O ratuszu miasta Kałuszyn, jego budowie i ponad 100-letniej siedzibie Władz Miasta, o budynkach publicznych i urzędnikach” [About Kałuszyn town hall, its construction and over a hundred-year-old seat of town authorities, about public buildings and public officials], Rocznik Kałuszyński, no. 8 (2008): 248. 66. Wiesław Charczuk, “Ochotnicze Straże Pożarne południowego Podlasia i wschodniego Mazowsza—dzieje i teraźniejszość” [Voluntary fire brigades of southern Podlasie and eastern Mazovia—history and present], Rocznik Kałuszyński, no. 8 (2008): 301.

Historical Reenactment of the Destruction of the Będzin Ghetto—Będzin, 2010. Source: Photo by Anna Musiałówna.

Chapter 2

Correction of the Reality Reenacting the Destruction of the Będzin Ghetto (2010) Tomasz Żukowski

On September 11, 2010, the destruction of the Będzin ghetto, which took place in August 1943, was reenacted in Będzin. Local teenagers played the roles of victims and perpetrators. The costumes for the Jews had been prepared, and the Nazi uniforms had been well-reproduced. Students and parents alike became involved in the initiative. Meanwhile, two vintage lorries were waiting to take deportees to Auschwitz. The reenactment had been organized by Adam Szydłowski, the Registrar General, a local social activist and regional history enthusiast. It was the second part of a three-part series presenting the history of Będzin. The previous year, historical reenactment groups had reenacted the German troops’ arrival at the town in September 1939; in 2011, the liberation of Będzin by Soviet troops was to be commemorated. It was the organizers’ intention to remind residents of the forgotten Jewish fellow countrymen. Polityka weekly magazine commented that Szydłowski “decided to restore the several centuries of the ‘amputated,’ torn out and foolishly forgotten history in the town.”1 Treating these events as integral parts of current residents’ heritage demonstrated how he understood the history of Poland. Organizing a series of reenactments prevents the Holocaust from being situated in the sphere of exotic “otherness” and folklore (see the subsection “Relocation to Reservations (Separation and Folklorization)” in chapter 1). It is a step toward integrating the narrative of war and describing not only what happened to the ethnic Poles, but also to Polish society in a broader sense—the history of all citizens, minorities included. In Będzin—which was called “Little Jerusalem” before the war, and in which 80 percent of inhabitants were Jewish until the occupation—Days of 57

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Jewish Culture were organized, a monument commemorating the deportation of 28,000 local Jews to Auschwitz was erected, and people started to collect extant Judaica. “Every stranger is welcomed graciously and fully taken care of, he does not arrive at a cold place,”2 said Adam Szydłowski. Włodzimierz Kac, the Chairman of the Jewish Community in Katowice, had no doubt about the reenactors’ intentions. “In his opinion, Szydłowski as well as the Będzin authorities have done a lot of good for the remembrance of the Jewish residents of ‘Jerusalem of Zagłębie,’ although the atmosphere for such undertakings was not always favourable.”3 (Zagłębie is a mining region in the south of Poland.) Andrzej Zawistowski, the Head of the Department of Historical Education at the Public Education Office of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), emphasized the educational dimension of the event: Already in the Middles Ages, Passion plays were organized, performed very realistically in order to outline the history to the illiterate. Similarly, today, the intention of such performances is to represent the bygone events to those who will not learn about them in any other way, will not read any book or watch a historical film.4

However, the idea aroused heated controversies and protests. Jan Hartman, for example, appealed for the event to be canceled and his opinion was quoted many times,5 whereas Seweryn Blumsztajn criticized it harshly.6 Jarosław J. Szczepański, the Chairman of the Jewish Association of “B’nei B’rith Polin” Humanitarian Societies, also expressed indignation.7 Everyone was disconcerted by the jolly atmosphere surrounding the reenactments; at the same time, however, there were concerns about whether young people should assume the roles of perpetrators and enter the emotional aura of persecution.8 “Szydłowski considers himself a philo-Semite and he perceives the commotion about the plans of the reenactment as unfair,” the Polish Press Agency (PAP) commented. “I’m sorry because so much has been done to change the residents’ mentality, those educational undertakings have already produced an effect,” he underlined.9 INSIGHT THROUGH IMAGINATION In the first decade of the twenty-first century, historical reenactments seemed like a new pop culture phenomenon. However, the gesture of recreating the Jewish world (which ceased to exist after the Holocaust) and attempts at reenacting those events—of which only scraps of testimonies, sparse traces, or

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nothing at all survived—were made in Polish culture much earlier. Historical reenactments were also performed by professional artists simultaneously with the reenactment in Będzin and after it. However, these earlier efforts provoked rather positive reactions. Emotional Bond The novel The Final Station: Umschlagplatz by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz is devoted to reconstructing the life of Polish Jews before the war and the circumstances of their death. The narrator and the author try to approach the truth of the Shoah through fiction and imagination. The Polish edition of Rymkiewicz’s book was published in 1988,10 when Polish culture returned to the topic of the Holocaust after many years of silence. Since the mid-1960s— and certainly since the anti-Semitic campaign of March 1968—the Holocaust had seldom appeared in the public discourse and was reduced to an element of Polish martyrdom. The prevailing Holocaust narrative in Poland, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, emphasized Polish society’s compassion for and devotion to the dying Jews. Such an image was cultivated by influential books, including Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej. Polacy z pomocą Żydom 1939– 1945 [He is the one from my homeland. Poles helping the Jews 1939–1945] (1967), edited by Władysław Bartoszewski11 and Kazimierz Moczarski’s Conversations with an Executioner (first Polish edition 1972–1974).12 It was further strengthened by mass culture.13 Jewish victims were treated as Polish losses.14 When they appeared in the narrative at all, they did so as background protagonists of the whitewashed tale of the Righteous Poles, helping the persecuted. The alleged harmony of this story, from which all disturbing elements had been erased, was soporific. This intellectual lethargy ended in the second half of the 1980s, when Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah (1986) was released and regarded in Poland as an accusation against Poles. Not long afterward, Jan Błoński’s essay The Poor Poles Look At The Ghetto15 (first Polish edition, 1987) was published. In it, the issue of Polish guilt returned. The Final Station: Umschlagplatz was written and published during a moment of crisis provoked by repeated revelations of unwanted knowledge of Polish behavior toward the Jews. These revelations caused the cognitive dissonance exemplified later by Jan Tomasz Gross’s Neighbors and recurring discussions on the so-called “Jedwabne issue.” In 2000, Gross described a town in which Poles murdered their fellow Jewish residents after the German army entered the territories occupied by the USSR in 1941. Thereafter, Jedwabne has been synonymous with Polish violence against Jews and complicity in the Holocaust. The strategy proposed by Rymkiewicz in great measure resembles the one used by the reenactors from Będzin. It is based on playing on the audience’s

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feelings. Fiction—the world reconstructed by the writer’s imagination—is supposed to bring us closer to the characters. They in general, and in particular scenes that include fictitious and de facto impossible conversations between them and their Creator, tighten bonds and intimacy. Rymkiewicz tells the story of a few people from a Jewish guesthouse near Warsaw. The main character is Icyk, who is in love with Chaja—a young, charming, and mysterious woman. At the same time, it is a tale of extracting from oblivion a world that no longer exists. The narrator becomes a part of the story and identifies with Icyk and Chaja. He tells of his own extremely emotional and personal search for traces, documents, and reports; he speaks of discovering the past and communing with it. His longing takes him into a world that no longer exists and is impossible to reach, but one that becomes more important to him than anything else. By means of fiction, the narrator, who tells the story in the first person (and who is probably the real author), seeks closeness with a world that is unknown and distant to him. He finds himself in the role of the friend of shades of Holocaust victims—or, rather, in the role of a longing and tender lover of imaginary, lost people. Reconstructing the details, visiting the places where historical events took place, and communing with testimonies are supposed to help him to touch both the historical reality and existential experience of the victims. Being a lover, he evokes the spirit of distant Chaja, near the River Świder.16 He tries to talk to her through the agency of Icyk, although he is aware that he will discover nothing about what is most important: the reality of their lives, as well as the tragedy and pain of their deaths.17 The emotional aura typical of this kind of narration and the melancholy of irretrievable loss create the framework for the reconstructed knowledge about the past. Due to the attitude to the characters, the Jewish world becomes colorful, interesting; the thought of meeting it appeals to us. At the same time, the Holocaust proves to be a catastrophe and an irreparable loss not only for its direct victims, but also for the author and the readers, who look at the characters in a nostalgic way. Rymkiewicz prepares himself for the question about what he, a ten-year-old boy, was doing while his characters were dying; and, in a broader sense, what Polish society was doing. He approaches these questions differently from the critics of Błoński (letters sent to Tygodnik Powszechny after Błoński’s essay was published prove the scale of aggression18) or Jan Tomasz Gross in that, unlike them, he does not refer to anti-Semitic stereotypes. Crossing the Borderlines of Otherness Thus, the attempt at reconstructing and approaching the destroyed Jewish world transforms into a lament. Asked about fiction, the narrator replies, “Maybe, I have made it all up,” and explains:

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So, I think I am a suitable witness, and I feel that I not only can but should testify. Even if I cannot testify to their lives, it will be my own personal act of remembrance. Not much, perhaps, but it will do. [. . .] You surely can’t mean that my great dirge for Polish Jews is imagined. [. . .] And surely my testimony is not imagined either.19

In spite of actual distance, the sense of closeness is intensified to such an extent that in the description of a visit to the scene of the massacre—the area of the former Umschlagplatz—the narrator confesses, “all the time we’re talking I keep wanting to cry, a bizarre feeling for a man of fifty, and all I want to do is sit down in the middle of the roadway and hide my face in my hands. On the spot where Szmerling sat.”20 Emotional suspense created in the story is supposed to “embrace” the readers—to infect them while reading. Rymkiewicz builds chains of identifications in which the audience can be immersed. The characters of the narrator and the protagonist—Icyk, who is in love with Chaja—blend with each other. Recreating the inner world of his character by means of fiction, the writer crosses the borderlines of otherness. Reconstructing, he experiences similar—as we become convinced—feelings; he somehow puts himself in the position of the Other. He shares the same loves, experiences similar sorrow, puts the same questions to fate. This intimacy causes him to transform into a member of the community of the boarding house in Otwork, run by Sara Fligeltaub. The strategy proposed by Rymkiewicz is based on the belief that being a member of a community is founded on the act of participating in the same world of experiences. The reconstruction enables entering the group of Jewish characters, which is done by a Polish woman—Lilka, the lover of Szymon Warszawski. The readers follow the narrator’s path; together with the narrator, they recreate, seek lost details, and examine the places where the events took place. Simultaneously, the mode of narration stimulates them to experience specific emotions, such as intimacy, sympathy, tenderness, compassion, and longing. Consequently, the audience experiences membership beyond the division between the Jews and the Polish majority; or, at least, it is left with a desire to push past this division. The penultimate scene in the last chapter of Rymkiewicz’s novel is an imaginary conversation with a boy immortalized in the well-known photograph “Mit Gewalt aus Bunkern hervorgeholt” (“Forcibly pulled out of bunkers”) from the Stroop Report.21 The narrator says to him that, “I know what we’ll do. I’ll lift my arms up now, and you put yours down. They may not notice. But wait, I’ve got a better idea. We’ll both stand with our arms up.”22 The experience that Rymkiewicz offers to the audience is defined with reference to the Other, who is not a life-threatening and stigmatized stranger.

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We can read in Umschlagplatz, “My dirge is a lament for myself. When I mourn for the Polish Jews it is an act of self-mourning, the lament of a Pole forever forsaken by Polish Jews.”23 One could assume that the cultural sources of the reenactment in Będzin refer to similar convictions, and the reenactors at least partially follow a similar path. Inconvenient Knowledge Umschlagplatz examines the attitudes of the Polish community toward the exterminated, including the refusal of compassion and even open hostility. Rymkiewicz notes the continuity of hatred and does not reduce it to demoralization caused by the occupation. Mentioning anti-Semitism during the inter-war period and aggression related to it, he gives an example of student fraternity members who threw Jews out of a commuter train to Otwock. Recalling the violence, he describes it in a way that truly moves the reader. One such scene is an emblematic story. Hania, a Jewess who survived the Holocaust in Warsaw as a child and a friend of the narrator, relates the reaction of a Polish woman in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation: She screamed: Jude! Jude!—urging the Germans or Ukrainians or Latvians to perform their duty and shoot a Jewish child. Listen, Jarek, that was not the only incident of this kind, I swear. No one knows how often it happened. But I was not the only one who heard. It went on and on. That scream: Jude! Jude!24

This subject returns when Adam Czerniaków’s notes about pogroms, organized in the early 1940s, are mentioned. The narrator says: Of course [. . .] there will always be people who use the favorite expression of the National Democrat journalists before the war and claim that this is typical Jewish bellyaching. [. . .] But when I read these impressions of Czerniakow, Kaplan, and Ringelblum, I literally shrivel up with shame and wail in typically Polish fashion, “How could we ever have behaved like that?”25

This embarrassment is also suggested to the reader as an emotional possibility. Although in the dialogue with Hania, there is this argument that “hoodlums” are responsible for violence, it is counterbalanced with the perspective of culture. Rymkiewicz makes it difficult to marginalize the evil by proving it to be the domain of “the dregs of society”—people who are not accepted by mainstream society. The question about responsibility is, in the first place, addressed to the Germans; then, by analogy, it is addressed to the Poles: “But every one of them is responsible for the existence of such people as Brant and Mende, for the moral sanction of their deeds, for the spiritual environment

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they operated in. To put it in a nutshell, I’d say they were responsible for the sanctioning of it.”26 In this context, the issue of Polish guilt appears: “If anyone feels that the anti-Semitic excesses of 1940 are not his business, I won’t hold it against him. Everyone—I mean the Poles—must work it out for himself—that’s what it’s really all about—and not pretend it never happened.”27 Rymkiewicz’s reaction is an attempt at describing with compassion the experience of violence from its victims’ perspective. Sara Fliegeltaub tells a story about something that happened to her before the war—or rather, to a maid who worked in her boarding house (the beautiful teenage Fejga). The reader meets Fejga through the eyes of Icyk, who is a little shy and delicate. Brutal sexual allusions—that is, a verbal assault carried out by the student fraternity members on the commuter train—strike a character already sketched with tenderness. The contrast between the fascination, craving for closeness, and genuine friendliness of Icyk, Sara, and the narrator and the aggression of the anti-Semitic assault is striking. Sara Fliegeltaub ends with the words, “My Fejga, as you know, is not clever. [. . .] I mean, she’s as thick as two little blocks. But stupid as she is, when those hooligans started blaspheming, she realized they were no longer insulting her personally, but someone else.”28 On the one hand, Rymkiewicz chooses a situation in which the arbitrariness of violence, its injustice and absurdity are blatant; on the other hand, he makes us aware that the pain related to the assault results from being included in this dehumanized and stigmatized category. The Need for Absolution Umschlagplatz recalls knowledge that the Polish community represses; however, that knowledge is not the most important element in the framework of the story. The accent falls on the act of crossing the borderline of otherness, of entering the Jewish world. Following the path suggested by Rymkiewicz automatically solves the problem of hostile behaviors and attitudes toward the Jews. Those who have succumbed to the charm of reconstruction must recognize that the excluding practices are not their concern anymore, that they have left them behind. Understanding of the “spiritual atmosphere”—the cultural conditions that enable violence—is not developed. The question of to what extent the cultural patterns of the occupation period can also be applied to modern times is neglected. Rymkiewicz concentrates instead on responsibility. “It may be [. . .] that some people feel responsible only for themselves, while others feel responsible for everyone. And I may well belong to the latter category,”29 the narrator affirms. Accepting responsibility “for everyone” becomes an act of

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extraordinary moral sensibility. It verges on accepting blame that is not yours. Accepting responsibility for discriminatory practices renders the impression that they are fundamentally estranged from the audience, who experiences closeness with the Jewish world. The risk emerges that merely accepting the role of one’s people in the tragedy is enough to absolve oneself of any further inquiry or feelings of discomfort. Acknowledging the truth is such a profound step, it means they personally can’t be “bad people” and so they don’t have to do anything, challenge anything. This is very similar to how black/white politics work in the United States, as many white “allies” think that simply acknowledging that racism exists there means they themselves cannot possibly be guilty of it and can’t have done anything to support the institutions that formalize racial hierarchy. Racism, they wish to believe, is something they live next to, not in. To some extent, the inconvenient knowledge disappears in the shadow of openness to the Other. The emotional process taking place at the individual level can easily be mistaken for change at the social level. Undoubtedly, the question of the Polish self-image is of great importance in the narration of Umschlagplatz. The relations between the Poles and the Jews are treated as a meeting of two great nations.30 Maintaining close relations with the “Jewish Other” confirms the Polish greatness. Rymkiewicz makes an effort to tell the story of the Holocaust in a way that does not omit Polish violence and, at the same time, allows the continued holding of the Polish community during the war in high esteem. Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was released in Poland in 1994. The international success of the film—seven Oscars and five Oscar nominations, among other accolades—was all the more noteworthy, as Polish actors had been engaged in it and the shooting had been mainly carried out in Cracow and other Polish cities (such as Kasina Wielka, Olkusz, Niepołomice, Oświęcim-Brzezinka, and Skarżysko-Kamienna). The Polish press followed the film crew’s activities with great interest. The film was treated as a historical reenactment on a grand scale. Although the film offered the audience a transformation similar to that which is offered by Rymkiewicz, the shadow—violence used by the groups with which the viewers could identify—had been removed meticulously. Unlike in Umschlagplatz, there was nothing disturbing left. As a protagonist, Spielberg had chosen a German—a representative of the nation which, in European as well as American imagination, is guilty par excellence of perpetrating the Holocaust. Schindler’s List presents his transformation into one of the “Righteous” while helping viewers escape the circle of guilt. Schindler arrives in Eastern Europe, which has been conquered by the Nazis, with the purpose of growing rich quickly. For him, the war is a favorable condition for doing business that brings quick and “big” money. He acts

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as a settler visiting colonies. For a long time, he does not pay attention to the fate of the conquered communities he encounters. He has no scruples about taking advantage of local Jews, forcing them to invest in his businesses. When his Jewish “business partners” try to negotiate, using the argument that “money is always money,” he replies, “Not anymore. Everything has changed, my friends.” Having arrived in Cracow with almost nothing, Schindler becomes one of the city’s most important players. He takes to the chaos brought about by the occupation like a duck to water. He corrupts and bribes powerful local Nazis. He enjoys a high standard of living, and lives life to the fullest. He is a personification of brilliant success. Due to his spontaneity and a characteristic innocence concerning passion for money and life, he is likeable. Schindler is a resourceful, feisty, and winning man, inspiring envy. Being a character in the popular imagination, he also embodies the realization of hidden dreams: The wartime situation allows him to break free from the shackles of traditional morality, and not only in the field of business. Surrounded by many young and beautiful secretaries, he consistently appears in restaurants in Cracow in the company of new lovers (mostly Polish, but there is a Jewish woman as well), who we also see in his bed. The director removes every trace of sexual or racial violence from these relationships, emphasizing instead the irresistible charms of the protagonist. In spite of his constant sexual harassment, women simply love him; scenes of his harassment are shot nonchalantly, as if nothing disturbing is happening. Schindler’s metamorphosis into the savior of the Jews impacts neither his position in the Nazi hierarchy nor his way of life. He remains an entrepreneur. He watches the violence on which his business is based, from a safe distance. Riding a horse, he sees the liquidation of the ghetto; standing on the veranda of the commandant’s villa, he observes the Płaszów camp. As the plot unfolds, he increasingly notices the victims and their pain. He comes closer. He reacts. In consequence, he manages to save more than 1,000 people. At the same time, he remains the director of the factory, with all of the privileges that come with that position. On the day of surrender, he leaves the city in a black limousine, wearing an impeccable suit. A lorry, probably loaded with the last reserves of his fortune, follows him. His workers show servile respect to him; this time, however, it is not out of fear but out to gratitude. When Schindler falls into despair—realizing that he should have done more, that he should have splurged not on indulgences but rather on saving people’s lives—they comfort and absolve him. In the final scene, they give him a gold ring with the engraved inscription: “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” The ring has somehow been made of their own bodies. Voluntarily, the prisoners pull out their gold teeth and melt them. A symbol of the Holocaust—the Jewish gold extracted from

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the gassed corpses—is appropriated in this new context. The victims give to their savior a token of their gratitude. In the audience’s imagination, the ring occupies the place of all previous profits Schindler has earned from his businesses. In Tadeusz Różewicz’s poem, the gold, stolen from the Holocaust victims, bleeds, rots, and disintegrates in bank safes.31 Schindler’s List is an antidote to this kind of nightmare about Western culture. After all, we would all like to be Schindlers; in the sphere of collective imagination, when there’s a will, there’s a way. At the same time, Spielberg removes social and cultural reasons for evil from the field of vision. In the light of Schindler’s List, Rymkiewicz’s question about “spiritual justifications,” which belong to the culture and justify the behavior of the characters, is deemed unimportant. The story develops only in the psychological sphere. Instead of social analysis of behavior patterns and practices, we watch the “psychomachia” between a good and bad character—a battle of opposing moral qualities. The antagonist of Oskar Schindler is Amon Goeth, an SS man, the commandant in the camp in Płaszów. Comparisons consistently suggest that the behavior of both characters is a consequence of their choices, determined by the psychological burden with which they enter the war-time situation. Goeth’s sadism is born of a desire for closeness and, at the same time, of fear of it. For him, violence and stiff hierarchies of power are a way to control relations, which he apparently cannot cope with outside of such a rigid structure. Simultaneously, domination allows him to relieve rising frustration and aggression. Spielberg observes Goeth’s fascination for a servant selected from the prisoners whom he loves and torments. The scene presenting an attempt at having sexual intercourse—an obstinate monologue of an SS man, who cannot notice another human or establish real contact with one—is contrasted with a scene in which Schindler warmly accepts birthday wishes offered by his workers. There are more signs of rivalry between them. Schindler maintains that Goeth “in other circumstances would act differently” and that “the war triggers the worst instincts.” However, there is no question asked about what those circumstances are and how the war started. Therefore, Nazism transforms into some kind of psychological degeneration. The social problem is treated like an individual aberration. The metamorphosis the viewers undergo following the character becomes easier. The narrative framework of rivalry between Schindler and Amon Goeth compels the public to identify with “good.” We are with Oskar Schindler; we are Oskar Schindler. No wonder everybody liked the film. In Poland, a country eternally preoccupied with the world’s opinion about Poles and Polish self-image, Schindler’s List must have made a powerful impression. Consternation—a German presented as an emblematic Righteous is rather too much—was accompanied by admiration for the effectiveness of

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the image campaign. The success of the film persuaded one to tell the Polish history one more time and to experience it again, according to the pattern proposed by Spielberg. At the same time that the reenactment of the ghetto’s liquidation in Będzin was organized, another project related to a similar idea was realized. In a movie titled In Darkness, Agnieszka Holland took the viewers for a walk following Spielberg’s path; however, she used a Polish character. Like Schindler, Leopold Socha, sewer worker in Lviv, transforms from an antiSemite into a Righteous. First, he blackmails Jews: He promises them shelter in the city sewers but demands money for it. Later, he helps selflessly and pays for the food delivered to those in hiding. He approaches the victims, recognizing them as human beings. He, too, must face the opponent; but, at this point (as in the case of Schindler), the problem disappears—as if by a magic wand. At the beginning of the film, Socha robs Jews trying to hide in the sewers. We are witnessing a phenomenon of epic proportions, one that was essential for the implementation of the Nazi plans: catching and robbing those who tried to save themselves. Poles such as Socha prevented Jews from escaping and, like beaters during a hunt, exposed the game to the shot. We only see Socha; therefore, viewers can appreciate neither the scale of the phenomenon nor its impact on the fate of the victims. Socha is quickly turned into a Righteous and, at the same time, the deadly violence perpetrated by him and others is transferred onto his opponent. Max—a Ukrainian nationalist, a former friend of Socha, and an officer of the Ukrainian formations collaborating with the Nazis during the occupation—turns out to be the most important persecutor of Jews in the story. Socha must protect his Jewish mentees from Max and finally openly oppose him. The struggles between them resemble those of Schindler and Goeth. More importantly, Holland makes use of a similar emotional mechanism. The construction of the narrative allows one to experience the transformation of Socha as our own. It changes the film character into a center around which the memory and identity of the viewership crystallize. WHAT WE WOULD RATHER FORGET Is there really anything from which to run away? Będzin appears to be a place like any other. It is not associated with any special events that could stir the Polish conscience. Probably a vast majority of the all-Polish audience heard the name of the town for the first time because of the reenactment from 2010; but, if one searched, one would find several important testimonies connected with Będzin and the local Jews.

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Stanisław Wygodzki: Blessed Be the Hands Stanisław Wygodzki, a writer and poet who is almost forgotten today, was born on November 15, 1885, in Będzin. He had been living there until the ghetto was liquidated. As a secondary school student, he became involved in the Communist movement. Before the outbreak of the war, he spent two years in prison, convicted for political activity. He was employed as an office worker in the “Feniks” glassworks. During the occupation, like others, he found himself in the ghetto. On August 1, 1943, on the day the Liquidation Aktion began, already on the train carrying them to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, he poisoned his wife and his four-year-old daughter. He himself survived because the dose he had left for himself was too small.32 Wygodzki survived Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, and Dachau. After he had managed to leave the transit camps, he returned to Poland and stayed in Warsaw. He was working in the Ministry of Culture and Art and, from 1948, in Polish Radio. He started a new family. Even before the “thaw” (the liberalization of 1956), he devoted himself completely to writing. In January 1968, he decided to emigrate to Israel because of the oppression his children suffered. He died there in 1992. Wygodzki’s prose revolves around two subjects: the Communist movement and the Holocaust. Będzin is mentioned in it more than once. His prose is politically committed and, being Communist, often disqualifies one’s work in the view of today’s Polish audience and critics. Sławomir Buryła writes about “the schematism and didactic passion characteristic of his first collections of stories after the war.”33 However, the war seen from a radical, leftist angle enables one to notice problems omitted by writers looking at history from different perspectives.34 Wygodzki often returns to the subject of the similarity between the aims of the Polish national right wing and the Nazis. The imperative of fighting the occupier appears to be of secondary importance when liberating Poland from Communists and Jews is at stake. Perceiving history in class and political categories rather than national ones allowed him to escape anxiety about the image of the community. Until 1956, Wygodzki accepted and supported the revolution that was taking place in Poland in the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s. He saw in it the hope of overcoming nationalism and anti-Semitism. His texts from the period, despite their literary and intellectual value, can be easily qualified as Stalinist propaganda. In the 1960s, he shifted perspective and turned to statements regarding culture patterns. It is precisely Będzin and Sosnowiec that most probably became the place of action for the short story Sprzymierzeńcy (Allies) published in 1950 in the volume Widzenie (Vision). The town and the city are called B and S. The story mentions also the River Przemsza, which flows through Będzin and the liquidation of the ghetto began on the night of July 31 to August 1, 1943—that is

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on the day when the liquidation of the ghetto in Będzin started.35 The narrator returns to his hometown in order to give evidence in court in the case of Carl Frensen, a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) charged with participation in the slaughter of the Jewish people in September 1939, immediately after the arrival of the German troops. Such an event really happened in Będzin36: On the night of September 8, 1939, the Germans burned the synagogue together with 200 Jews who were praying inside. At the same time, the Jewish quarter was burned down, in particular the houses situated in Kołłątaja, Kościelna, Bożnicza, Plebańska and Zamkowa Streets. The Germans did not allow fire fighters to extinguish the fires. Soldiers fired at Jews fleeing in an attempt to save themselves from death in the flames. Those who tried to remove the Torah and religious books from the burning synagogue were also shot. 14 people died in this way. Others, captured on the street, were forced by the Nazis into barrels with tar and set on fire.37

The trial seen from the perspective of a survivor evokes a sense of strangeness. It accompanies the narrator from the moment he comes to town. “I’m in an unfamiliar room, an unfamiliar town, I don’t know anyone here,” he says.38 The recurring sound of locomotives and shunted wagons brings the day of the deportation to mind. The legal procedure of establishing the truth by means of detailed testimony verification does not befit the situation in question. It is not only individual Jewish witnesses who are not alive; the whole community to which they belonged no longer exists. When the judge asks whether or not the witness saw the fire and how he knows that the accused was there, he hears, “Indeed. The burnt cannot talk any more, and I [. . .] if I was there, do you think I could escape the fire? They were shooting those who were running away from the burning houses.”39 In another place, a reflection appears that implies the profound difference of experiences and perspectives of the Polish observers and the Jewish victims: I see the presiding judge once again. He is completely grey. Where was he when my father was doubting whether they would ever try them? Did he see their work, and did he also doubt that the day of judgement would come? Did he ever sob so much that he could not give his words the right form to express pain and suffering?40

Moreover, the courtroom seems different than in the times when the narrator was responsible for his membership in the Communist party. “It is people, cases, the court itself that has changed.”41 What he means is probably not a change for the better connected with the new political system, but a change

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caused by the Holocaust. The report of the court proceedings is accompanied by the narrator’s reflections; but the latter run their own, separate course. They emphasize motives and facts, both of which remain hidden from the court. The court does not see, and does not want to see, the Polish context of the events. The Polish-German relations concerning the Jews are not the subject of a court hearing. An important guilty party did not appear in the dock. We learn about the fire on September 8, 1939, from the narrator’s father, who, several days after the massacre, went to the fire site to bury the dead. Asked about the perpetrators, the father gives a vague answer: “They.” He certainly means the Nazis, but does he mean only the Nazis? This is his story: But they consisted of individuals; I wanted to know which of them did that. “I don’t want to know. What for? [. . .] will they ever appear before a court? Who will judge them? And if I forget,” I saw tears in my father’s eyes. “I will never forget that eight, perhaps nine-year-old boy who was walking around the still smoldering ashes and searching the burnt-out flats. He was opening wardrobes that hadn’t been consumed by fire and going through clothes, looking into the drawers of scorched tables and using a poker to take out some bags, boxes from under the beds . . . He didn’t stop his search even when Chaim and I were taking out the charred bodies. He was laughing and grinning at us, and his smile was in his eyes, on his lips and cheeks. [. . .] The first moment I saw him, I stopped in terror. But it turned out that we didn’t disturb him; I can understand that he was not afraid of the dead, but he was not afraid of us, the living, either.42

The father sees the crime as a collective undertaking, which is why he thinks that pointing at particular criminals does not make sense. He is most probably doubtful about the judiciary, as well. Perhaps he is afraid that the judges will be closer to the perpetrators than to the victims. In fact, after the war, Polish courts were extremely careless in handling cases concerning crimes against Jews.43 The small looter is a personification of those who committed the crime or, perhaps, the culture that had formed them and made the extermination possible. The child treats the still-living Jews like “the deceased on vacation.” His smile reveals his satisfaction. Now he can openly show them that they do not mean anything anymore and enjoy displaying his hostility and contempt without suffering any consequences. This will become the sanctioned norm. The boy from the fire site appears at the trial as a witness for the defense of Frensen. Wygodzki shows how culture and social ties on a microscale make it impossible to come to the truth. They have reached an agreement in prison: Jan Matysiak testifies that the person who was present at the massacre was policeman Fransen, who was always wearing his uniform—not merchant Frensen, who used to dress in civilian clothes. Toward the end of his testimony, he says that—as a ten-year-old boy—he saw two Jews removing

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burned bodies from the site.44 This suggests he saw the narrator’s father and Chaim. Matysiak serves his time for complicity in robbery. As a member of an underground organization, he was said to help in entering the factory and robbing its safe. What he has in common with Frensen is hatred for the Jews and the Communists. It turns out that it was Matysiak who—as a thirteenyear-old—gave away to the Nazis the Jew Kwastel, who hid himself in the working district. It was similar with the second witness for the defense, Włodzimierz Cybulski: a small inciter and snoop, a flunky of the authorities before the war who offered similar services to the Nazis during the occupation. The origin of Frensen’s possessions does not raise his doubts, even though it must have been stolen from local Jews. For Cybulski, Frensen is a “great merchant.” When the court asks where he got the shop from, he answers that he bought it.45 Frensen comes into the possession of buildings and goods46 already several days after the arrival of the Germans.47 Thus, he must have been interested in removing the former owners. He employs a Jewish accountant, Hempel, in his shop. Probably by his order, the latter cooks the accounting books. When the fraud comes to light, Frensen denounces him and then—on the day before the Liquidation Aktion—arranges his release so that he can immediately be put in the transport to Auschwitz. For the Polish witnesses, Frensen’s behavior toward Hempel is impeccable. Maria Szumska, a courier of an underground national organization during the war, says, he was even helping Jews.48 She testifies before the Polish court that Mr. Frensen was very humane. Not only did he employ a Jew but also, when the Jew was arrested, managed to have him released.49 The narrator is familiar with the inside story of the whole situation. He saw Hempel on the day of the deportation, when the latter was trying in vain to find his employer; but that information is not disclosed to the Polish court. Wygodzki notices another phenomenon, too, which escaped Justice’s attention: the bond between the defendant and the witnesses for the defense. He defines it as selfless. The witnesses’ behavior does not stem from their desire for financial gain. Matysiak testifies “idealistically.” Intentionally or not, he wants to gain a different, superior, “noble” benefit.50 The same is true of Cybulski. The crime against the Jewish inhabitants of the town fades into the background during the court proceedings. Even though the charges are related to participation in a massacre of the Jews, the witnesses emphasize that the defendant treated the Poles well. When the court picks up the subject of an assault on the narrator carried out by Frensen, the fact that the latter battered him as a Jew escapes the account. Although unexpressed, the information is in the air. The prosecutor asks the victim about his reaction. The latter comments:

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Now I know what was hidden in the prosecutor’s voice, “An attacked man should defend himself!” Which of them is right? Is it the old man [. . .] [the judge—T. Ż.] or the young prosecutor, who accuses Frensen and—indirectly— me, too? Didn’t I help him in his crime, allowing him to batter me and accepting his blows as something due only because he was a fascist and I was a resident of this country in 1940?51

The accusation concerns passivity. Is it belief about Jewish passivity, deeply rooted in the anti-Semitic culture? Immediately after that reflection comes another, resulting from relentless logic rooted in the atmosphere in the courtroom: Frensen claims that he doesn’t know me. [. . .] but I know what he’s thinking “Why was I only beating him? After all, I could have just as well shot him, and there would be no witness to accuse me now.” My father returns again: would he be strong enough to place my body on the cart and, with the silly Chaim’s help, take it to the cemetery?52

Wygodzki emphasizes the incompatibility of experiences and languages, which is terrifying for a Jewish survivor. The filter through which the lawyers, the witnesses, and the whole court room perceive events separates them from the narrator like a wall. Ironically, the judge, who comes to his defense, raises his voice after the suggestion of the barrister that the defendant’s testimony weighs as much as the witness’s testimony, saying that “The witness is a Polish writer!”53 The fact that he is among the direct victims of the Holocaust and, as a result, observed the events up-close and recognized the social mechanisms behind them is not uttered aloud. Everything is pervaded by the laughter of the nine-year-old boy looting the fire site. It is he, in the narrator’s imagination, who would watch the father taking his son’s body to the cemetery. The small looter returns during reflections on the judge, whose grey hair brings back memories of the narrator’s father, even though both men are separated by a chasm of wartime experiences. When the narrator asks himself if the judge had experienced despair like the despair of the Jews, the memory returns: And I see the face of that boy I didn’t know. I see him smile. [. . .] Masca eris . . . I will never see you among the living ones; I will never meet you, a nightmare.54

Wygodzki develops the story in such a way as to deny the narrator’s opinions. Jan Matysiak appears in the court room, but there is probably something more to it. The division into the Polish and the Jewish world and the unexpressed alliance between the occupier and the occupied related to

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the Jews—which terrified the narrator’s father while removing the dead bodies and which found itself in the title of the story—does not disappear. The face of the boy from the fire site merges with the image of the laughing man from Victor Hugo’s novel, “De denasatis. Bucca fissa usque ad aures, genzivis denudatis, nosque murdridato, masca eris, et ridebis semper.”55 (About the noseless. With your lips split up to your ears, bare gums and deformed nose, you will be a mask and you will be laughing forever.) Ursus quotes Conquest’s description of the treatment he used to cripple the main character. Laughter is a sign of disability—a wound, deviation, and atrocity. Matysiak lacks only the sensitivity and tragedy of Hugo’s figure. From Wygodzki’s point of view, the trial of Frensen changes into the trial of culture. Conclusions from the proceedings are not optimistic. During the first questioning, the narrator, looking at the police officer, was thinking, “Could he be guessing that when I return back in thoughts, everything I have been erecting with effort for several years is collapsing again?”56 The story shows that it happens not only because of his return to the past. Wygodzki says that the revolution is powerless against anti-Semitism rooted in culture—an unexpected statement, considering the contemporary ideas about the literature involved in the new system in the first half of the 1950s, which is seen only as propaganda serving the authorities. In Blessed Be the Hands . . . , a short story written eleven years later, Wygodzki no longer addresses readers, trying to alert them to relationships between characters. He does not resort to anti-nationalist rhetoric from the 1950s, either. The description appears balanced and neutral, although it concerns the same problem. This time, the story is set in Sochaczew. A German movie star, whose husband was shooting anti-Semitic propaganda films for the Nazi party, is employed in Poland as an actress in a film. The narrator is her translator and looks after her. We meet them when they are looking for a way to go from the film set in the countryside to Warsaw because they accidentally missed the bus that came for the filmmakers. The actress is afraid. She perceives Poland as a country in which the occupation wounds have not yet healed. She feels guilty and has the impression that she attracts the attention of local people. She fears unfriendly or even aggressive reactions to the sound of the German language she uses. Finally, the translator manages to find a man who will take them to a station in Sochaczew by cab. On the way, Mr. Jagła, the cab driver, stops to show the actress something: At the side, on a little square close to the road, behind some low buildings, stood a high wall. It looked like a stage decoration shooting upward with a flat scorched quadrangle supported with diagonally placed logs. Through the window openings without frames or panes we could see the darkening sky. At the

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bottom of the wall weeds grew rampant. My heart sank. I knew what that wall was; I knew what building must have stood here where now only white stones remained with the traces of the fire that had consumed the inside and the rest of the walls.57

They are in the front of the synagogue ruins. Mr. Jagła explains, “Tell her that in front of that wall Germans shot all the Jews from our town.” “I won’t tell her anything. Go on, will you?”58 the narrator says. The atmosphere is growing tense: Mr Jagła got up, turned to us, I saw him standing, husky and tall. I was sitting so I had to raise my head. His eyes and mouth, his whole face, was laughing. He slowly lifted his hand, pointed at the scorched wall, and said, “There all the kikes, kaputt.” And he drew his flatly spread hand along his throat as if he were cutting it with a knife. He gave a short laugh. [. . .] “What we suffered, we suffered, but blessed be the hands that did that,” and he once again pointed at the wall. “Repeat it to her.”59

The German actress parries the Polish driver’s words like an attack, while he addresses her as if she were an ally. He thanks her. Again, laughter is heard, analogous to the laughter of the boy from the fire site in Sprzymierzeńcy. In 1961, Wygodzki presents the topic laconically: through one figure, one event, one statement. He loses an extremely important dimension that he managed to capture ten years before: the extensive network of social relations that suggests the scope of the agreement (realized or not) on the Jews and the Holocaust. The image of the courtroom became a chance to show a crosssection of attitudes and points of view. Mr. Jagła, while expressive, remains an isolated figure. It is easy to consider him an exception and push him to the sidelines. The conversation has an unexpected ending. The actress insists: “What did he say,” the woman was not giving up. “Nothing.” “He said something about Germans. I know that. [. . .]” She was sobbing, unable to conceal her trembling lips and hands. She made such a gesture as if she wanted to get up and leave the droshky. I put my hand on hers. I wanted to be kind to her. I lied, “He said it was his house and the Germans burned it down during the war. [. . .]” “But he laughed. I saw him laughing.” “Yes, he laughed. He said that he had a new house now. A nicer one.”60

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The new, nicer house means Poland without the Jews, for which Mr. Jagła thanks the Germans. He is thanking them for Sochaczew and Będzin. In fact, there is no place for the narrator there. The man recognizes the ruins of the synagogue correctly and—looking at a young, olive-skinned Italian from the film crew—thinks, “Under her short eyelashes her eyes were dark, serious, and heavy. In former times, such eyes were frequently encountered; now you no longer see them in Poland.”61 He remains silent. Between the Polish cab driver and the German with the Nazi past, he must lie and hide. His attempt at easing the situation is an abdication, just like the hurried departure from town S. of the narrator of Sprzymierzeńcy. Tadeusz Borowski: This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen Wygodzki was taken to Auschwitz by transport that became popular in Polish literature due to Tadeusz Borowski. The narrator of the short stories from Auschwitz goes with Canada—a detachment of prisoners employed in unloading transports with Jews, sorting victims into those who will labor and those who will be murdered—to the ramp, when the “Sosnowiec-Będzin” transport arrives. It is the summer of 1943. Borowski shows an unusual image of a meeting between a Polish character and the exterminated Jews. Vorarbeiter Tadek is a part of the Holocaust machinery and speaks about his experience in the first person. In the story This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, the ramp at which transports arrive is treated extremely instrumentally as a “good” place in a concentration camp—an El Dorado, where one could grow rich by stealing from Jews. The Jews, sent directly to gas chambers, supply the whole camp. Auschwitz runs on the provisions they bring, wears their clothes, and deals in their valuables. It is a privilege to work with the Kommandos supervising the unloading. Borowski’s narrator wishes to go to the ramp to get a shirt and shoes. At the same time, he becomes a part of the Hell that takes place there. He says: I am furious, simply furious with those people—furious because I must be here because of them. I feel no pity. I am not sorry they’re going to the gas chamber. Damn them all! I could throw myself at them, beat them with my fists.62

In response, he hears that it is “natural, predictable and calculated.”63 This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen shows the epicenter of the Holocaust through the prism of participation. The camp system is based on co-participation of the prisoners. Even though everything takes place under solitary confinement conditions, where there was practically no free choice, the Polish audience found it difficult to accept Borowski’s writing style

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together with its intellectual potential. Borowski did not only use the perspective of co-participation when he described the camp; he was also interested in social practices and ways to cope with reality in the world outside of the wire. Farewell to Maria describes Warsaw during the occupation—Warsaw with its black market and illegal business activities. One recognizes the type of look Borowski has at his surroundings in the following comment about the owner of a shop in Skaryszewska Street, who—apart from trading in groceries—acted as an agent in ransoming Polish prisoners to be sent to forced labor in Germany: He did not fill the shots of moonshine, gave a hundred grams less butter than expected, cut bread into uneven parts and mercilessly wrung cash out of men for each girl released on the side because he wanted to live by himself, he had a wife, a son in the second grade of the secondary school and a daughter, who took part in upper secondary-school secret classes, felt the tempting allure of clothes, boys’ charm, the taste of education and the magic of conspiracy.64

Profits from fraud and bribes were the other side of ordinary middle-class life, as well as the usually unnoticed reverse of secret classes and struggles for independence. There is an important plot in the one-day story happening in the building depot in Skaryszewska Street: An old, rich Jewess comes from the ghetto with a platform filled with goods. She appears at the very beginning of the story, when young people, the narrator’s friends, leave office rooms in the morning. We part from her on one of the last pages. The seemingly minor episode takes up a surprisingly amount of space in the story, as much as—or perhaps even more than—the story of the titular character, Maria. Before the war, the doctor’s wife had employed the depot manager. “He was working then as a store man in a Jewish company. Under the vigilant eye of the owner, he was stubbornly developing to end up as a successful man. He bought a sports car and earned up to three hundred zlotys per day in a taxi, excluding the driver’s daily rate.”65 The earnings were not entirely official, and the manager—then a driver—exploited his principals a bit. Borowski adds an ironic point: “He understood that he was acting in accordance with human law, and he was living life to the full, without nagging spiritual dilemmas. From his possessions of the time, he has saved his plots and currency, as well as deep attachment to the old doctor’s wife.”66 During the occupation, the narrator describes him with the following words: The manager knew a lot about gold and valuables. He, himself, was selling and purchasing furniture, knew the addresses of real estate agents and traded

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in flats, had connections among train robbers and helped them in their contact with second-hand shops, was friends with drivers and car parts sellers and was involved in extensive exchange with the ghetto.67

He was also involved in trading in wood “from post-Jewish houses from the Otwock ghetto, sold in bulk by the kreishauptmann to the Polish entrepreneur.”68 It was probably due to the last part of his activities that he intensified his contact with the doctor’s wife. Depot employees justify the appearance of the Jewess on the grounds of the manager’s gratitude: “She made him a man, so he rewards her.”69 When she addresses him, the doctor’s wife sometimes uses the familiar or diminutive form of his name or talks about him in the third person.70 This intimacy— reminiscent of the times when he was the driver—stands in contrast with her behavior. She is anxious, which is obvious; she feels particularly uncomfortable in the manager’s office—which was probably her property before the war. She is worried about her things, afraid of theft. She looks poor, “too poor for a pre-war owner of a huge building depot. [. . .] too poor even for an owner of a platform filled with all kinds of baggage.”71 Indeed, they are the last remains of her possessions.72 Apart from gratitude, help offered to the doctor’s wife is inspired by other motives. When she wants to return to the ghetto because she did not manage to get her daughter out of it, the narrator—thinking about the manager—says, “The old woman has too big a bundle for him to let her go.”73 Indeed, saving the Jewess is also a business, which is actually quite profitable. It arouses lively interest in the shop owner, who acts as an agent in ransoming Polish prisoners; a man who—judging by his characteristics provided by the narrator—is far from altruistic. The manager, too, desperately tries to divert the doctor’s wife’s attention from her daughter, who stayed in the ghetto. He encourages her to stay and lists sums of necessary expenses.74 When the decision to return is made, there is a note of distance in cordial speech: “Forgive me, Jasio, that I bothered you,” she says to the manager. “Because it paid off for you, didn’t it?” “You shouldn’t think so,” said the manager, shrugging his shoulders. “The money I took, I spent it on the flat, and those several pieces of clothing you left in my place can always be. . . . It won’t make me rich.”75

In Borowski’s wartime Warsaw, the “Aryan side” and the ghetto are joined by a network of interests governed by the same rules as in the whole occupied world. Terror, power relations, and hierarchies introduced by the Nazis are elements of trade that cannot be ignored, which in turn contribute to

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strengthening the strong and pushing those condemned to the Holocaust over the cliff. To varying degrees, everyone takes part in these relations. Borowski includes the narrator, who seems to be only watching the doctor’s wife, in her story. Already departing, the manager says, “She’s forgotten to take the machine from you.” What he presumably meant is a typewriter Tadeusz kept under his bed. “The machine will be useful for the company,”76 he replies, thus entering the circle of benefits and participation. It is worth noting that in the edition published by the National Library of Poland, the story Pożegnanie z Marią is not supplemented with any commentary that would explain the relations between the “Aryan side” and the ghetto.77 Borowski, who survived Auschwitz himself, ridiculed the figure of a narrator not involved in camp relations. He formulated the idea behind his writing style in sharp polemics with Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a Catholic writer and moralist and the author of the popular book Z otchłani (From the Abyss),78 in which she described her experiences from Auschwitz: One cannot write impersonally about Auschwitz. [. . .] You should finally tell everyone how you were buying beds in hospital, pushing Muslims into chimneys and buying men and women, what you were doing in unterkunfts, Canadas, krankenbaums, the Gypsy camp. Tell us about all that and many other small things. [. . .] But write that it was you who did that. That you deserve a part of the infamy of Auschwitz too! Or maybe not, which is it?79

In his opinion, the falsehood of Z otchłani consists in creating an image of the narrator as a witness who is not involved in the camp reality—a witness with whom readers can easily identify, in whose innocence they recognize themselves. Borowski is not, however, moralistic. As he explains, “nobody will catch me accusing the author [. . .] of going through the camp in an unethical way.”80 What he means is intellectual accuracy and individual and collective self-consciousness. “The only thing for which I bear a grudge against her—and it is quite a serious grudge—is that she lacked the courage to introduce herself to the story and judge herself.”81 Building a narrative from the position of an uninvolved witness eliminates social mechanisms from the field of vision, replacing sociological analysis with myth. Borowski writes, “The author of Z otchłani was not interested in the abyss and, talking about the abyss, did not care about the ‘realities,’ as a result giving a false image of her environment.”82 In the case of Kossak-Szczucka, it is a religious and national myth: a belief in the superiority and heroism of Polish female prisoners, who differ from the rest mainly because they are Poles and Catholics. Despite the conspicuous naivety of Kossak-Szczucka’s reasoning, literary circles defended the

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author against Borowski. Opinions and beliefs violated by Borowski were apparently so important for the collective identity that any criticism of them was met with indignation. The Main Board of the Polish Writers’ Trade Union wrote an open letter in which it demanded he be brought before the fellow-members’ arbitration board. Among others, Paweł Jasienica accused Borowski of questioning the Poles’ national solidarity during the war and— indirectly—creating a false image of Polish behavior.83 Private Historical Reenactment, or Czesław Śliwa Alias Jacek ben Silberstein Beneath both the reluctance to talk about co-participation in the Holocaust and idealization of the Polish community lies a constant disposition to violence against the Other-Jew. Historical reenactment, provided that it is not subjected to self-image constraints, reveals that readiness. Konsul (Consul), a comedy by Mirosław Bork, was released in 1989. This is a story of a true figure, Czesław Śliwa, a swindler active toward the end of the 1960s. Among his deceptions, one draws attention: Śliwa, claiming to be a Jew who plans to leave Poland forever, came to wealthy Poles and declared that he wanted to hand over his property to them as an act of gratitude for saving his life during the occupation. Although the Poles he had cheated had nothing to do with helping Jews, they swallowed the catch immediately. They were ready to incur the necessary expenses to bring about the transfer of property. In Bork’s film, the whole situation takes place at the close of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), in the realities of the oncoming transformation and capitalism. The swindler goes to Otwock in order to find an alleged savior from the times of war: the Righteous who saved his life. He chooses Mitura, a local taxi-driver, whose family had nothing to do with saving the Jews, as a target. Mitura does not admit that he is not the right person in order to show gratitude to him and decides to fleece the Jew, coming across a more cunning person than he is. The story with the transfer of savings seems probable to him because prior to 1989, the citizens of socialist countries could not export foreign currency abroad. Czesław Śliwa repeated the fraud several times, except that he did not do it toward the end of the 1980s, but between August 8 and November 28, 1969,84 when he was arrested for the last time. The dates are important; in their context, one can perfectly understand the motive for “leaving Poland,” together with the situation of the character for whom the swindler passed and the reactions of the defrauded. We are in Poland just after March 1968, and the last Jews are leaving the country under compulsion, in the atmosphere of an anti-Semitic campaign.

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In such circumstances, Śliwa suggests to his victims an image they would like to see most: The image of a Jew who is grateful toward his saviors, who leaves the country, and who leaves his possessions to them. Even though the violence raging around them did not escape their attention the defrauded unanimously agree to fleece and fool the Jew on parting.85 They are not bothered by the gross injustice of forced emigration. Acts of discrimination and violence against Jews are normalized. We are close to mechanisms of co-participation described by Wygodzki and Borowski. March 1968 brought the revival of the narrative about the Righteous in its harmonious and “groomed” version. Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej . . . [This one is from my homeland], a book that ended the campaign of collecting testimonies about Polish help for the Jews initiated by Władysław Bartoszewski, was published in 1967. Its second, expanded edition appeared in 1969. The book was quickly translated into English in order to protect Polish self-image abroad.86 In the meantime, Mieczysław Moczar’s environment referred to Bartoszewski’s work in their anti-Semitic texts,87 and the documentary film Sprawiedliwi [The Righteous] was produced. The subject of help was supposed to determine the image of the Poles, and it thus covered violence increasing toward the end of the 1960s and its social foundations. In Moczar’s point of view, it justified the exclusion of the Jews, attributing ingratitude to them and casting them in the role of traitors slandering Poland. Śliwa gave the defrauded a Jew who was completely compatible with their collective self-image: he was grateful, with no trace of grievance, and ready to give them everything he had. Violence disappeared under the pretext of omnipresent harmony, which completely paralyzed the victims’ vigilance. At the same time, self-satisfaction did not change the practice of taking advantage of the Jews, which is precisely the element on which the idea for fraud was based. In Konsul, Mirosław Bork ends the episode with a scene in a courtroom. As a witness, Mitura explains to the judge, “I’ve never had anything to do with swindles.” When asked, “Did your father really hide anyone during the occupation?” he says, “No, my father didn’t. . . . But my neighbor. . . . He’s already dead.” In documentary Konsul i inni [Consul and others], a film by Krzysztof Gradowski from 1970, one of the alleged Righteous, who was defrauded as well, says, “There was no sign of him being an inauthentic figure.” Mieczysław Śliwa must have known a lot about the Polish majority’s practices toward the Jews. He was a survivor of the Holocaust. He survived in a Polish family in the countryside. Maciejewski states that Śliwa denied his connections with the family that gave shelter to him. His Jewish parents did not survive the war. None of his relatives survived either.88 Despite complicated relations between Jews and those who hid them and the unclear

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boundary between help and robbery,89 the biography of Śliwa is presented as a story of ingratitude. Michał Ogórek writes: Swindles and manipulations of Konsul are not shocking to us anymore, even though some of them leave a nasty aftertaste, especially taking advantages of the alleged cases of his life being saved during the war by false saviors. The fact that they are so willing to enter the role of saviors is obviously mean and comical. [. . .] However, the mystification looks much worse against the information that the real Śliwa was really taken in and brought up during the war by someone named Śliwa. The Polish saying that he is ready to bargain away his father and mother finds literal confirmation here.90

Ogórek demonstrates blindness characteristic of culture. In actual fact, Śliwa swindled people whose conduct has nothing to do with helping Jews in any sense. He was an acute observer and, it seems, a very intelligent man. He knew to which events he was referring. In Krzysztof Gradowski’s documentary film Konsul i inni [Consul and others], he appears—at his own request—disguised as an Orthodox Jew, with a long beard attached to his chin by the make-up artist. He speaks with a drawl, like in Jewish jokes told by comedians. He presents himself to the audience in a way they would like to see him, this time as a cunning—yet likeable—Jewish swindler, an embodiment of the dark side of stereotype. He begins with the song “I’ll give, give, give, I won’t refuse, I will give you the best I have . . . ,” a paraphrase of the lyrics of Daj mi świat [Give me the world] by Jan Zalewski from Stenia Kozłowska’s repertoire. Then he states, “I never begin with words. For I may only give someone pleasure in advance”; the narrator announces, “For dear viewers from Jacek Ben Silberstein: Viennese Waltz.” There is quite a large amount of irony in this self-presentation; Śliwa sneers at the audience, in front of whom he has always acted. RECONSTRUCTED MEMORY In the reenactment organized in Będzin, the intention to cross the distance that separates Poles from the Other goes hand-in-hand with those acts of removing all traces of complicity in the extermination that we know of from other texts— which are often treated as models. “Is it so hard to understand that one could not re-enact murders, massacres, pogroms? It is not fun, and not everybody is Andrzej Wajda. Still, there are other forms of remembrance,”91 Seweryn Blumsztajn wrote. However, he did not ask the question about whether the

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sentiment of the reenactment in Będzin overlapped in some crucial points with the content of the mainstream of the Polish culture. The history presented during the performance is adjusted to the image with which the Polish community would like to identify. The adjustment prevails over elements of the real events that could introduce dissonance to the idyllic self-image. Due to the lighthearted manner in which the story is narrated, it is easier to succumb to the emotions suggested by its creators. On the other hand, the events, recreated and experienced during the reenactment, become the experienced truth. The narrative about the Jewish neighbors shifts from the sphere of memories revived by those who participated in the events during the occupation and the domain of historical research (where critical distance is kept and researchers create and use methods to verify the image of the past) to that of memory understood as a reservoir of vivid impressions and emotions of a group from which the majority of eyewitnesses is already gone. The present-day group of viewers does not experience the reality but its embellished reenactment. This culture-made memory of performance transforms a crafted stereotype into an experienced reality. There is faith in the reliability of such performances, intensified by conviction about their educational and patriotic value. “Truth” of experience—based, in great measure, on fiction—becomes evident and is non-debatable, impervious to critical procedures. Nostalgia The framework of the Będzin reenactment is nostalgia. The performance began with the violin melody My Yiddishe Momme, played by a girl in a white dress. The song, written by Marian Hemar, talks about an irreparable loss, waiting for those who shall never return, and inconsolable mourning. Just like the readers of Rymkiewicz’s novel, the audience and actors alike are supposed to see the last day in the life of the Jews from Będzin through the lens of these and similar emotions. The subject of the reenactment is the relationship connecting the audience and the participants with the characters of the performance. Experiencing compassion and loss, hence changing the attitude toward the excluded that is rooted in the culture, the community of viewers recognizes itself in the image of a sympathizing witness. In the experience of reenactment, an actor is created who did not exist in the wartime reality: the Pole, kind toward the exterminated, is treated as a social backdrop for the events. Desire for changing cultural practices overlaps with and contrasts desire for repairing the self-image and removing from it the tormenting dissonance. The knowledge of hostile indifference, aversion to or violence against the victims disappears

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from the self-image. The problem seems to be solved—after all, we have already undergone transformation—but this solution is superficial. The practices of exclusion are neither named nor reworked through critical reflection but are instead repressed from consciousness and memory. The audience and actors need not reach for the past to understand their own behaviors, which provokes the feeling of discomfort. This discomfort simply disappears. The chance of distance, from which the thought that everything was different could arise, also disappears. Succumbing to the emotional aura of reenactment gives the impression of certainty. Still, attempts at returning to the reality—especially its darker side—can easily be treated as invidious. When the opportunity arises, emotional involvement and intensely experienced closeness with the victims merge and transform into the feeling of injustice. Those who do not know and do not want to know about Polish aggression (and who, at the same time, experience themselves as compassionate witnesses of the Holocaust reconstructed according to their own script) probably will not listen to true testimonies of Polish Jews and will regard them as slanders. Polish Jews, meanwhile, can only confirm the image that accompanies reenactment by passing over their own experience of exclusion and violence by the Polish majority. (A similar mechanism operates in the highbrow culture. See chapters 1, 4, and 5.) Community of Sympathizing Witnesses The second important feature of the image produced during the reenactment is casting the Polish community in the role of witnesses. The main characters of this performance are two groups: the Nazis and the Jews. The third character from the classical triad proposed by Raul Hilberg is missing: there are no witnesses, no bystanders.92 However, the group that has been removed from the reenactment—the Poles—can be found in the structure of the performance, though not on stage. The spectators are standing behind white-and-red police tape separating them from the space where the reenacted events take place. Passers-by become witnesses to a crime and stop behind the police tape to observe something that has happened without their participation. Being perfectly separated from the crime, they can look at it from the defined space, behind a conventional border. The audience acquires the status of a group that is both present and absent. The desire to recognize oneself in this kind of role had already appeared in the Polish culture during the war. The narrator of Antoni Szymanowski’s brochure published in the underground, Likwidacja getta warszawskiego. Reportaż93 [Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Report], moves around the closed district during the Great Aktion as an exterritorial observer, who is safe in the raging terror.94 Zofia Kossak-Szczucka acts similarly in her

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popular Protest: she looks at the ghetto and sealed cars as if she was the omniscient narrator in a nineteenth-century novel.95 The Polish community distances itself from the interaction with both the occupier and its Jewish victims. By definition of the role that has been ascribed to it, complicity in the crime proves to be impossible. In Polish culture, it is customary to describe Polish bystanders as “indifferent” witnesses, erasing from memory the space where persecuted Jews met with their Polish neighbors. As we learn from Wygodzki and Borowski—and from many other testimonies, literary works, films (e.g., Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto by Jerzy Andrzejewski, Medallions by Zofia Nałkowska, Ślady [Traces] by Ludwik Hering or Samson by Kazimierz Brandys together with Andrzej Wajda’s screen adaptations), or historical research (e.g., works by the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research of IFiS PAN)—in the reality of the occupation, meetings with the victims of the Shoah were a part of everyday life. In such situations, every kind of behavior was a choice that influenced the fate the victims met. The act of not calling a Jew a Jew, thus leaving him unidentified, allowed him to disappear in the crowd, whereas severing relations deprived him of social base and blocked the escape routes. Meeting the exterminated also meant involvement, including help, trade (which often was in fact the trading of plunder), or denunciations, and open aggression. To a large extent, recognizing oneself as a witness makes it impossible for the viewers to see the Polish activities toward the exterminated, in particular those attitudes that facilitated the implementation of the Final Solution. Simultaneously, the belief about separation and non-involvement interferes with compassion and nostalgia, creating a constellation of images in which the crossing of the borderline that separates the victims becomes probable only in the case of help. In this kind of consciousness, there is the argument, “We could not do anything,” in addition to the emotional aura—the witnesses sympathize with the victims—that convinces one of the commonness of saving Jews, or at least the intention of alleviating the victims’ fate. When survivors say that the Polish community collaborated with the Nazis, the Polish dominant majority expresses both conviction about their ingratitude (“After all, we indeed helped them”) and affront at the mere suggestion. The Imagined Other The performance organized in Będzin reinforces the image of the Other defined by the majority’s narrative. A friendly attitude toward the Jewish characters—sympathetic and nostalgic—includes them in the history told by the group. The Jews do nothing that might violate the self-image of the Poles that dominates the narrative of the past. In the photographs documenting the reenactment, one can see them being sad, terrified, and suffering; and they

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are always presented only in relation to the Nazis. Depicted violence—not ours—is supposed to arouse the viewers’ opposition, whereas the fighters’ resistance is meant to arouse admiration and respect. The reenacted Jews—and the reenactment itself—do not mention that which worried Wygodzki in both wartime and postwar Będzin, as well as in Poland generally. Due to this silence, they can remain in the state of undisturbed harmony with the viewers. They are de facto absent; they do not have—and should not have—anything to say in postwar conditions. The Jews are accepted as long as they do not bother the majority with their own story. As long as they do not demand that the rules of communication be changed and instead agree to subordination to the majority, they obediently confirm its version of the events. Although they vanished from Będzin, their return—be it only a testimony presented from their point of view—does not arouse interest. The silence of the Jews is a symptom of violence inscribed in the project of crossing the barrier of otherness by means of accepting, with compassion, the position of the exterminated. Looking at the photographs, one gets the impression that the style of the actors’ make-up is different. The uniforms and weapons of the Nazis have been reconstructed with reverence. Historical reenactment groups are interested in them, and not only in the context of the performance representing the liquidation of the ghetto but, most of all, in that of reconstructing historical battles involving Poles. The costumes of Jews seem to have been prepared by amateurs at home. However, they have been prepared neatly, making use of the iconography representing the Będzin Jews.96 Apart from the orthodox, wearing hats and characteristic beards, there are assimilated Jews dressed according to the fashion of the early 1940s, followed by different social strata. These costumes are makeshift to some extent, and therefore were likely created only for this performance. The difference in the intensity and persistence of interest is striking. At the same time, in the reenactment, the roles of Jews are played by the Polish actors who have pinned the Star of David to their everyday, yet stylized clothes. The performance leads them from the Polish everyday life of 2010 into a psychodrama, in which they portray the excluded. Trying to identify with the Jewish experience, they go through their tragedy in their own way. Coming closer to the Other, taking their place due to the theatrical performance, creates an impression that every one of them could be put in the place of the exterminated and that violence toward the Jews is completely arbitrary. This is not accompanied by the awareness that the Jews fell victim to exclusion being the majority practice. The “universalization” of the Jewish fate—including it in what could happen to any member of the dominating group—perforce conceals a fundamental difference of position between those who are discriminated against and those who discriminate. The excluded do

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not have access to what is obvious and transparent for the dominant group: social capitals, networks of contacts, freedom of movement in common space, possibilities to hide and vanish in the faceless crowd. Moreover, the barriers they face result from the practices of the majority group that are not visible for their members, although are repeated in everyday life. Wygodzki faced these barriers during in the trial in Będzin. In the reenactment, there are no elements that would provide knowledge about the phenomenon to the actors and the viewers and this way modify their feelings and cultural self-image. Entering the experience of recreating the past, the reenactors and the spectators dissociate themselves from any hint of self-awareness. Anyone could derive an impression from the reenactment that they are like Yiddishe Momme from the song, even while the reenactment itself positions the audience such that it cannot recognize or understand her situation. NOTES 1. Barbara Pietkiewicz, “Na własne oczy. Projekt: Likwidacja” [With my very own eyes. Project: Liquidation], phot. Anna Musiałówna, Polityka, September 18, 2010, 120. 2. Pietkiewicz, “Na własne oczy,” 120. 3. PAP, “Będzin / Kontrowersje wokół planowanej rekonstrukcji likwidacji getta” [Będzin / Controversies surrounding the planned reenactment of the ghetto’s liquidation], dzieje​.pl​, September 8, 2010, http:​/​/dzi​​eje​.p​​l​/akt​​ualno​​sci​/ b​​edzin​​-kont​​rower​​sje​-w​​okol-​​plano​​wanej​​-reko​​nstru​​kcji-​​​likwi​​dacji​​-gett​​a. 4. Ibid. 5. Jan Hartman, “Trochę pokory . . . —o zasadności przywoływania traumy w rekonstrukcjach historycznych” [A little more humbleness—about the legitimacy of recalling trauma in historical reenactments], interview by Łukasz Białkowski and Michał Fundowicz, MOCAK Forum, no. 1 (2011). 6. Seweryn Blumsztajn, “Źle się bawią w Będzinie” [They play dangerously in Będzin], Gazeta Wyborcza, September 8, 2010, http://wyborcza​.pl​/1​,7684​​2​,834​​8189,​​ Zle​_s​​ie​_ba​​wia​_w​​_Bedz​​inie.​​html.​ 7. Anna Malinowska, “Dzieci zlikwidują getto” [Children will liquidate the ghetto], Gazeta Wyborcza, September 8, 2010, http://sosnowiec​ .wyborcza​ .pl​ / sosnowiec​/1​,9386​​7​,836​​9073,​​Rekon​​struk​​cja​_l​​ikwid​​acji_​​getta​​_w​_Be​​dzini​​e_​_ZD​​JECIA​ _​.htm​​l​#ixz​​z41Gr​​BAbMf​. 8. See Adam Szydłowski, “Dzieci nie zagrają getta” [Children will not play the ghetto], interview by Anna Malinowska, wyborcza​.pl​, September 9, 2010, http:// wyborcza​.pl​/1​,7684​​2​,835​​2110,​​Dziec​​i​_nie​​_zagr​​aja​_g​​etta.​​html#​​TRrel​​SST. 9. PAP, “Będzin / Kontrowersje.” 10. Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, Umschlagplatz (Warszawa: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1988).

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11. Cf. Bartoszewski, Władysław, Lewin, Zofia, eds. Righteous Among the Nations: How Poles Helped the Jews 1939–1945 (London: Earlscourt Publications, 1969). 12. Cf. Kazimierz Moczarski, Conversations with an Executioner. An incredible 225-day-long interview with the man who destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto, ed. Mariana Fitzpatrick (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981). 13. Janusz Morgenstern (dir.), Kolumbowie [Columbuses], Polish series, Zespół Filmowy Iluzjon (1970). 14. Jacek Leociak, “Liczba ofiar jako metafora w dyskursie publicznym o Zagładzie” [The number of victims as a metaphor in the public discourse about the Holocaust], Studia Litteraria Polono-Slavica 8, SOW (MONTH 2008): 1–16. 15. Błoński, Jan. “The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto,” in: ‘My brother’s keeper’ recent Polish debates on the Holocaust, ed. Anthony Polonsky (London; New York: Routledge in association with Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, 1990), 35–53. 16. Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, The final station: Umschlagplatz, trans. Nina Taylor (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994), 139. 17. Ibid., 165–66. 18. See Ewa Koźmińska-Frejlak, “Świadkowie Zagłady—Holocaust jako zbiorowe doświadczenie Polaków” [The witnesses of the extermination—the Holocaust as a collective experience of Poles], Przegląd Socjologiczny. Kwartalnik Polskiego Instytutu Socjologicznego, vol. XLIX/2 (2000): 181–206. 19. Rymkiewicz, The Final Station, 128–29. 20. Ibid., 299. 21. Jürgen Stroop, Żydowska dzielnica mieszkaniowa w Warszawie już nie istnieje! Es gibt keinen jüdischen Wohnbezirk—in Warschau mehr! [The Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no more!], ed. A. Żbikowski (Warsaw: Insert Publisher, 2009), Sheet 91. 22. Rymkiewicz, The final station, 326. 23. Ibid., 129. 24. Ibid., 42. 25. Ibid., 75. 26. Ibid., 79. 27. Ibid., 79–80. 28. Ibid. 271–72. 29. Ibid., 79. 30. Ibid., 156–57. 31. Tadeusz Różewicz, “recycling,” in Recycling, trans. Barbara Plebanek and Tony Howard, with an introduction and additional translation by Adam Czerniawski (Todmorden: Arc, 2001), 25. 32. Monika Szabłowska-Zaremba, “‘Tragarz pamięci’—rzecz o Stanisławie Wygodzkim” [“Memory carrier”—about Stanisław Wygodzki], in Ślady obecności [Trace of presence], ed. Sławomir Buryła, Alina Molisak (Kraków: Universitas, 2010), 219–20. 33. Sławomir Buryła, “Stanisław Wygodzki (1907–1922),” in Polish literature towards the Holocaust 1939-1968, ed. Jacek Leociak, Sławomir Buryła, Dorota Krawczyńska (Place of publication not identified: Peter Lang, 2020), 593.

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34. Wygodzki’s works have been discussed twice during the seminar “Wobec Zagłady—w stronę demitologizacji kategorii opisu. Kategoria «obojętni świadkowie»” [Facing the Holocaust: Toward the demythologisation of the category of description. ‘Indifferent witnesses’ category] at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk, IBL PAN): on October 9 and 23, 2013 (oeuvre and its reception; opening speeches by Helena Datner), and December 16, 2015 (prose from the 1950s; opening speeches by Anna Zawadzka and Helena Datner); the following analysis develops the issues outlined during the event. The stenographic record from the discussion is available in the seminar archive. 35. Stanisław Wygodzki, “Sprzymierzeńcy,” in Widzenie. Opowiadania [Vision. Short stories] (Kraków: PIW, 1950), 189–90, 194 and 219. 36. See Jan Przemsza-Zieliński, ed., Żydzi w Zagłębiu. Żyli wśród nas, mieszkali i zginęli [Jews in Zagłębie. They lived among us and died] (Sonsowiec: Sowa-Press, 1993), 89–91. 37. “Będzin,” accessed June 23, 2020, https​:/​/sz​​tetl.​​org​.p​​l​/pl/​​miejs​​cowos​​ci​/b/​​406​ -b​​edzin​​/99​-h​​istor​​ia​-sp​​olecz​​nosci​​/1370​​57​-hi​​​stori​​a​-spo​​leczn​​osci. 38. Wygodzki, “Sprzymierzeńcy,” 189. 39. Ibid., 191. 40. Ibid., 197. 41. Ibid., 193. 42. Ibid., 196–97. 43. Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors. The destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne (Princen [Princeton?]: Princeton University Press, 2001), 18–21. 44. Wygodzki, “Sprzymierzeńcy,” 210. 45. Ibid., 206. 46. Ibid., 190. 47. Ibid., 206. 48. Ibid., 215. 49. Ibid., 220. 50. Ibid., 211. 51. Ibid., 198. 52. Ibid., 199. 53. Ibid., 201. 54. Ibid., 197. 55. Victor Hugo, L’homme qui rit, [The man who laughs] (Place of publication not identified: Bibebook, 1869), 189, http:​/​/www​​.bibe​​book.​​com​/f​​i les/​​ebook​​/libr​​e​/V2/​​ hugo_​​victo​​r_-​_l​​_homm​​​e​_qui​​_rit.​​pdf. 56. Wygodzki, “Sprzymierzeńcy,” 190. 57. Stanisław Wygodzki, “Blessed Be the Hands . . . ,” trans. Monika AdamczykGarbowska, in Contemporary Jewish Writing in Poland. An Anthology, ed. Anthony Polonsky and Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 70. 58. Ibid., 71. 59. Ibid.

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60. Ibid., 71–72. 61. Ibid., 62. 62. Tadeusz Borowski, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” in eadem This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, ed. and trans. Barbara Vedder (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), 40. 63. Ibid., 40. 64. Tadeusz Borowski, “Pożegnanie z Marią” [Farewell to Maria], in eadem, Utwory wybrane [Selected Works], ed. Andrzej Werner (Wrocław, Warszawa, Kraków: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1991), 156. 65. Ibid., 158. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., 162. 69. Ibid., 152. 70. Ibid., 159–60. 71. Ibid., 159. 72. See: ibid., 161. 73. Ibid., 168. 74. Ibid., 160. 75. Ibid., 171. 76. Ibid., 175 77. Tadeusz Borowski, Utwory wybrane [Selected works], ed. Andrzej Werner, BN, seria I, nr 276 (Wrocław, Warszawa, Kraków: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1991). 78. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Z otchłani [From the abyss] (Rzym: Polski Dom Wydawniczy, 1946). 79. Tadeusz Borowski, “Alicja w krainie czarów” [Alice in Wonderland], Pokolenie 1/7, January 15, 1947, quoted in Tadeusz Borowski, Utwory zebrane [Collected works], introduction Wiktor Woroszylski, vol. III (Warsaw: PIW, 1954), 30–31. 80. Ibid., 30. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid., 23. 83. Paweł Jasienica, “Warto pogadać” [It’s worth talking], Tygodnik Powszechny, March 2, 1947: 4–5; see also: idem “Spowiedź udręczonych” [Confession of the tormented], Tygodnik Powszechny, October 5, 1947, 3 and 8. 84. Marian Maciejewski, “Ja dyplomata obcy ambasada. Sprawa ‘Konsula’” [I’m foreign diplomat, from embassy. The case of Konsul], in Akta W [W records], ed. Wanda Dybalska, Marian Maciejewski, Aneta Augustyn, Cezary Marszewski (Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza Atut, Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe, 2005). 85. Ibid., 160. 86. See Bartoszewski, Władysław, Lewin, Zofia, eds. Righteous Among the Nations. 87. PAP, “Polacy z pomocą Żydom w latach okupacji. Wypowiedź W. Bartoszewskiego” [Poles helping Jews during occupation. W. Bartoszewski’s

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statement], Życie Warszawy, April 2, 1968, 4. Statement most probably used without the author’s approval. 88. See Maciejewski, “Ja dyplomata obcy,” 156. 89. See Jan Grabowski, Rescue for Money. Paid Helpers in Poland, 1939–1945, series Search and Research, Lectures and Papers, 13 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2008). 90. Michał Ogórek, “Konsul” [Consul], in Konsul. “Tele Tydzień” poleca. Kultowe komedie PRL-u, książka + DVD, [Konsul. Recommended by Tele Tydzień. Cult comedies from the PRL, booklet + DVD], vol. 14, 13. 91. Blumsztajn, “Źle się bawią.” 92. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). 93. Antoni Szymanowski, “Likwidacja getta warszawskiego. Reportaż [1942]” [The liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Report (1942)], in Tryptyk polsko-żydowski [The Polish-Jewish triptych], ed. Władysław Bartoszewski (Warszawa: Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa, 2003). 94. Wojciech Wilczyk, “Reportaż z likwidacji w propagandowym tonie” [A report from the liquidation in a propaganda tone], in Lata czterdzieste. Początki polskiej narracji o Zagładzie [The forties. The beginnings of the Polish narrative about the Holocaust], ed. Maryla Hopfinger and Tomasz Żukowski (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IBL, 2019), 61–80. 95. Tomasz Żukowski, “Autowizerunek po katastrofie. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka i Jerzy Andrzejewski: dwa polskie świadectwa Zagłady z lat 40.” [The self-image after the catastrophe. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Jerzy Andrzejewski: two Polish testimonies of the Holocaust from the 1940s], Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne 45, no. 25 (2015): 165–71, DOI: https://doi​.org​/10​.14746​/pspsl​.2015​.25​.7. 96. See Aleksandra Namysło, Zanim nadeszła Zagłada . . . Położenie ludności żydowskiej w Zagłębiu Dąbrowskim w okresie okupacji niemieckiej [Before the Holocaust came . . . Situation of the Jewish population in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie during the German occupation] (Katowice: Oddział Instytutu Pamie̜ci Narodowej, 2009).

Slogan “I Miss You, Jew” by Rafał Betlejewski While Whited Out—Warsaw, 2010. Source: Photo by Dariusz Borowicz / Agencja Gazeta. BOR120628_020005 © Dariusz Borowicz / Agencja Gazeta.

Chapter 3

The Object and Subject of Nostalgia I Miss You, Jew, and The Burning Barn by Rafał Betlejewski (2010) Tomasz Żukowski

Rafał Betlejewski organized two events in 2010 that played important roles in post-2000 discussions about Polish attitudes toward Jews. These are the series of performances titled I miss you, Jew; and a commemoration of the Jedwabne massacre called The Burning Barn, which was held in the village of Zawada, near Tomaszów. Both events elicited strong responses. I miss you, Jew was warmly embraced by the public, who voluntary joined in the artist’s actions all over Poland. These events were also widely publicized and commented on in the press. People copied the slogan, took photographs standing near an empty chair, and sent written accounts of their memories. They illustrated the idea using their own content, just as performer Betlejewski expected. For The Burning Barn, Betlejewski burned down a barn with white pieces of paper inside that had been submitted by Poles.1 In Betlejewski’s project, the slips symbolized confessions of sins and “all malevolent thoughts we have ever expressed towards the Jews and which weigh heavily on us.”2 The Burning Barn generated a wave of protest and criticism. For Betlejewski, burning down a barn was a radical continuation of the project I miss you, Jew. The scope of communication proposed in both cases and the reaction of participants constitute an important record of the Polish discourse on the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish history. Being accounts of memory and denial, the projects present motifs and narratives in which Poles as a community wish to recognize themselves. At the same time, one can observe in them that which is consistently omitted by other accounts. In his experiments, strategies meant to lead participants to release emotions or explore certain topics in the prevailing narrative about the Holocaust 93

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encounter deep, culturally ingrained resistance to unwanted knowledge. Only when the logic of provocation and the logic of cultural denial are compared can the scope of Betlejewski’s projects be appreciated. I MISS YOU, JEW The project I miss you, Jew was considered “a social-artistic project.”3 Betlejewski declared that it was “a process in which the Poles [. . .] can face their phobias about Jews.”4 He said it was “theatrical.” The series, which was supposed to be joined by as many participants as possible, led to individual and collective unconsciousness. “I also explore the subconscious, which is the source not only of fears, phobias and complexes but also of wonderful dreams about the past,” the performer said. “As a Pole, I would like to know what lies dormant in my subconscious, to discover the area of that which I call an active forgetting. I would like to construct a platform to express positive emotions towards the Jews.”5

All of these elements of Betlejewski’s intention should lead to a change in the culture. “‘I am trying to introduce into the Polish reality a trace, which cannot be concealed,’ he explained. ‘I want to regain the word Jew, snatch it from anti-Semites since in Poland, only they use it without hindrance.’”6 Communication and Art I miss you, Jew is thus situated in the sphere of social communication. The effect of the artist’s work is not so much a work of art as a social process: a change of collective ideas, ways of thinking and, finally, practices. Aiming at that which is collective and inter-subjective, Betlejewski emphasizes repeatedly that he is interested in specific, particular people. The objective of any artistic program is to transform the rules of social life. In this case, the program concerns behaviors, emotions, and myths related to Jews. With this understanding, the criteria of perception and evaluation of the program change. If changes in communication and social organization are top priorities, such criteria as uniqueness or beauty become less important. The work, understood as an independent message, disappears; its place becomes occupied by collectively produced texts reacting to the artistic provocation. Instead of a product controlled by the artist, there is a net of autonomous voices—referring to one another and, often, standing in contradiction to one another—that creates an image of collective consciousness. The line between artist and audience becomes blurred. All of those who have decided to accept this proposal become co-authors of and participants in the process

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simultaneously. The traditional understanding of the aesthetic space as a play zone, free of social restrictions, morphs into one of the aesthetic space as an experiment performed on a living social fabric. The cognition and selfconsciousness gained in the process are extremely important. The creation of conditions that enable self-knowledge is at stake. Betlejewski defines himself as both an artist and a copywriter. Advertisement and methods of influencing consumers developed on its basis constitute a natural base of his activities. He uses them for non-commercial purposes; yet publicity, expressiveness, existence in popular culture, and mass media presence are as important to him as they are to product placement. Persuasion, implantation of ideas and values, influence on emotions, animation of change in behaviors—all of these elements, from the perspective of traditional understanding of art, situate Betlejewski in the sphere of kitsch or commercialism. His strategy seems excessively easy and unambiguous. The accusation of kitsch was repeated in national newspapers7 by professional art critics, such as Dorota Jarecka8 or Mariusz Cieślik.9 Only few tried to adopt different approach.10 From the perspective of ideas that shift the emphasis of the program—the way we understand art—to communication and transforming onlookers into “users of culture,”11 these seeming disadvantages are unimportant. The program functions on two levels. The first is that of the artist’s activities. In Betlejewski’s case, these are: the slogan “I miss you, Jew,” writings on the walls, photographs taken by him, the idea of an empty chair as a prop, the request to send him memories, and public statements concerning the project and its meaning. The second level includes the activities of users of culture, such as a policeman whose reaction was to apprehend Betlejewski for writing anti-Semitic slogans; reactions of those who participated in the event, whether by copying the slogan, taking photographs near an empty chair, or sending memories; both spontaneous and professional or institutional responses (such as commentaries made by art critics) presented from the outside, positive as well as negative. All of these elements together constitute the actual effect of the artistic program. As in more traditional works of art, these elements have multiple meanings and create a complicated, profound picture of reality. As such, they demand analysis. Let the Murdered Return . . . Betlejewski suggested a slogan to the audience, a declaration of longing. Indicating the absence of Jews, it expresses the regret for it. “For the Poles, the synonym of ‘Holocaust’ should be ‘Loss,’” wrote Betlejewski on the website of the project.12 Although I miss you, Jew refers to the Holocaust, it

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does not do so straightforwardly. The Holocaust is, however, the central topic of the event, memory of which is the performer’s primary concern. The Polish Jews were murdered. The formula of longing leaves the circumstances of genocide aside. Instead, the project is focused on the emotions of those who are confronted with the genocide’s consequences. In the Polish reality of 2010, the emotional context is created by the decade-long discussion centered on the problem of the Jedwabne massacre. It is also enlivened by Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Nasza klasa [Our class], published in 2009. In the autumn of 2010, when Betlejewski’s project was already in progress, Nasza klasa received the Nike Literary Award. The feeling of longing is felt by the audience, which in turn attempts to integrate—or deny—knowledge of complicity in the crime. Before 2010, the knowledge of these phenomena became more visible in the Polish public space. It is discussed not only in Gross’s book or in the text by Calel Perechodnik (which Betlejewski referred to, published for the first time in 1993), but also in other testimonies.13 Defending itself from the memory of its role in the extermination, the dominant group recalls a number of behaviors that were a part of Nazi extermination, such as isolating Jews, closing escape routes from ghettos, robbing Jews, catching refugees, and ultimately killing individuals or whole communities. If the Poles denounced the Jews, the latter stayed in the ghetto, where Nazis could deport them. The significance of such Polish-German cooperation is perhaps best exemplified by the Jedwabne massacre, in which Poles participated in the killing directly. On one hand, the articulation of longing evokes a sense of collective guilt; on the other hand, it creates an opportunity to forget that very guilt. The audience misses the Jews who “disappeared” from the Polish space without the participation of those taking part in the performance—or the group with which they identify. Longing, however, implies regret. It motivates the intent to reverse history. It produces a context in which the death of Polish Jewry raises a protest and is treated as evil, so it becomes something that one wishes to change—although it is impossible to do so.14 The perspective shifts from an anti-Semitic one (the Nazis solved the Jewish problem for the Poles) to one of mournful blamelessness (innocent people, who were somehow close to us Poles, were killed, and it is a tragedy). At the (individual and collective) psychological level, saying “I miss you, Jew” is an important act. In Polish culture, the act of recalling a dead person is an archetypal motif of stories about crime, memory, and denial. Mickiewicz’s Lilije [Lilies] is a popular, canonical text, stylized as the folk ballad, which functions in the Polish culture as locus communis. A wife kills her husband to conceal marital infidelity. Seeking for absolution and ready for the heaviest penance, she goes to a hermit, who offers her to raise the husband from the dead; however, she rejects the proposal. The hermit calms

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her down by saying that only the victim can reveal the truth about the murder. On the strength of fairy-tale logic, the dead husband comes back as a dreadful avenger when his brothers, who are interested in courting his wife and not in searching for the truth about his death, bring her flowers planted on his grave. In Mickiewicz’s ballad, the game played by the murderous wife is related to memory and oblivion. She says, “Night would cover up my sin”15 but all attempts at planning life after the crime would seem successful were it not for the world of nocturnal fears—the repressed memory that returns every night, provoking constant anxiety. The solution to this impasse is repentance. It may appear, at first, that Mickiewicz refers to Christian theology of contrition; yet the character of a hermit, to whom the murderer comes for advice, is derived more from the world of archaic fairy tales than that of the Church and its rituals. His words, “I can raise thy knight again / Though he has been dead a year,” open new possibilities for confronting the past, for recognizing unwanted knowledge and the consequences of one’s action. Paradoxically, the consent for the return of the past may have healing properties. It enables the repressed emotions to reach the consciousness; hence, we can rework them. This new way of confronting the past—facing the genocide and facing its victims—allows us to break the deadlock of silence and the return of repressed emotions. Although not present in Betlejewki’s projects, for the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, Lilije was an important point of reference when they told their own story—specifically in the context of Polish guilt and amnesia. Before the Ghetto Uprising, Władysław Szlengel used the rhythm pattern of Mickiewicz’s ballad in his poem Dzwonki [Doorbells], in which he described taking over flats left by the Jews. New Polish residents wave the extermination aside; it seems that life follows its usual course. For Szlengel, the ghosts of former residents are helpless. Unlike the ghosts in Lilije, they do not have the power to torment the consciousness of those who remain alive.16 The dark side of Polish collective psyche is successfully controlled by “active forgetting.”17 Voices from the first years after the war, when awareness of what happened to the Jews and what fate the Polish majority prepared for them during and after the occupation was still common and alive, give us an idea of how it really is. In the reportage Powrót z Kielc [The return from Kielce], published in Odrodzenie after the Kielce pogrom, Franciszek Gil writes about the unusual silence in which the city and the trial of the murderers were enveloped:18 “The Kielce vacuum, this awful silence in which the trial was proceeding. One could feel this silence in conversations in the room. [. . .] the gallery was quiet, neither discussing nor arguing [. . .].”19 The postwar realities are defined by the reluctance to express interest in the subject, which, despite all, remains immovable. This reluctance penetrates not only the local but also the considerably wider Polish community.

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Gil presents this subject in the following words: [The accused] were typical representatives of the mass which, being middle class, had been definitively formed by the murderous period of German occupation. The period during which hundreds of thousands of people had unexpectedly become merchants as well as owners of flats in the city and gainful workshops not due to work and training, not due to foresight and market competition, but due to passive and active participation in the German crime, due to which millions of our citizens indeed graduated to better life conditions, either we wish to see it or not.

He concludes, “Were there many eras during which such a huge social stratum developed in terms of economy and ethics this way?”20 Memory and guilt are not limited to the new petite bourgeoisie that, similarly to the bourgeoisie in Kielce, was enfranchised during the Holocaust. Gil highlights that the root of the “memory-guilt problem” lies much deeper than the superficial question of active versus passive participation: In a gigantic style, great Hitler finished the job done by little Hitlers, university senates and faculty councils, which—through resolutions on benches only for Jews—taught the masses that Jews were different, inferior. Who of these little Hitlers could dream about such a wonderful numerus nullus! In Majdanek and Oświęcim, great Hitler took care of all pre-war applications for this numerus; in a violent, outstanding style, he finished ineffectual limitations on students and parliamentary debates on ritual slaughter. [. . .] Sharing booty with the masses, he bought their belief in the otherness and inferiority of the Jews, which thus justified successive quests for loot. With a past like this, we joined our gentle revolution.21

Therefore, the “memory-guilt problem” concerns the violence that the Polish society applied to the Jewish minority over time, independent of German Nazism or future cooperation with it. It also concerns the cultural acceptance of this kind of violence, confirmed by recognized authorities. In other words, it is about guilt that results not only from individual acts of violence that can be condemned and recognized as exceptional, but also from the cultural norms that have encouraged such acts. Silence and the desire to circumvent the problem are consequences of discomfort. Gil writes, “This victory of Hitler was disgusting, and it was hard to admit it. People wanted to forget: if only it was already over, if only it was never raked up anymore.”22 In another paragraph, he comments on attitudes of the participants in the process: “But each time I was questioning ordinary people, I flinched and had the sudden urge to stop every further conversation

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and run away from it all. In consequence, all questions, all investigations were becoming tasteless.”23 Thereby, we return to the psychological state suggested by Mickiewicz’s ballad. The audiences in Kielce specifically and in Poland generally, just like the Lady from Lilije, are determined to do everything so that “The crime would be covered / By the perpetual night.” From Gil’s perspective, this means not only approving of the silence, but also actively creating it. Under pressure that compels us to abandon conversation, the act of forgetting as the result of collective activity makes its presence felt.24 This pressure is so strong and internalized that, almost seventy years later, Andrzej Leder—raising the issue of the Holocaust as a foundational crime that created the Polish bourgeoisie— presented Polish society as passive, respecting the unspoken pact of silence.25 The repressed returns, above all, in the form of the Jews who survived. They pose a double threat: They both recall the unwanted knowledge of the Polish society’s attitude and call into question the legitimacy of its members’ possessions. Gil labels the returning Jews “ghosts,” as if these survivors were visitors from the underworld to which they had been sent by the practices of the majority.26 Their return leads to new outbursts of hatred and aggression. The repressed memory returns in a form that cannot be reworked. Like the knight from Mickiewicz’s ballad, it abducts a society reluctant to self-reflect and carries it off to Hell. Experiment on Collective Emotions: Present and Concealed Violence The slogan “I miss you, Jew” touches upon the issue of silence with respect to Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Betlejewski does not so much break the silence as he tries to create conditions in which doing so would be possible (including breaking the strong emotional block that prevents Poles from talking about it). Observing what happened to the Jewish survivors in Kielce, Franciszek Gil asserted, “In order to admit the survived ghosts on equal terms, a revolt, or at least a deep feeling of equality with slaves in captivity, was needed. When the Jews were separated by means of armbands, this feeling was lost in the Polish masses.”27 Presumably, it is missing even today. Due to the expression of longing and intention to reverse what happened, the victims receive an equal status. When emotions such as sympathy, grief, the feeling of lack are unblocked, the subject of group aggression—and, in turn, the society that misses—is humanized; the chance arises for people to reflect upon violence and their social group’s role in it. It is Betlejewski’s intention that a clash with the slogan “I miss you, Jew” should de-automate aggressive reactions. It should introduce both a dissonance between empathy and excluding practices present

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in the culture and a distance from which one gains perspective, enabled to recognize these practices as violence. The array of emotions connected with longing and lack creates conditions that make it possible to question role of the Poles in the events, as well as to explore the repressed guilt that gnaws at Polish culture. The Inside and the Outside It may seem that the intention to disarm aggression (which is present in the practices of indicating a Jew), assumes awareness of speaking from within a violent society. Betlejewski addresses members of a society that used violence to oppress; they are immersed in aggressive norms of behavior, which they regard as natural. In the performance I miss you, Jew in 2010, however, this vital issue, which Franciszek Gil clearly observed in 1946, is blurred and disappears from view. Betlejewski’s performances are interpreted in Poland only in the context of the present day; Gil’s text from 1946 allows us to see that it is in fact a deep, lasting model of culture. The artist explained, “We associate the word ‘Jew’ only with anti-Semitic writings on the walls. I decided to overcome this fear of uttering it.”28 We are not told, however, what kind of fear it is and what its source is; these details are presumed to be obvious. For starters, the fear includes a fear of violence. The word “Jew” has a special meaning in Polish. It is not only a term that defines nationality; it proves to be a gesture—one both stigmatizing and excluding. Michał Głowiński notices that it contains potential aggression, expressed not just on the individual level but also in the dominant culture: “Jew” can mean the same as the one whom I consider a stranger, whom I despise. The meaning of this word is devoid of the specific, it absorbs emotional content and starts to transmit attitudes. It must be underlined that this kind of use [. . .] is not a personal initiative of this or that speaker [. . .]. This use creates in speech a characteristic potentiality, as if the speech itself suggested it.29

In his story Gałąź (The branch), Tadeusz Różewicz presents another meaning of this word and connects it with social practice. It is a story of a Jewish child who hides in a single-story house. His guardians forbid him to go to the window, but the boy misses his mother and cannot resist the temptation. When he looks out, one word is spoken from the outside, from the Polish space: “Jew.” Then, a stone is thrown.30 The act of naming is an act of exclusion performed by the collective, denying the stigmatized a place in the common space. In the reality of the Holocaust, it means that the victim is driven out of safe harbor; the victim becomes visible to the Nazis and is turned in to them.

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Głowiński talks about using this type of rejection in political battles and public discourse.31 If someone is called a “Jew,” that person is excluded from the community and deprived of rights the “folk” have. Fear of the word “Jew,” and especially of the stigmatizing expression “You, Jew,” results at least partially from disgust at violence. Those who do not use the stigmatizing word wish to stop the practice of excluding. Being silent, they refrain from naming, which encloses the victims in the identity that is imposed by the majority; they express their disagreement with the collective norm. At the same time, they are largely helpless in the face of this norm that, not being labeled, is still valid and effective. From this point of view, referring to the aggressive category and practice that was related to it makes sense only when it leads to the disarmament of the cultural norm. In Betlejewski’s project, the word “Jew” does not cease to worry and provoke; yet it is analyzed neither at the intellectual nor the emotional level. Polish speakers do not confront the violence included in this word. The performer, rather, suggests changing its meaning without confronting the current one. Therefore, the audience members (who are also members of the dominant majority) do not face their own image of those who use violence and exclusion. This evasion consists of a thoughtless passage from the group of those who exclude to the community of those who miss the Jews. Repetition of the slogan does not lead to cognitive dissonance that would extort reflection and change because the latter seems to have already been produced. The project of creating conditions that enable one to notice the problem of Polish culture goes hand-in-hand with concealing this very problem. Protection of Self-Image This strategy seems safe since it protects not only the participants’ selfimage, but also their traditional identity. Fear of the word “Jew” is connected to both a protest against violence and what used to be called the “terror of political correctness.” Polish culture still has not reflected on the problem of discrimination, and avoiding stigmatizing expressions has not yet become its norm. In fact, political correctness is often ridiculed in Polish culture. In its critics’ opinion, it makes it difficult to call a spade a spade; it robs people of the ability to describe phenomena accurately. Political correctness, they allege, makes it impossible to talk about the Jews as a cohesive group responsible for its social practices—especially those that are hostile to the Polish society or cause damage to it. When Betlejewski was performing I miss you, Jew, these suspicions were intense. A reviewer from Dekada Literacka’s reaction to Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s play Nasza klasa provides an example of this attitude. Paulina Małochleb praises the author for “exploding the myth of innocence of

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the Jewish victim” and departing from “presentation of the black-and-white world.”32 From this perspective, Słobodzianek would act against the “terror of political correctness” that prevents indicating the “Jewish guilt.” Making a mockery of political correctness and demanding that “a spade be called a spade” are expressions of a community that wishes to save traditional identities—above all, that in which it encloses the stigmatized. This community ignores the fact that, as a dominant majority, it itself produces and imposes this identity of “a spade” in practices and acts of naming that it considers both natural and neutral. The majority simultaneously invents and perpetuates the myth of the very identity it claims is unjustly obscured by political correctness. In the case of violence against the Jews, a fundamental stake of these practices is the refusal to acknowledge discrimination as a cultural norm. As long as it is not uncovered, one can think about Polish violence in terms of conflict, defense of one’s own interests, or response to disloyalty or betrayal. The arbitrariness of aggression is obscured and, in turn, the same occurs with the sense of guilt and the compulsion to change behaviors, norms, and ways of thinking. Franciszek Gil demonstrated that when cognitive dissonance cannot be avoided (in other words, when the normalized discrimination against Jews in Polish culture is too apparent to ignore), Polish society extorts silence. Since the project I miss you, Jew is only about expressing longing and is often combined with a whitewashed image of the past, it allows people to avoid this inconvenient moment, silently moving from aggression to its ostensible end. Those who “miss” gain the sense of exclusion from the majority culture that uses violence. They recognize themselves as radically different. Although the intention of overcoming exclusion commands respect, to a large extent, it proves to be wishful thinking. Violence is barely externalized, and the profit is based, above all, on the illusion of one’s own innocence. Participants in this program draw a firm distinction between those who “miss” to those who use the word “Jew” with aggressive intention. Małgorzata Maciejewska considers that the reception of I miss you, Jew and The Burning Barn shift the unwanted knowledge to the realm of the not-me, whereas Betlejewski, who refers to the theory of enactment, indeed tries to confront the society with his not-me.33 Betlejewski paints his slogan on the walls of many cities and towns in Poland. Therefore, he refers to the anti-Semitic inscriptions, with the same word “Jew,” that can be seen almost everywhere. Wojciech Wilczyk’s photo album Święta wojna (The sacred war) includes a review of such graffiti. Wilczyk collected roughly 100 examples of graffiti made by skinhead and fascist football fans. Compared to the material presented in that album, which is spray-painted in modern lettering, Betlejewski’s slogan is stylistically different. It is painted with a brush or paint roller—not with spray, like the majority of modern anti-Semitic graffiti. The lettering is also strikingly

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different; it seems archaic. The artist separates himself and the participants from the context in which he places the program. The state of disorientation in which he put the audience was quickly replaced by the division into “us,” who wanted to reclaim the word “Jew;” and “them,” who employed it in hate speech. Wilczyk demonstrated that it is impossible to compartmentalize this problem. Anti-Semitic writings do not disappear from the walls (unlike Betlejewski’s writings, which were painted over very quickly in Warsaw34 and other places35), suggesting a tacit consent from society. Anti-Semitism is transparent; it forms a seemingly natural part of the Polish landscape. It does not disturb because nobody perceives it as a problem. At an exhibition staged in the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, where he showed photos collected in the book, Wilczyk presented a video installation showing a street in Cracow on a loop: heavy traffic, cars passing by, people standing at the intersection, policemen directing traffic. In the background, an anti-Semitic message is written on a wall, to which no one reacts, and which apparently does not disturb anyone. From this perspective, the problem of hate speech cannot be limited to the creators of anti-Semitic graffiti; one must also question the lack of opposition to it, which concerns everybody. In an essay commenting on Wilczyk’s material, sociologist Anna Zawadzka, argues against the commonly accepted thesis that murals created by football fans are peripheral to Polish culture (as opposed to being mainstream or central). She indicates that they have their origins in the center of culture; they develop and explain symbols and ideas prevailing in Polish public life. Zawadzka writes: Created by football fans, graffiti demonstrate that anti-Semitism is rather a code of Polish culture in which a Jew is “only” a communication tool. He is a medium, but neither its target nor addressee. Anti-Semitism is an integral element of Polish culture, which would be incomprehensible without it; the language in which words have nothing in common with a referent, yet they enable people who use them to communicate.36

She concludes, “It is not a Jew who is important here, but [. . .] every supporter of a rival team and every resident of a city who sees this writing and knows who, and how deeply, is offended by it.”37 Zawadzka’s identification of rules of communication probably caused Betlejewski’s graffiti to be perceived as anti-Semitic. However, the suggestion to join the community of those who miss removed the problem from the field of vision. This way, Betlejewski passes over the opposition to violence. Both painting over anti-Semitic writings and attempts to punish its perpetrators by law prove to be impossible. Betlejewski also passes over the phase of

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reflection on the phenomenon, in that could have come to light in a collective consent to violence against Jews. The Community of Innocents Betlejewski’s project becomes a part of a cultural trend that externalizes evil and creates the community of innocent Poles who miss the Jews. The newspaper Gazeta Stołeczna (Warsaw supplement of the daily Gazeta Wyborcza) from March 6 to 7, 2010, reported under the headline “Pokażmy, że tęsknimy” (Let’s show that we miss) that Betlejewski would take a group photo at the Gdański Railway Station on the anniversary of March 1968. The following announcement was printed in bold: “‘Let’s take today, on the anniversary of March 1968, a group photo at the Gdański Railway Station, the place from which the Jews who were forced to leave Poland departed,’ appeals artist Rafał Betlejewski.”38 Next to it, there was an archival photo of two men embraced in a farewell gesture against a background of a steam engine standing at the platform. This is a shot from the documentary Dworzec Gdański (Gdański Railway Station), directed by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz. This creates the impression as if Betlejewski’s photograph constituted a continuation of the painful parting from 1968. In the context of the program I miss you, Jew and the press report, it seems obvious that the men in the photograph are a Pole and a Jew “forced to leave Poland.” It is unclear who made the Jews depart. We can assume that it was the Communist Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) or its leaders during the anti-Semitic campaign in March 1968—Mieczysław Moczar and Władysław Gomułka; in any case, a group that had nothing in common with “us” who wish to manifest our longing. Regardless of what participants in Betlejewski’s 2010 project were thinking and doing in 1968 (the largest anti-Semitic campaign in Europe since the Holocaust), and regardless of the honesty of their objection with the events, at the level of the diagnosis of the culture, Betlejewski’s message seems confusing. In the film from which this archival photograph was taken, Teresa Torańska speaks with people who emigrated in March 1968. The image of Poland in the late 1960s emerges from their stories. Politics is a starting point; apart from memories, there are documentary shots of Gomułka’s speeches, rallies with anti-Semitic banners, and incidents on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street in Warsaw. The emphasis is laid on administrative campaigns: smear campaigns in the press, sentences, dismissals, expulsions from the party, summonses to appear in the Office of Internal Affairs (USW). Questions are asked about parting with friends. Occasionally, crowds come to the railway station—as in the case of the Rozenbaum sisters, who are departing from Łódź—while at other times, only immediate family are present. At this stage of the story, one

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may still have the impression that the authorities and society constitute two different worlds in 1968. Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz soon leads the viewers in another direction. When Teresa Torańska asks about the events that have provoked the decision to emigrate, the behaviors of ordinary people are displayed. The storytellers often perceive them as kind. Seemingly insignificant words uttered by people from the Polish environment prove that this division into “us” Poles and “them”—the Jews—is impassable even in friendly conditions. “I do not drink toasts to kikes,” says a young researcher who does not wish to drink to a professor’s health; a “kind” supervisor remarks in passing, “Too many Jews are holding high-ranking positions.” Friends writing an appeal on behalf of protesting students ignore invitations to join protests against the anti-Semitic campaign. The emigrants recollect “the power and fury of hatred” and the bitter awareness that they will not rid themselves of the stigma of “Jew”—that they are still second-class citizens. Włodek Kofman admits that the events in March were organized by the Security Office (UB), but he adds, “Society accepted this argumentation in some ways. [. . .] It was not only propaganda.” Somebody else says, “Between ten and twenty thousand Jews left, yet apart from those who were directly related to them, the rest did not even notice it.” One of the female characters says, “I did not feel opposition. I did not feel that anybody stood up for us. We were alone.” Torańska’s interlocutors emphasize that in 1968, the war was still a very vivid experience. “As if it was yesterday,” they say. There is no doubt that fear was related to physical extermination: “They also were afraid of it in 1968.” The comment “but there were no killings then” is left without any reaction to it. It indicates an unspoken yet ever-present aspect of the situation: fears concerning aggression on the part of Poles. This fear results from the Poles’ behavior both during the occupation and after the liberation. In the conditions of March 1968, when there are no Nazis in Poland, it seems possible that the Holocaust will be repeated—this time, performed only by locals. The nanny of one of the characters from the film, who hid his father and siblings during the war, “lived in the confidence that everything might happen again.” She worried about the “wrong appearance” of the children and thought about new hiding places. The atmosphere influencing the decision about leaving is not balanced, in the emigrants’ feeling, by exceptional acts of protest. Teresa Torańska talks about the reaction of Znak Deputies’ Group and asks, “Is it not enough for those times?” As a reply, she hears, “For me, it was not enough; I wanted the whole university to protest.” Some people mention individual sympathetic reactions that moved them; however, they underline that these were exceptions rather than the rule.

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The photograph reproduced in Gazeta Stołeczna was used in ZmarzKoczanowicz’s film as a projection that disperses during the narration. We, as a community, would like to be those who are saying goodbye to emigrants at Gdański Railway Station; yet the reality is different. Betlejewski returns to the phantasm, ignoring all of its problematic questions, whereas Gazeta Stołeczna follows the artist’s suggestion and omits criticism present in the material from which the photograph was taken. Thus, the photograph becomes part of the narrative of nostalgia. Its first representation is probably Radosław Piwowarski’s film from 1989, March Caresses. On the one hand, Piwowarski contrasts Polish society with Communist authorities; on the other hand, he places the Jewish emigrants in the Polish narrative of independence. They become victims of the Communist Polish People’s Republic (PRL)—not of the Poles—and, like them, they fight for independence. A high school class in a provincial town serves as a stand-in for society. History falls on the class, somehow, from the outside. It is superimposed onto the relationships between the characters, while the Jewish stigma does not play any role in these relationships. A local secret police agent who tyrannizes his own daughter is oppression incarnate. Anti-Semitism seems to be a matter of people who support Communist rule. One of them is Heniek, a worker who has come to town from the countryside not so long ago and is trying his best to settle in at the local factory. An aggressive barbarian without roots, he takes every opportunity to support the anti-Semitic campaign. Piwowarski draws a thick line between the two protagonists and that which is Polish. The secret police agent remains outside of the local community. His opposite is a grandfather of one of the young characters, named Tomek: an old man who fought for Poland during World War I with Józef Piłsudski, and who is slowly dying because of his low pension. Tomek’s grandfather is the symbol of old Poland and tradition. Heniek shares a flat with him, hates him, and does not respect his past. In the final scene, Marcyś—who, being a Jew, leaves Poland—is given his friend’s grandfather’s sabre. The community of fate is underlined by the addresses of the remaining characters and dates of their emigration that appear in the ending: 1976, 1980, and 1982. In the end, there is a piece of information about Ola, the secret police agent’s daughter, who disappears without trace. Off-screen, the song To nasza młodość (This is our youth), to the words by Tadeusz Śliwiak, can be heard. It is obvious that the story refers to the whole generation, for whom there was not enough space in the Polish People’s Republic. The difference in the fates of its Jewish and non-Jewish representatives proves unimportant. This phantasm develops into the motif of Polish-Jewish romance that is interrupted by the March; into love that—because of historical, external events—cannot be realized. The photograph from the article about

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Betlejewski’s program, taken from the film Dworzec Gdański, becomes an image of two friends—a Pole and a Jew—who are separated by history. The Poles, however, had nothing to do with this separation. WHO DO I MISS? The construction of “we,” cleared of participation in excluding and discriminatory practices, is accompanied by maintenance of old identities that were not subjected to criticism. The “Jew” from the slogan “I miss you, Jew” remains a construct of the majority group. Using a word that is immersed in excluding practices and pervaded with their essence makes it at least largely impossible to recognize the people hidden behind such imposed masks. The “Jew” from the phrase “you, Jew” is not an individual but a collective, stigmatizing category. As noticed by Głowiński, it “disposes of specificity”39 and places a less-than sign in its place. The custom of addressing Jews using the familiar form, especially saying “you, Jew” or simply “Jew,” marked the speakers’ place in the social hierarchy. The relationship between the Polish speaker and the Jew was never symmetrical because it was unthinkable that a Jew could respond to a Pole in the same way. In that case, the respectful form “sir” or an individualizing name would be used. When Jankiel convinces the gentry to abandon the foray in the Polish romantic national epic Pan Tadeusz, he addresses the settlement with respect, which is natural in the still-feudal reality, saying, “Masters Dobrzyńskis” or “Good Sir Maciej.” He meets with an outburst of aggression, placing Jankiel in the role that belongs to him: Gervaze raised his Penknife above Jankiel’s head. The Jew leapt down and vanished; cried Warden: “Out, Jew! Go! Do not stick your fingers in other folks’ stew!”40

An echo of the same behavior is found in an event mentioned by Jan Tomasz Gross and drawn from the Franciszek Konopko case records. Gross’s Nie ma dlaczego (There is no why) includes a description of a crime that took place next to Szczuczyn (near Jedwabne): I could clearly see how Franciszek Konopko, [. . .] holding a birch club as thick as an arm in his hand, together with Aleksander Domiziak, who lived in Szczuczyn [. . .] and was also holding a similar birch stick, were rushing towards Jewish graves [. . .] of Magik, a Jew I knew who was making sweets in Szczuczyn until 1939. [. . .] I heard Magik ask Domiziak, “Let me go, Olek, I

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was feeding your children, I did give you many sweets without money, I have a golden watch, I will give it to you.” I saw Konopko hit the Jew with the tip of his shoe in the back of his body and say, “Go to fuck, Jew.”41

In both cases (of Pan Tadeusz and Konopko’s account), the Jew, addressed as “you, Jew!” is supposed to stop talking and submit to the speaker. The Jew must disappear as an individual and a participant in the dialogue. It appears that Betlejewski fails to discontinue that tradition. His project takes place solely in the Polish sphere (although the inscription “I miss you, Jew” did appear in Israel). The Jew we miss remains under our control in the sense that we are not interested in the Jew’s opinion of us. In Betlejewski’s project, there is no place for confrontation with someone who personally experienced the Polish “you, Jew” and would thus like to tell us something about ourselves, the experiences we thrust upon them, and their resultant attitude toward us. There are still quite a few of such people, the Polish Jews. Although those who survived Holocaust in Poland are slowly passing away, emigrants from 1968 are still alive. They have a good memory, which is proven by ZmarzKoczanowicz’s documentary. They are full of bitterness: The first statement in the film is, “You wouldn’t have been even let in here if you had wanted to make such an interview twenty years ago. The very fact that you are journalists from Poland blighted your chances.” The March emigrants have such an understandably low opinion about Poland and the Poles that, until recently, it eliminated any prospects of dialogue between the two groups. People representing Polish culture were included among those to whom one simply does not talk. An intra-Polish monologue protects Poles from confrontation with everything they could hear from the Other. Betlejewski “encourages those Varsovians (and not only them), who remember Jews whom they would like to recollect, to participate in the project. Jews whom they know from literature or personally.” The artist explains: We already have a great number of Jews’ testimonies from wartime and subsequent years in archives and books. Now we should give the floor to the Poles. I am curious whether they actually remember the Jews who lived here and how they remember them.42

There are, in fact, many testimonies by Polish Jews; but any content therein that is inconvenient for the majority is ignored and concealed. Many important authors, such as Stanisław Wygodzki and Mieczysław R. Frenkel, have sunk into oblivion. Those who have found themselves in the canon are

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interpreted in a way that renders their voice inaudible. In her analysis of the Polish reception of Ida Fink’s stories, Aránzazu Calderón Puerta shows how consistently Polish critics avoid parts of her works that speak to the norms of Polish culture that yield anti-Semitic behavior.43 The presence of Jewish testimonies in the Poles’ collective memory is an illusion. Calel Perechodnik, whom Betlejewski recalls as a Jew he misses himself, is a telling example of that illusion. The artist says, “If I was to indicate someone, it would be Calel Perechodnik, who wrote Spowiedź [Confession]. It was a book about his experience as a policeman during the liquidation of the Otwock Ghetto in 1943, when he participated in sending his family to Treblinka. Shocking non-fiction.”44 The artist refers to the second edition of Perechodnik’s diary.45 The first one caused scandal because it was censored.46 The Karta Center (Ośrodek Karta) tried to withdraw it from circulation, offering the full text free of charge in exchange for the first edition copies. The title—Am I a Murderer?—was misleading, too (however, the first edition was used as the basis for the translation into English47). Betlejewski did not give Perechodnik’s testimony enough attention to notice that the ghetto in Otwock was liquidated in 1942, not in 1943. Even if one attributed the mistake in the date to a printing goblin, the summary of Spowiedź more likely comes from opinions on it published in the press than from knowledge of the text itself. The nightmare, awe, and complete confusion described by Perechodnik certainly do not match the statement that “he participated in sending his family to Treblinka,” as described in the first reviews after his first diaries had been published in 1993. Indeed, he did not hide his wife and daughter, as he was afraid that they would be found in a bunker and die. He took them to the square, believing that they would be released. When the Germans broke the promise and announced that they were deporting policemen’s families, he did not decide to go with them.48 In Betlejewski’s summary, emphasis falls on the ambiguity of Perechodnik as a murderer of his own family, which constituted the leitmotif of the early reception. Spowiedź was considered an anti-Polish text. The author’s descriptions of the way the Polish environment operated were counterbalanced by opinions that morally discredited him. Perechodnik’s perceptiveness as a critical observer of Polish culture disappeared from view. The appeal, “Now we should give the floor to the Poles” is surprising in that, since the end of the war, they—the majority that decided on the rules of discourse—had an almost exclusive right to relate the Polish-Jewish history. Betlejewski not only fails to break that monopoly, but also creates the impression that the Polish majority had not yet had a chance to express itself. He thus begins fantasizing about the Polish-Jewish history—or to be precise, about the Poles’ own image in relation to the Jews.

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An empty chair, a prop used in group photographs, makes it possible for participants to project their own myths about Jews. The chair was meant to be a sign of emptiness. “Through my project, I would like to express my longing for the Polish Jews who were but are no longer,”49 wrote Betlejewski. The artist meant for the missed to be specific Jews, known by their full names. However, the empty chair and the word “Jew” from the slogan “I miss you, Jew” negates this specificity. In the end, we see a kippah on the chair, a sign of a special kind of identity: a religious and folkloristic one that is separate from ours. When the photograph was taken at the University of Warsaw, Rabbi Stambler, the leader of the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch community, sat down on the second chair, creating the icon of a Jew locked in his own, separate world. We wrote about the “folklorization” of the image of the Jew and its meaning in Polish culture and memory in the first chapter of this book, in the part “Jews as the Mythical ‘Jew.’” The “folklorized” Jew stays in his reservation, he does not appear among Poles and does not claim equal rights in the common space. Emphasizing the religious separateness between Jews and Poles is fundamental to protecting the dominant Polish narrative from criticism—it takes away their voice and use their image in instrumental way. Instead, the notion is once again put forth that Jews are separate by nature, not by human actions or societal choices. It is also implied that, since Poles invited both this empty chair symbolizing Jews who have been killed and the rabbi sitting in the second chair to pose for a “family” photo together, but to say nothing, the Poles as a whole have not intentionally dominated the Polish-Jewish narrative; they’ve made a sincere effort to include The Other in these discussions. Thus, the fundamental problem of the domination of the nationally understood Polish identity, which establishes the rules of life in the common sphere and treats others as guests at best, is obscured. Its opposite would consist of a public space open to the multitude of to some extent separate but intersecting and overlapping identities that coexist in a sphere, providing for their freedom and equality. In order to save the dominance of “Polishness,” or at least insulate it from critical examination, one must maintain the juxtaposition of the Jews and the Poles and their religious and traditional separateness. One must gloss over the effects of excluding gestures—“You, Jew!”—or new acts of exclusion developed by modern society. The “Jew” from the excluding “You, Jew” should be replaced with “Jews,” who are—contrary to the discriminatory stereotype—diverse, sometimes close to the traditional Jewish identity and completely alien to it at other times. However, they are included in a dialogue about the present that is common to all Polish society, contribute to that present, and formulate demands supposed to impact the present. Polish culture

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is unable to cope with precisely such Jews, participants in common life. An empty chair with a rabbi’s kippah does not help to solve the problem. Once again, the real Other is not among us. This time, we sent him to the sphere of nostalgic longing. Instead of reflection, Betlejewski offers a kind of family photograph: A group picture in which Poles stand around an empty chair, or their own ideas about themselves and the past. They manifest their longing for someone who should be in that photograph but is no longer there. Harmony is the dominant feature of family photographs. Betlejewski wishes to create conditions in which that harmony could become a fact; at the same time, he treats the postulate as if it were reality. He lets the participants recognize themselves in a harmonious picture of themselves, the Polish culture, in relation to the Jews. Is it not too soon? Departure from Critical Art In 2010, in the context of the discussion around Neighbors (revived after the publication of Nasza klasa), Szmul Wasersztajn’s testimony became emblematic of the unwanted knowledge described by Franciszek Gil. In Neighbors, Gross introduced a fundamental change into the Polish public discourse: Not only did he recall the voices of the victims of the extermination, but he also gave them a superior status. “When considering survivors’ testimonies, we would be well advised to change the starting premise in appraisal of their evidentiary contribution from a priori critical to in principle affirmative,”50 he wrote. In other words, the Jews say what is concealed in the testimonies of the nonJewish majority. As removing the voice of victims and whitewashing the past are essential features of exclusion, we can only learn about violence from victims. That is why we must prioritize their testimonies. What we consider to be “objective” is usually an idealized self-portrait of the dominant group. Gross added: All that we know [. . .]—by virtue of the fact that it has been told—is not a representative sample of the Jewish fate suffered under Nazi rule. It is all skewed evidence, biased in one direction: these are all stories with a happy ending. [. . .] And that is why we must take literally all fragments of information at our disposal, fully aware that what actually happened to the Jewish community during the Holocaust can only be more tragic than the existing representation of events based on surviving evidence.51

Gross postulated this while bearing in mind the need to retell the history of Poland and the Poles. He wrote, “This so-called question of Polish-Jewish relations during the war is like a loose thread in the historiography of this

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period. If we grasp and pull it, the entire intricately woven tapestry comes undone.”52 “The intricately woven tapestry” is collective memory, full of concealment and distortion; the narratives that reflect it, and the related selfimage of the majority. Neighbors violated the existing Polish monopoly on relating the war. It broke the taboo imposed by culture, introduced an unwanted voice to its center, and attached special status to that voice. It openly postulated revision of the defensive narrative. Fifty years later, Gross said aloud that which had been left unsaid by the participants of the Kielce trial from Franciszek Gil’s report. The reception of Neighbors thus included questioning both the credibility of Szmul Wasersztajn’s testimony and the reliability of Gross himself by professional historians,53 in the national press,54 not to mention aggressive attacks on the author by right-wing journalists.55 At stake was not only denial of the facts brought to light but also reversion of the ongoing discursive and cultural change. Discrediting the postulate of the affirmative approach toward victims’ testimonies meant restoration of hierarchy in the discursive order and re-subordination of the Jew—the one from statements by Gervaze (the protagonist of the national epic Pan Tadeusz) and Konopko from Szczuczyn (the protagonist of the pogrom)—to the rules of co-existence enforced by the majority. It would deprive the real Jews of the chance that they were just about to have: the chance to express their opinions about their own experiences, Polish history, and the present—on equal terms. Betlejewski’s project, although organized with the intention of reinforcing the changes happening in Polish culture as a result of Neighbors, instead disrupted the process of including the Other to the common sphere. Instead of a real Polish Jew and his story, the center features an empty place filled with collective fantasies. People gathered around the empty chair symbolized the Polish community. The Jew was once again denied the right to return and express the Jew’s own stance. Thus, the majority lost a chance of a potentially healing confrontation with the unwanted and dangerous elements of its own memory. The departure from discriminatory practices made by Gross was somehow encysted by culture in its liberal and insincerely “open” version. As a result, emotions triggered in Betlejewski’s project morphed into an argument in favor of those who are longing. They became not so much the beginning of shock and self-reflection as an element of a favorable self-image. Reminiscing and manifesting their longing was only beneficial to the group; recognizing themselves in nostalgia functioned as absolution. Impersonal and devoid of perpetration, the images of the Jews “who are no longer here— they left, died, disappeared from Polish towns and villages”56 enabled the dominant majority to avoid the issues of its own collective behaviors and thus avoid accounting for its past. Commentators repeated metaphors where

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impersonal forms do not indicate the perpetrators or the social context. “They vanished during the Holocaust,” wrote Piotr Pacewicz.57 Likewise, there is no mention of the reaction to their “disappearance,” what was achieved due to that reaction, and how the Polish community consistently refused to relinquish benefits obtained via ethnic cleansing.58 It did so to such an extent that those few Jews who returned often lost their lives.59 The way the problem of the group’s unclear conscience was solved resembles, in large measure, what Franciszek Gil wrote about: “In all conversations, they were as lavish with helpless remorse as with nodding.”60 Gil compares the Kielce audience to “tens of Pilates washing their hands of everything with disgust.”61 However, even the last reserves of dissonance disappear in I miss you, Jew. A narcissistic tone can be heard in the appeal “Let’s show that we miss them.”62 Apart from a message sent to the Polish Jews, it contains an element of self-presentation. Longing for a “Jew” or Jews went hand-in-hand with longing for one’s own purified and harmonious selfimage—for a beautiful gesture of nostalgia in which it is easy to recognize oneself and ignore the un-aesthetic, violent reality. The photograph from Betlejewski’s project found itself in the last room of the permanent exhibition at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Nevertheless, the miraculous transformation from anti-Semites into a longing community was assumed both successful and complete. THE BURNING BARN. RADICAL CONTINUATION “The time comes to move forward,”63 said Betlejewski in an interview for Duży Format (the reporters’ weekly supplement of Gazeta Wyborcza daily newspaper), in which he publicly announced his intention of burning a barn on the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne. The Burning Barn project was considered a “radical continuation” of I miss you, Jew.64 “The initial shock caused by wall inscriptions is over,” said the artist. “I have been absorbed by culture.”65 Was there, in that statement, any awareness of faux nostalgia feeding narcissism among those who had participated in his previous project? Probably not, but Betlejewski did realize perfectly that the most important things are still ahead of both him and Polish culture. “The time has come to face the most serious problem we have with the Holocaust,”66 he announced. Historical Reenactment Historical reenactments were particularly popular at the turn of the twentyfirst century—in the early aughts and twenty-teens. Poles were reenacting

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important events in national history—mainly heroic battles. In the twentyteens, on every anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, performances were organized in many Polish cities. These performances often included dozens of participants. What was reenacted were not so much the events themselves as expressions of the collective identity through which they were to be understood. Actors and viewers recognized themselves in the roles of heroes; all doubts and questions disappeared in aesthetic and heroic staffage. The idea to burn a barn, which was supposed to be the barn from Jedwabne in the viewers’ consciousness, turned that convention upside down. Betlejewski paid particular attention to the emotional dimension of the undertaking. “Years of demagoguery and propaganda made us indifferent to the suffering of our Jewish neighbors. We neither feel nor sympathize,”67 he said. The reenactment was supposed to restore sensitivity—to confront us with the reality of that event and the cruelty of those deaths. The artist explained: The theatrical performance is to make it possible to look straight at the tragedy of the Jews from Jedwabne in real time and in direct proximity. Their Holocaust continued, had a temperature and sound and was stretching over minutes, quarters, hours. Someone was standing around the barn, watching. What did he feel? Through my project, I would like to reveal his secret too.68

That statement signals one more element Betlejewski does not mention directly: unlike in other, “safe” historical reenactments, the viewers are dragged into the performance. Against their own will, they turn from observers into actors. They surround the barn just as it was surrounded by a crowd of murderers sixty-nine years ago. The burning changes into a kind of site inspection, where the culprit is led to the scene of a crime to reconstruct the train of events in detail and experience the crime anew. Such a reconstruction was most probably Betlejewski’s unexpressed intention. The artist provoked an experiment that could make its participants become horrified at their own deed and accept the blame. He tried to prepare the participants for this; they were supposed to bring or send “white pieces of paper as signs of confession.”69 Betlejewski adds, “I would like those pieces of paper to symbolize all unkind thoughts we could ever have had towards the Jews, thoughts, which we consider a burden.”70 On the one hand, a feeling of hatred and violence was revived and recalled; on the other, those feelings were recalled as a burden—something no longer accepted, functioning on the border of denial. The burning was planned in such a way as to help its participants cross the line separating them from the excluded. To confront them with the victims’ pain and, at the same time, their own—collective or individual—role as the

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perpetrator. In this sense, the reenactment set the stage for the moment of confrontation “with the most serious problem we have with the Holocaust.” Mirror Effect In the photograph illustrating the interview in Duży Format, Betlejewski faces the audience as an icon of their opinions of themselves. He is like Janosik, the character of Polish folk legends adopted by popular culture and imagination (he resembles Robin Hood, being a highwayman and an outlaw who uses violence to defend the weak). A laced shirt with a slit under the neck and widened sleeves refer to folk images. The landscape is familiar, too: a flowered meadow and a barn in the background. A folk hero with whom one can fully identify—“folk” in the sense of the phantasm whose dominant features include “aesthetization” and unproblematic familiarity. Except that the icon was placed in a context that leaves no doubt over its meaning. A torch in the performer’s hand and his determined face indicate the crime that took place years ago and that will now be recalled. The group narcissism is put to a hard test. The collective self-image clashes with that with which it cannot integrate. Betlejewski is aware of his “incredible insolence.” With regard to the Poles, he perceives himself as someone who “makes them look at their crime once again.”71 Indeed, he was criticized for breaking the good mood ensured by the project I miss you, Jew.72 At the same time, he explains, “I feel such an act is necessary. To awake from the historical callousness. We are participants of the post-Holocaust trauma, and yet it remains something alien, as if we saw it in a foreign film.”73 The “post-Holocaust trauma” carries two meanings. The context of Polish culture suggests that it should be understood as the trauma of the bystanders, passive witnesses who are not able to integrate the shock received after watching the Nazi crimes.74 On the other hand, Betlejewski comes closer to understanding the Polish war trauma in an entirely different way. He emphasizes that the Jews’ suffering did not de facto pervade the Polish consciousness. It did not cause any response or leave any significant traces. The Polish community watches it “as if we saw it in a foreign film.” Participation in the crime remains concealed. The reenactment refers not to the trauma of witnesses who observe someone else’s oppressive activities but to that of a group that sees its own perpetration of evil. The group sees it but, at the same time, is not able to talk about it; group members successfully defend themselves from noticing and understanding their own role. Sometimes, this defense manifested itself in regressions to violence, which can be seen, for example, in the aggressive anti-Semitic language of “defenders of the good name of Poland.” The question of the Polish community recognizing itself in the role of perpetrators is in the

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air and is sometimes voiced aloud. Ishabel Szatrawska from Czulent Jewish Association claimed that the aim of the happening was to “identify with the role of the executioner.”75 Jan Tomasz Gross told Gazeta Wyborcza that Betlejewski “simply reminds of what is forced out from Polish consciousness.”76 The project, not surprisingly, sparked protests. Its critics found it inappropriate that the direct allusion to the crime had been in the sphere of art. The sign of the Jewish suffering was treated as a taboo; but the taboo de facto protects the majority consciousness. The Forum of Polish Jews stood up for the inhabitants of Jedwabne, where Betlejewski wanted to organize his happening. “We will help you cope with the demons because it is not your fault,” reads the document signed by the Forum.77 The authors realize that the matter of guilt is of crucial importance here, and that it is recognition of that guilt that inspires aggression. Others state clearly the most crucial problem: “It is awakening the dormant demons. You as a Pole will perform exorcisms, and I as a Jew will reap a bitter harvest of that ritual?”78 The question of guilt indeed appears to be difficult. Krzysztof Ogórek, the village council chair of Zawada, answers the question “Have you felt the Polish guilt towards the Jews?” with reserve: “Guilt or not, let’s leave it to historians.”79 He admits, however, that he feels “sympathy for those who were burnt.” His attitude is clearly not representative of the local community. When two young people shut themselves in the barn to prevent the happening, drunken locals intervene who want to “see the fire and go see a [football] match [on TV—T. Ż.].”80 The event takes the form of a picnic, even though the village council chair had rejected the idea of a festival. “Mr. Betlejewski did not tell us that he would like to commemorate the anniversary of Jedwabne but that they will shoot a film here.81 [. . .] I will not send people to have fun while the death of the Jews is being commemorated,”82 he explained. “There is no abatement. There is boredom and a picnic. Laughter and a show,”83 writes Gazeta Wyborcza. The viewers unknowingly repeat reactions known from the times of the Holocaust: they are detached, yet curious; they experience the event as a performance and, in some peculiar way, enjoy themselves watching it. It is reminiscent of the crowd near the carousels in Krasiński Square in Easter 1943, during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; or the sunbathers by the River Świder during the liquidation of the Otwock Ghetto.84 Ease of Purification Apart from a self-image with dissonance, Betlejewski offers purification to the audience. “White pieces of paper as signs of confession” were burned in the barn. The artist explained, “I would like those pieces of paper to

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symbolize all unkind thoughts we could ever have had towards the Jews, thoughts which we consider a burden.”85 Burning pieces of paper symbolizes parting from unwanted emotions and practices. Behind such an activity is belief in its effectiveness. The ritual is supposed to cause an inner change. Just as in the project Spalić wstyda [Burn the shame], it is supposed to bring a feeling of liberation and make a new beginning possible. Betlejewski attaches great significance to confession. He said, “I have already been thinking about a confession project since 2004. It was to be a pavilion for confession in Jedwabne, but I could not find the right form for it. [. . .] Now it has become clear that the pavilion should be in the shape of a barn.”86 The barn in Zawada was thus supposed to become a huge confessional in the social sphere. There remains the question about the conditions of such group confession. Betlejewski treats The Burning Barn as a radical continuation of I miss you, Jew. The radicalism certainly consists of making the community aware of its deeds and the violence it inflicted, in revealing the role of the perpetrator. Yet the artist, who is clearly aware that the problem should be examined at the level of a community and culture patterns, chooses an individual perspective. As in I miss you, Jew, he begins with emotions of the participants. The transition to that which is collective is at best difficult, if not impossible, in such a case. The division into those longing and others who use the word “Jew” with hatred masks the common denominator that is culture, with its deep-rooted perception of the Other. When Piotr Pacewicz asks, “Should I confess my own sins or the sins of my nation?” Betlejewski answers, “Your own. I will put there my pieces of paper, too.”87 Becoming aware of one’s personal participation in collective violence, or at least co-participation in creating conditions in which said violence was possible, is a major step forward; but such a ritual creates a group with the feeling of premature purification—premature because the project did not start a discussion that could illuminate the mechanisms of collective behaviors. To some extent, the audience intercepted the performance and led it in a direction that was convenient for it. Behaviors that proved to repeat the wartime reactions were overlooked and treated as characteristic of the realm of art, not of cultural patterns. The picnic atmosphere and a kind of cold interest have been attributed to the reenactment as a form. Thus, culture protected itself against recognizing that the performance organized by Betlejewski emphasized collective practices that, in a more-or-less unchanged form, have lasted since the 1940s. The article in Gazeta Wyborcza entitled “Spłonęła Stodoła. I co z tego wynika?” [The barn burned down, and what comes of it?] was written

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according to the style of responses to critical art followed in the 1990s. It is aversion to artistic provocation and conviction that it is inappropriate and ineffective; this aversion is more intensely felt in the article than an attempt at reflection on the project. The audience stops at the level of “painful provocation,” the sense of which they do not actually want to examine too closely. The division into us—the Poles—and them—the Jews is maintained and strengthened. Unlike in I miss you, Jew, Betlejewski reserved some place for the Other. The reactions of Jewish communities were of great importance to him this time; however, by asking them what they thought about his project and the audience’s behavior, he put them in a place that is characterized by great tensions and high intensity of violence inflicted by the majority. The publication of Neighbors caused a wave of attacks against Jan Tomasz Gross. Many voices and publications treated his book as an anti-Polish text and Gross himself as a Jew threatening the Poles’ good name. Thus, everyone who wants to express their opinions about Jedwabne and Polish guilt from a Jewish perspective is placed under enormous pressure. They may not wish to talk directly about their own experience, especially the Polish perpetration, for many reasons. The simplest strategy, to some extent forced by the external pressure, is to stop at the question of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the reenactment. Discussion about art and its limits protects oneself from touching upon social problems. At the same time, it gives a chance to confirm oneself in the minority identity and the role of the defenders of its symbols—much like the “witnesses” in Po-lin, those “guardians of memory” tasked with preserving symbols of the departed. Such a choice turns out to be safe, because the majority is ready to accept this type of identity—provided that it defends an unwritten agreement on silence regarding Polish culture. NOTES 1. Rafał Betlejewski, “Płonie stodoła” [The burn is burning], interview by Piotr Pacewicz, Gazeta Wyborcza, Duży Format, May 20, 2010, 14. 2. Piotr Pacewicz and Grzegorz Szymanik, “Spłonęła stodoła. I co z tego wynika?” [The barn was burned down. What about that?], Gazeta Wyborcza, July 12, 2010, 5. 3. Agnieszka Kowalska, “Z tęsknoty za Żydem” [Of longing for a Jew], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, January 19, 2010, 1. 4. Betlejewski, “Płonie stodoła,” 13. 5. Ibid.

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6. Ibid. 7. Dorota Jarecka, “Prowokacja czy ściema. Kicz to sztuka szczęścia” [Provocation or baloney. Kitsch is the art of happiness], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Świąteczna, May 20–30, 2010, 21. 8. Dorota Jarecka, “rubryka KIT” [Failure column], Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysoskie Obcasy, April 3, 2010, 6. 9. Mariusz Cieślik, “Betlejewski? Nie ten człowiek” [Betlejewski? Not this man], Newsweek​.pl​, January 21, 2011, http:​/​/opi​​nie​.n​​ewswe​​ek​.pl​​/betl​​ejews​​ki-​-n​​ie​-te​​n​czl​​owiek​​​,70750​,1​,1​.html. 10. Katarzyna Kasia, “O czym nie można milczeć” [What cannot be left unsaid], Kultura Liberalna, March 6, 2012. 11. Anna Kowalska, Nowy odbiorca? Przemiany obrazu odbiorcy w wybranych koncepcjach współczesnej kultury [A new viewer? Changes of the image of viewer in the selected concepts of modern culture] (Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa, 2014). 12. Rafał Betlejewski, “Tęsknię za tobą Żydzie.” Tesknie.Com, accessed July 2010, https://www​.tesknie​.com. 13. Tadeusz Markiel, Zagłada domu Trynczerów [The slaughter of the Trynczer family], Znak, no. 4 (2008): 119–46. 14. Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, The Final Station: Umschlagplatz, trans. Nina Taylor (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994), 128–29 and 299. 15. Adam Mickiewicz, Dorothea Prall Radin, “The Lilies,” The Slavonic and East European Review 17, no. 49 (1938): 2. Accessed August 5, 2016. http://www​.jstor​ .org​/stable​/4203447. 16. Tomasz Żukowski, “Żydzi i polska wspólnota. Ballady o Szoa” [Jews and the Polish community Ballads about the Shoah], in Pod presją. Co mówią o Zagładzie ci, którym odbieramy głos [Under the pressure. What the silenced say about the Holocaust] (Warszawa: Wielka Litera, 2021), 154–59. 17. Betlejewski, “Płonie stodoła,” 13. 18. I would like to thank Helena Datner for directing my attention to the text. 19. Franciszek Gil, “Powrót z Kielc” [The return from Kielce], in: Przeciw antysemityzmowi [Against anti-Semitism], ed. Adam Michnik, vol. 2 (Kraków: Universitas, 2010), 107. 20. Ibid., 108–109. 21. Ibid., 111–12. 22. Ibid., 111. 23. Ibid., 115. 24. Eviatar Zerubavel, The Elephant in the Room (New York; Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2008). 25. Andrzej Leder, Prześniona rewolucja. Ćwiczenia z logiki historycznej [The overslept revolution. Exercises in historical logic] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo “Krytyki Politycznej,” 2015). 26. Gil, “Powrót z Kielc,” 111. 27. Ibid. 28. Kowalska, “Z tęsknoty za Żydem,” 1.

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29. Michał Głowiński, “Mowa i zło” [Speech and evil], in idem, Pismak 1863 [Hack 1863] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Literackie i Naukowe Open, 1995), 43. 30. Tadeusz Różewicz, “Gałąź” [The branch], in idem, Proza [Prose], vol. 1 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literacie, 1990), 14. 31. Głowiński, “Mowa i zło,” 43. 32. Paulina Małochleb, “Stodoła i Sienkiewicz” [Barn and Sienkiewicz], Dekada Literacka 242/243, no. 4/5 (2010): 178 and 177. 33. Małgorzata Maciejewska, “Nie nasza stodoła—list” [Not our barn—letter], Gazeta Wyborcza, July 16, 2010, http://wyborcza​.pl​/1​,9589​​2​,814​​6511,​​Nie​_n​​asza_​​ stodo​​la___​​list.​​html#​​ixzz4​​0Viie​​BYx. 34. Mateusz Różański, “Betlejewski nie zdążył. Kolej była szybsza” [Betlejewski did not make it. Rail was quicker], Gazeta Wyborcza, June 28, 2012, http://warszawa​ .wyborcza​.pl​/warszawa​/1​,3488​​9​,120​​29366​​,Betl​​ejews​​ki​_ni​​e​_zda​​zyl__​​kolej​​_byla​​ _szyb​​sza​.h​​tml. 35. Marek Wojtczak, “Tęsknię za Tobą Żydzie” [I miss you, Jew]. W Kazimierzu Dolnym​.p​l, accessed March 16, 2016, http:​/​/www​​.wkaz​​imier​​zudol​​nym​.p​​l​/tes​​knie-​​za​ -to​​ba​-z​y​​dzie.​​html. 36. Anna Zawadzka, “Polska walcząca” [Fighting Poland], in Wojciech Wilczyk, Święta wojna [The sacred war] (Kraków: Karakter, Łódź: Atlas Sztuki, 2014), 14–15. 37. Ibid. 15. 38. Agnieszka Kowalska, “Pokażmy, że tęsknimy” [Let’s show that we miss], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, March 6–7, 2010, 2. 39. Głowiński, “Mowa i zło,” 43. 40. Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania. A tale of the gentry during 1811–1812, trans. Marcel Weyland (Rose Bay: Verand Press, 2004), 183. 41. Jan Tomasz Gross, “Nie ma dlaczego” [There is no why], Gazeta Wyborcza, December 11, 2002, 14. 42. Kowalska, “Z tęsknoty za Żydem.” 43. Aránzazu Calderón Puerta, "Doświadczenie wykluczenia widziane od środka: Skrawek czasu Idy Fink i jego polska recepcja” [The experience of exclusion seen from the inside: A Scrap of Time by Ida Fink and its Polish reception], Pamiętnik Literacki, CVI, z. 3 (2015): 91–103. 44. Kowalska, “Z tęsknoty za Żydem.” 45. Calek Perechodnik, Spowiedź. Dzieje rodziny żydowskiej podczas okupacji hitlerowskiej w Polsce [Confession. A History of a Jewish family during Nazi occupation in Poland], ed. David Engel (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ośrodek Karta, 2004). 46. Calel Perechodnik, Czy ja jestem mordercą? [Am I a murderer?], ed. Paweł Szapiro (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ośrodek Karta, 1993). 47. Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer? Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman, ed. and trans. Frank Fox (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). 48. Ibid., 25–51. 49. Kowalska, “Z tęsknoty za Żydem,” 1.

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50. Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 139. 51. Ibid., 141–42. 52. Ibid., 168. 53. Tomasz Strzembosz, “Przemilczana kolaboracja” [Hidden collaboration], Rzeczpospolita, January 27–28, 2001. 54. Tomasz Strzembosz, “Zstąpienie szatana czy przyjazd Gestapo” [Descent of Satan or the arrival of the Gestapo], Rzeczpospolita, May 12–13, 2001. 55. Henryk Pająk, Jedwabne geszefty [Jedwabne deals] (Lublin: Retro, 2001). 56. Kowalska, “Pokażmy, że tęsknimy,” 2. 57. Piotr Pacewicz, “Spłonie stodoła. Żydzi podzieleni” [The barn will burn. Jews divided], Gazeta Wyborcza, July 9, 2010, 16. 58. Andrzej Żbikowski, “The Post-War Wave of Pogroms and Killings,” in Jewish Presence in Absensce. The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944–2010, ed. Feliks Tych, Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, trans. Grzegorz Dąbkowski, Jessica Taylor-Kucia (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2014). 59. Łukasz Krzyżanowski, Ghost Citizens. Jewish Return to a Postwar City, trans. Madeline G. Levine (Cambridge, MA; London, England: Harvard University Press, 2020). 60. Gil, “Powrót z Kielc,” 105. 61. Ibid., 168. 62. See: Kowalska, “Pokażmy, że tęsknimy.” 63. Betlejewski, “Płonie stodoła,” 13. 64. Pacewicz, “Spłonie stodoła,” 16. 65. Betlejewski, “Płonie stodoła,” 13. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., 14. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Betlejewski, “Płonie stodoła,” 14. 72. Radosław Poczykowski, “Rytualne spalenie” [Ritual burning], Gazeta​.pl​, July 13, 2010, http://wyborcza​.pl​/1​,7684​​2​,813​​4004,​​Rytua​​lne​_s​​palen​​ie​.ht​​ml​#ix​​zz40V​​ oYb1y​​D. 73. Betlejewski, “Płonie stodoła,” 14. 74. Elżbieta Janicka, “Pamięć przyswojona. Koncepcja polskiego doświadczenia zagłady Żydów jako traumy zbiorowej w świetle rewizji kategorii świadka” [Memory acquired. The conception of the Polish experience of the Holocaust as collective trauma in the light of a revision of the concept of bystander], Studia Litteraria et Historica, no. 4–5 (2015), https​:/​/is​​pan​.w​​aw​.pl​​/jour​​nals/​​index​​.php/​​slh​/a​​rticl​​e​/vie​​w​/ slh​​​.2015​​.009/​​1628. 75. Pacewicz, “Spłonie stodoła,” 16. 76. Pacewicz, Szymanik, “Spłonęła stodoła,” 8. 77. Pacewicz, “Spłonie stodoła,” 16. 78. Ibid.

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79. “Zrozumiałem, co Betlejewski chciał powiedzieć” [I realized what Betlejewski wanted to say], Gazeta Wyborcza, July 12, 2010, 8. 80. Pacewicz, Szymanik, “Spłonęła stodoła,” 8. 81. Piotr Pacewicz, “Artysta: Wójt podburzył wieś. Sam spalę stodołę” [Artist: The municipality head incited the village. I will burn the barn myself], Gazeta​.pl​, July 10, 2010, http://wyborcza​.pl​/1​,7684​​2​,812​​4285,​​Artys​​ta_​_W​​ojt​_p​​odbur​​zyl​_w​​ies__​​ Sam​_s​​pale_​​Stodo​​le_​.h​​tml​#i​​xzz40​​VltCn​​TV. 82. Pacewicz, Szymanik, “Spłonęła stodoła,” 8. 83. Ibid. 84. See Edmund Wierciński, “Gałązki akacji” [Acacia branches], Twórczość, no. 1 (1974): 49. 85. Betlejewski, “Płonie stodoła,” 14. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid.

Symbolic Reconstruction of the Warsaw Ghetto Footbridge over Chłodna Street by Tomasz Lec—Warsaw, 2011. Source: Photo by Franciszek Mazur / Agencja Gazeta. CHLODNA_KLADKAMAZ06 © Franciszek Mazur / Agencja Gazeta.

Chapter 4

Purification through Separation The Commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Bridge (1996, 2007–2011) Elżbieta Janicka

After the so-called regaining of independence by Poland in 1989, the “recovery of memory” began: the de facto construction of a new narrative about the identity and past of the dominant majority that was subordinate to new needs and interests (not just symbolic ones). Chłodna Street found itself at the center of increasingly intense manifestations of memory. When viewed as a former border strip, Chłodna Street—particularly its presentday rendering—exemplifies Claude Lévi-Strauss’s thesis that the energy of a structure manifests itself on its margins. The street resembles a rift valley: a place of collision of metaphoric massifs, of the outcropping of symbolic mountain formations, and the nexus of narrative creation. Is the symbolic topography of this place merely happenstance? Or is it a clear, recognizable system of communicating vessels, characterized by a recognizable order of inner flows and sensitive to the fluctuations of external pressures? Does a set of rules or laws govern the spatial-symbolic arrangement? The street has a long and rich history. At the beginning of the 1990s, however, it was home to only one memorial: one of the serial plaques by Karol Tchorek, situated on its western side, off the beaten track, marking the burning in this place of the corpses of Polish civilians murdered by the Germans in the Wola massacre during the Warsaw uprising of 1944. Today, apart from the four memorials to the martyrdom of the so-called Siberians (defined as Catholic Poles deported to Siberia by the authorities of the USSR, which occupied the eastern parts of prewar Poland from September 17, 1939 to June 22, 1941) located on the eastern side of the street, one can count almost ten commemorative artifacts near the junction of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets

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alone. Three memorials pay tribute to Father Jerzy Popiełuszko. Two others mark the location of a German gendarmerie station—the Nordwache— directly linked to the events of the Warsaw uprising of 1944. There is also the well-known and popular Keret House (2011), known as the “narrowest house in the world.” As many as four objects commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto wooden bridge over Chłodna Street, which existed for a few months in 1942. All of them emerged in the second decade of the Third Republic of Poland (from the year 2000 on), culminating in the symbolic (non-literal) reconstruction by Tomasz Lec (2012). The symbolic reconstruction of the bridge is the central object in this place, stretched over the street like a brace-gate. It organizes the space and, at the same time, the narrative. My analysis omits Anna Baumgart’s and Agnieszka Kurant’s spatial installation Wielokropek [Ellipsis] (2010), as well as Wiktoria Julia Frydrych’s sound installation Słyszysz, Mirów? [Can You Hear, Mirów?] (2015)—both of which could be considered as ephemeral messages addressed to a decisively smaller and more niche audience mainly connected with the Varsovian intellectual-artistic milieu. None of these realizations enhanced the selfawareness of the dominant group with regard to the Polish context of the Holocaust. Wielokropek universalized the matter.1 Słyszysz, Mirów?, in turn, placed responsibility entirely and solely with the Germans.2 Described below, subsequent stages of symbol management of the crossroads of Żelazna and Chłodna Streets shifted from counter-commemoration to embodiment via a series of visualizations of the ghetto bridge. The visualizations included a painting, a photograph, and the strategic placement of an object. These visualizations can then be described as representations of an object in search of the object of representation. Symbolic reconstruction is something other than the production of a trace. As with every reconstruction, it entails the question of what its object is, since that which a reconstruction attempts to replicate is not the past but imaginings of the past. One therefore has to ask: Whose imaginings? Who is their subject, and who is their object? Which elements of the past are displayed, and which are hidden? What symbolic stakes are played out through them, and by whom? THE BRIDGE OVER CHŁODNA STREET (1942): INSTRUMENT OF TORTURE, EMBLEM OF HUMILIATION The bridge in question is the wooden bridge from the time of the ghetto. The northern side of Chłodna Street belonged to a large ghetto, while part of the southern side belonged to a small ghetto. The middle of the street was

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“Aryan,” as one would say and write back then, without quotation marks. Through the “Aryan” corridor ran an “Aryan” tram used by “Aryans.” The exclusion of the western side of Chłodna Street from the ghetto and the erection of walls in the middle of Żelazna Street in October 1941 minimized the possibility of traveling from the northern part of the ghetto to the southern part and vice-versa. Crowds of Jews forcing their way into the bottleneck at the junction of Chłodna Street and Żelazna Streets disrupted the smoothness of “Aryan” traffic flow. Another consequence of this segregation was that thousands of Jews lost the roofs over their heads—and, for many of them, not for the first time. This concerned, for example, Stefania Wilczyńska and Janusz Korczak’s orphanage. This disaster, however, concerned solely Jews. The constant changing of borders, the construction of successive walls, and the calculated overcrowding that came with the arrival of Jews deported from both other parts of Poland and abroad all enabled the Germans to keep the ghetto in a state of a permanent catastrophe with respect to housing, supplies, sanitaryepidemiological conditions, and transport. The bridge over Chłodna Street was a development forced both upon and into the ghetto. It was insistently striven for and requested by the Judenrat (Jewish Council)—which also had to pay for it, adding to the humiliation. The Judenrat turned to the German authorities with subsequent projects and supplications in November 1940 and in September 1941. The works began in December 1941. They lasted approximately a month. The architect of the largest civil engineering undertaking in the ghetto was Mieczysław (Mosze) Ring, an engineer working for the Technical Section of the Jewish Council. The contractors were Jewish carpenters. Building materials were provided by the Jewish community. The structure was erected under the windows of Lewin’s tenement at 20 Chłodna Street, where Adam Czerniaków, the chairman of the Judenrat, lived after two forced moves resulting from the unremitting shrinking of the ghetto borders. The bridge was opened for use on January 26, 1942. It was two stories high, with over fifty steps on each side. Vehicular traffic in the ghetto took place on Żelazna Street’s east side. At the intersection of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets, a gate was installed in the wall. Its wings would swing open, alternately closing off traffic to Chłodna Street and Żelazna Street. As Żelazna Street means “Iron Street” it was called the Iron Gate, while the junction was called Scylla and Charybdis—or the Dardanelles, which was an allusion both to the Dardanelles from ancient history and to the famous battle and slaughter in the Dardanelles Strait during World War I. The junction was operated by the Jüdische Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Order Service) under the supervision of the Polish police, who directed traffic. The entire operation was supervised by the German gendarmerie. Despite the

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original intention on the part of both the Germans and the Jewish community to charge a fee, use of the bridge was ultimately free. (The resourceful Germans made up for this financial concession by looting the ghetto at every opportunity.) Jacek Leociak has noted that the ghetto bridge in fact negated all of the positive meanings that the idea of a bridge carries with it: In traditional experience of space, a bridge symbolizes something positive. It makes it possible to overcome a divide, or the untamed element of water. It increases the possibility of moving about and creates greater convenience. It is a sign of victory over adversity. It joins two shores, two edges, and makes a common space, a space for meeting. We imagine a bridge primarily as something that joins broken halves together and makes it possible to overcome what divides them. For the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto, the bridge lost this positive value. It was spectacular evidence that they were caught up in an absurd spatial order. It reminded them of their humiliating incarceration. It made it clear all links between the ghetto and the rest of the world were to be broken. [The bridge in the ghetto was a sign of division and enslavement.]3 (Translator’s Note: The final sentence is missing in Emma Harris’s translation of Jacek Leociak’s book. The translation in brackets is mine.)4

Leociak also noted the associations that the bridge over Chłodna Street evoked in the imagination of prisoners of the ghetto, such as Jan Mawult, Chaim Kapłan, and Henryk Makower: “The wooden bridge, hindering the steady movement of pedestrians from one side of Chłodna to the other. Thousands of feet in a hasty procession walk on it, daily, hourly. Thousands of hanging heads are lifted, greeting the panorama of Chłodna and Wolska Streets, the Market Halls and the Saxon Gardens [sic!], the skyscraper in Napoleon Square, the Cedergren Tower in Zielna Street, the crosses of the churches and the line of the far-off Vistula. The heads fall again with a sigh, the bridge of the ghetto—Ponte di Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs”—5 wrote Jan Mawult with a tone of irony.6

Irony is intertwined here with a bitterly literal form of expression, as the origin of the ghetto Bridge of Sighs is the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, connecting the Doge’s Palace, the seat of the Criminal Court, with a prison. Crossing it, the convicts allegedly sighed for the free world. Il Ponte dei Sospiri is the title of both an Italian silent film from 1921 and a sound film from 1940. (In the films, an unjustly apprehended and convicted lover escapes from

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his persecutors, jumping into the water from the Ponte dei Sospiri.) It is not inconceivable that Mawult refers to one of these films.7 Venice is also the city in which Christians established the first Jewish ghetto in the world. The very etymology of the word “ghetto” is Venetian. It refers to the beginning of the sixteenth century and to the place of forced settlement for Jews, the island Gheto Novo (the New Foundry).8 For the Jews, it was indeed a bridge. For the “Aryans,” it was both a gate and a spectacle. The bridge exposed the Jews to the gaze of the Poles and unveiled them to the Germans. For the Jewish children living nearby and able to move around through their own exertion, it served as a refuge from the physically weaker adults who were unable to climb its many steps. This was of significance in the competition for nourishment; children in the area would snatch food from adults and escape with it to the bridge. For the adult prisoners of the ghetto, the bridge was above all an instrument of torture: physical and psychological. As with the ghetto as a whole, it was an object of hatred. Josef Kirman wrote: My dear and only son! [. . .] You wanted me and no-one else to take you onto the wooden bridge. [. . .] When you asked me whether I was not afraid that the bridge might collapse, I clutched onto that like a drowning man to a straw. [. . .] It might collapse. It ought to collapse. [. . .] Every time I climb up onto the bridge and climb down again, I pray to God that their wooden bridge might fly apart into tiny pieces. Maybe because soldiers in helmets stand under the bridge and, with a smile, look at those climbing on the bridge as if they were monkeys. And maybe because the bridge is terribly dirty, covered with mud that sticks to the ankles. Maybe also because only Jews bustle around on the bridge, because it is swarmed with arm bands of shame like with shrouds. It is their bridge. [. . .] Don’t drag me onto bridges which are bound to collapse one day. Still during my lifetime, I will show you how that cursed bridge of theirs breaks and collapses.9

The construction did indeed prove to be an ephemera. It lasted longer, however, than those condemned to use it. The inhabitants of the small ghetto were deported to the gas chambers of Treblinka between August 10 and 16, 1942. [I]n the torrid summer of 1942 the Germans set to work to exterminate the largest Jewish community in Europe. In just under a week all the inhabitants of the little ghetto were driven across the bridge to the larger area. The steep flights of steps sucked in crowds loaded with bundles and suitcases, packed with the very essence of their homes, for the

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homes themselves had gone. They did not halt on the farther side of the bridge but were driven deeper and deeper into the big ghetto, while the streets left behind shrank like a severed limb. During that summer the Germans deported over three hundred thousand people from the ghetto. People who had grown like trees, were sorted out like tin figures. One day I saw an incredible sight: there was no one on the bridge. No one was left in the little ghetto: it was a city without people, as in the fairy tale. During the summer and autumn of 1942, at the cost of one part of Warsaw, the Germans presented the other part with a royal spectacle. A task which our backward minds might estimate to take a hundred years was achieved in a few weeks. One day when I awoke, I did not recognize the street: the bridge was gone. From “all the land of Judah unto the utmost sea” the Germans began to remove the landmarks.10

The career of the “bridge which divides,” to use Josef Kirman’s expression, is a doubly posthumous phenomenon. It takes place after both the liquidation of the bridge and the murder of people who the bridge targeted. The bridge over Chłodna Street existed for a short period of time, and it was not the only such bridge. In the Warsaw ghetto, there were three more wooden bridges, all of which had been built earlier. “In chronological order, these were: the bridge over Mławska Street, in the northeastern part of the ghetto (February 1941); the bridge over Przebieg Street, linking Muranowska and Bronifraterska Streets (June 1941); the bridge over Żelazna Street by the crossroads with Leszno Street (November 1941).”11 There were also plans to build at least three next footbridges. Three wooden bridges existed in the Łódź ghetto. How was it, then, that the bridge over Chłodna Street became the hero of a reconstructive success story? How and why has the symbolic reconstruction of a German Nazi construction—a symbol of humiliation, incapacitation, suffering, and death of Jews—been promoted to the rank of a tourist attraction that meets with societal approval? This did not happen overnight. It was preceded by a long process, unfolding in stages. The signifier—that is, the Warsaw ghetto wooden bridge over Chłodna Street—was hollowed out of its primary, original meaning. It was then filled with a new meaning and subsequently reconstructed in situ through the prism of this new meaning. In terms of material concretization: initial non-existence triggered a counter-commemoration that was followed by restrained forms of commemoration. These, in turn, were followed by a high-tech, styled imitation. How exactly did the process of raising up the symbolic mountain formation “bridge over Chłodna Street” from scratch proceed? What exactly does it mean to call this process “revitalization?” Last, but not least: What is the meaning and what are the functions of this new object within the system of

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representation constituted by the symbolic topography of today’s Chłodna Street? FATHER JERZY SQUARE (1996): APOTROPAIC COUNTER-COMMEMORATION The beginnings of the process leading to the current form of symbolic management of Chłodna Street date back to the second half of the 1990s. It was then that Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was commemorated with a granite obelisk, erected near the crossroads with Żelazna Street. Popiełuszko (1947–1984) was one of the chaplains of the opposition Solidarność (Solidarity) trade union. He was murdered by the functionaries of the Ministry of the Interior of the People’s Republic of Poland (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) for his political activities.12 The obelisk itself was devoid of religious emblems, with an inscription in Polish. The site, previously a traffic island serving as a tram stop, was named Father Jerzy Square. The obelisk, in turn, was supplemented with a large crucifix, facing west. What does all this have to do with the wooden footbridge? At the beginning of the 1990s, small groups of Jews and Israeli school excursions started to regularly visit the then-anonymous and imperceptible island. Their presence, to which Polish users of the space were hardly indifferent, made the place visible. This manifested via knowing looks and comments such as: “Little kikes” (Żydki), “Our friends from the Middle East,” “Oy vey” (shouts directed at the groups), “Real sweet Jewesses” (Żydóweczki istny cymes),” “They are looking for their property” (Patrzą za swoim), “They haven’t got enough yet” (Jeszcze im mało). In the pastry shop Calypso at 15 Chłodna Street, such comments were expressed loudly, exchanged freely between tables; a community of shared thoughts and feeling was assumed among both staff and guests. One day, excavation work began at the island. A small elevation was built. A signpost, an obelisk, and a crucifix were installed. After the work had been completed, the small groups and the excursion participants gathered in the same place. The sight of the Jews and Israelis under the crucifix—viewed as humorous, grotesque, and provocative—became an additional draw for pedestrians. Among the lovers of confectionaries, an atmosphere of outwitting the adversary reigned. The installation resulted from a consensus and a co-operation beyond the circle of city officials. The commemoration had to be approved by the District Council, and afterward by the City Council. It therefore required consent among the usually conflict-prone city councilors. The implementation lay with both the Administration of Public Land (Zarząd Terenów Publicznych) and the Administration of Urban Roads (Zarząd Dróg Miejskich). The very

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idea, however, had surfaced independently of the city authorities and the low-ranking clerks. It was a collective initiative, an expression of vox populi and vox Dei. The engraving on the obelisk identifies the initiators: the local parish of Saint Andrew the Apostle and “the inhabitants of Warsaw’s [district of] Mirów.” Media reports neither noted any voices of protest nor raised any objections themselves. Unanimity resulted from what Pierre Bourdieu termed doxa, or sociocultural obviousness. All initiators of the installation, numbering at least a few thousand people, saw Jews and Israelis on the traffic island. Nobody questioned the form of the commemoration, not to mention the very idea of it. And the choice to commemorate Father Jerzy Popiełuszko in the middle of Chłodna Street was to be questioned. The sanctuary, grave, and monument of the chaplain of Solidarność (Solidarity) are all located in a parish in Warsaw’s Żoliborz district, where he lived and carried out his anti-Communist political activities. In Żoliborz, there is also a street bearing his name. It is one of the district’s main arteries. The chaplain was connected to Chłodna Street in that in the building at Number 15—the same that housed Calypso—there was an apartment in his name (belonging to his aunt from America) in which he did not live. The Ministry of the Interior took advantage of this by planting compromising material there.13 In connection with the case of the apartment at 15 Chłodna Street, Jerzy Popiełuszko was temporarily arrested and subjected to a humiliating body search. After being released on his own recognizance, he was summoned fifteen times for interrogation. This was part of a largescale policy of harassment of the chaplain by the Ministry of the Interior of the People’s Republic of Poland. Popiełuszko described the events as they unfolded, in his diary.14 According to the tenants who remember the 1980s, the neighbors then placed an improvised altar in honor of the priest, imagined as Saint George (święty Jerzy) on a white horse aiming a spear at a red dragon, at the door of the apartment.15 The dragon was supposed to embody Communism. The commemoration of the “martyr to faith and fatherland” in the middle of the street can therefore be understood as an extension and external transference of that altar—the altar’s elevation in the symbolic hierarchy of prestige, in times during which anti-Communism not only became permissible but was also elevated to the level of a standard, if not binding, descriptive paradigm of the collective past, present, and identity. Anti-Communism is widely displayed on today’s Chłodna Street through the aforementioned numerous “Siberian” commemorations crystallizing around the deportations of Polish citizens into the depths of the USSR. The construct of the Siberians—while polonizing the deportees—is a tool of exclusion of non-Poles from the community of suffering. It is as popular as it

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is inaccurate, since the policies of the USSR were class-oriented and applied equally to Poland’s citizens regardless of their denomination. Combined with the popular myth of Judeo-Communism (żydokomuna), it is commonly used to present Jews as the perpetrators of persecution targeted against the majority populations (Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians). This serves in turn to justify the stance and behavior of these dominant groups toward Jews. This anti-Semitic narrative is known as double genocide theory. Back to the Popiełuszko’s memorial case. There remains the issue of the content and form of the memorialization. On the bronze plaque, Father Jerzy Popiełuszko is described as a “martyr to faith and fatherland.” He is therefore commemorated here as a heroic figure in whom the cause of the nation is identified with the cause of religion. Indeed, this is how he was perceived during his lifetime, by virtue of his biography and teachings. As a chaplain of Solidarity, he renewed the Romantic institution of the Holy Mass for the Fatherland. The religious services he celebrated drew crowds of thousands. They were, in fact, patriotic demonstrations. A phrase affixed to his name has entered the cultural treasure trove of the community’s wisdom: “Only under the cross, / only under this sign / will Poland be Poland, / and a Pole—a Pole.” There has been no critical examination of his choices pertaining to identity and belonging. Clearly, Polish culture is interested in the myth of Jerzy Popiełuszko and in converting his mortal remains into relics, whereas it is not interested in the Belarusian who became a Roman Catholic priest and who placed on his cassock the emblematic eagle of interwar Poland, a state that persecuted Belarusians throughout its existence—and, later, wherever its ethos raised its head.16 What we are dealing with on Chłodna Street is a commemoration of the emblematic figure of Polak-katolik (Polish equals Catholic), an icon and muse of anti-Communism. While from a formal point of view, both the signpost and the stone place themselves into the convention of acts of memory in the urban space, adding a crucifix to them comes as a surprise in that it goes beyond the framework of a certain commemorative standard, constituting a form of excess. The crucifix acts here as a visual exclamation mark, reinforcing the transmission of what is contained in the signpost and the obelisk. It also carries its own message, introducing additional tension as an intensely antagonizing sign of exclusivity. “Marking of space” is a category used by Manuel Castells for the description of the city as a form—or set of forms—of symbolic expression.17 According to this depiction, the city is a playground for a game of symbolic power, which manifests itself in the aspiration to mark the space “whether according to the signs of power [. . .] or as a tangible concretization of [. . .] values.”18 In a book on national and ethnic conflicts in the symbolic dimension, Lech Nijakowski proposes the term “symbolic domain” for a “territory,

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which a given group dominates symbolically.”19 Placing a crucifix in the public space deprives that space of its commonly accessible character. It is a demonstration of power. It is an act of appropriation, of territorial aggression.20 It establishes a differentiation among the users of space between owners and intruders, even though the aggressor—in order to mask the violence in play—usually prefers the terms “hosts” and “guests.” The installation of a cross as a casus belli is a gesture typical of Christianity, of religious wars and religious persecution, particularly popular in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów) during the time of the Counter-Reformation. This practice consists in simultaneously marking ownership of a site with a symbol and issuing threats. The pattern is deeply rooted in tradition and the prevailing cultural code in a country where the Catholics used the cross—in particular, the crucifix—as an instrument of religious struggle, of political struggle as well as an instrument of property disputes. “At the same time, every attempt to remove the cross or move it to a different place was treated as a blasphemous act. The legal action and trials which resulted in connection with this found a broad echo in the society of the nobility provoking fierce polemics in the land diets (sejmiki) and the National Diet (sejm).”21 This type of practice intensified in the seventeenth century, but the cross as a symbol of appropriation and exclusion underwent a genuine renaissance in the post-1989 Republic of Poland. An example of this are the crucifix placed under the cover of the night in the plenary hall of the Sejm (1997) or the cross installed “spontaneously”—i.e. de facto prior information and negotiation with anyone—by the scouts in front of the President’s Palace in Warsaw (2010). The so-called Sejm cross is a crucifix which was placed on the grave of Jerzy Popiełuszko during one of the “Holy Masses for the Fatherland.” After the service the priest’s mother handed it over to the members of parliament. It is made of ebony wood, derived from the altar of the Chapel of the Miraculous Image in Jasna Góra, and hence endowed with all the apotropaic attributes, safeguarding it from any possible removal. Carving out Father Jerzy Square from the doorsteps of the church to the crossroads with Żelazna Street, thereby creating an outpost of Polishness and Catholicism there, constitutes symbolic expansion. It changes the symbolic status of this section of Chłodna Street, enlarging the symbolic property of the church—even though the site remains in possession of the city of Warsaw, with city authorities paying for its maintenance. Before 1996, the symbolic domain of the church ended near its doorsteps, by the figure of the Gracious Mother of God, planted with coniferous bushes and linden trees. At the foot of the figure, one can still see an improvised corner of the cult of the priest, a relic of ancient times. Protected from the rain by means of a homemade shelter is a black-and-white photograph of Jerzy Popiełuszko in a cassock with a silver eagle, an emblem of interwar Poland.

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The photograph bears the inscription “He was one of us.” Both the figure and the photograph face the church. The installation is low-key in character. In 2011, in the course of the so-called revitalization—which, at times, was difficult to distinguish from plain devastation—the bushes and trees surrounding the figure were cleared away. The site was flanked by signposts with the name of the square, increasing its visibility. This intrusion into the urban fabric on that particular section of Chłodna Street reflects the brutal nature of the “territorial-symbolic economy” of the city as a whole—in other words, it is characteristic of the post-1989 triumphant restitution of capitalism and Catholicism in Poland. The Christianization of the former traffic island needs to be situated in the context of the historical moment in which this place, neglected and forgotten, became a highly visible symbolic center. The process occurred at the apogee of a turbulent and often brutal nationwide debate on the presence of religious symbols in the field of ashes located in the former German Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz-II Birkenau. One of the scenes in a Polish symbolic campaign went on incessantly for more than a decade, starting in 1985. What was at stake was the national ownership of the camp complex as a symbol of martyrdom recognizable all over the world. Another way to put it is to say that the very meaning of Auschwitz was being contested. We are talking about a succession of events: the placement of the Carmelite convent in one of the buildings of the Auschwitz-I complex (1985–1993), the installation of a church in the former building of the SS Command Headquarters (Kommandantur)22 at Auschwitz-II Birkenau (1994, still existing and functioning), the scandal in connection with the commemorations of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of both camps (1995), the plan to build a shopping mall in the immediate vicinity of the camp (1996), the aforementioned interference in the field of ashes in Auschwitz-II Birkenau (1996–1997), and the placement of the so-called papal cross on the gravel pit next to the building that the Carmelite nuns had vacated a few years earlier (1998–1999).23,24 The so-called papal cross was a cross that was placed on the ramp in Birkenau in 1979—alongside a white-and-red Polish national flag as an element of the altar at which Pope John Paul II celebrated mass. Without this and without the papal call “Defend the Cross!,” it is difficult to imagine the subsequent willfulness and impunity of the Polish Catholic Church, although its sense of legitimacy also derived from support from below and by no means exclusively from Catholic fundamentalists. Since everywhere except in Poland, Auschwitz was the symbol of the murder of European Jewry, Jews were cast by the Poles in the role of the adversary, if not the assailant: living and dead Jews, real and phantasmatic ones, those who were engaged in the territorial-symbolic camp economy

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and those who were not. Polish dominant culture offered here the phantasm of property due to the Poles—albeit finding itself, illegitimately in the view of Poles, in proverbial Jewish hands. Structurally, this idea was manifested in the repetition of an unchanging pattern. It began with the installation of a symbol of Christian presence—one that is unambiguously Catholic and identified with Polishness. Following the installation, protests ensued. They were articulated from abroad by Jewish organizations or by individuals publicly identifying as Jewish. In Poland, what was time and again considered as the real problem and placed at the center of public debate was not the appropriation of the terrain of Auschwitz or the area in the immediate vicinity of the camp (strefa przyobozowa) but disagreement with this process. The situation was identified through the prism of the myth of the aggressive Jew slandering Poland and the Poles from abroad. The crucifix on Chłodna Street appeared in the eleventh year of the symbolic campaign around Auschwitz, in an atmosphere difficult to convey in a few words. It began with an appeal made by Elie Wiesel to the Polish prime minister to remove any religious symbols from the place in which the bodies of murdered Jews, mostly Hungarian, had been burned. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s call formed part of the conclusion of his speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the Kielce pogrom: the best known of post–World War II pogroms and anti-Semitic murders dating back to July 4, 1946. His speech concerned religious symbols—crosses and Stars of David—planted in the field of ashes in Birkenau by Polish scouts in the mid-1980s. (Voices of protest had been raised earlier, but to no avail.) The debate that flared up after Wiesel’s appeal unfolded in the press, on the radio, and on television broadcasts of all political orientations: from the extreme right to the so-called left. Public authorities, including the Polish prime minister and the Polish president, participated in it. The author of a monograph on the debate, Piotr Forecki, divided its participants, most of them male, into two camps: the national-Catholic one and the liberal-progressive one.25 (The core of this chapter was omitted in the English translation of Forecki’s book.)26 Within the national-Catholic element, Wiesel’s speech was taken to be an attack on the cross and, ergo, on Poles, Poland, and Polishness—in the image and likeness of the attacks carried out by the Nazis and the Communists. Participants wrote about a foreign dictate as well as a series of unceasing impositions made on Poland by Jews. The topos of the Polish land with Poles as its landlords was stirred up; the entire affair was placed within the context of the Polish uprisings, martyrdom at the hands of the German Nazi occupiers, resistance to Communism, and “the fight of the Polish nation for your freedom and ours, which was an inspiration for our Europe and the symbol of which was Solidarity.”27

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There is no reason to assume that public opinion leaned more heavily toward the national-Catholic mindset than the liberal-progressive one. The democratically elected authorities then in power were considered left-wing. The point is that the liberal-progressive element defined the field of debate in the same way as the national-Catholic camp. The two sides also assumed the same stance regarding the presence of religious symbols in Birkenau. There were differences concerning the vocabulary, rhetoric, and the argumentation schemes—though more than one progressive-liberal statement could easily have surfaced in the national-Catholic field, such as the opinion of a Gazeta Wyborcza journalist that “[i]n the Auschwitz controversy kołtun [Polish plait]28 meets chutzpah, which means insolence in Yiddish.”29 Within both camps, Wiesel’s intervention was judged out of order, to say the least. It was his appeal for a removal of the religious symbols that was considered the main problem, instead of the symbols themselves.30 The consequence was treated as the cause. In other words, the debate was predominantly of “substitute” character and reproduced tried-and-tested models of violence and exclusion at symbolic level. Those coming out in favor of the removal of the installation planted in the ground by the scouts were in the outright minority. Among the ranks of this outright minority, there was another outright minority: those who shared Wiesel’s arguments in particular. As it seems, only Adam Rok,31 the chief editor from Słowo Żydowskie fortnightly and Konstanty Gebert,32 a journalist from Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper took a definite pro-Wiesel stand. However, both titles also published opposite opinions on the matter. The religious symbols were eventually removed. Reference was made to the UNESCO convention specifying conditions for inclusion of the site of the former camp on the World Heritage List. The convention prohibits the placing of any “non-historical elements” other than information display boards on the terrain of the former camp complex. “Such a solution was actually advocated by the members of the International Council of the AuschwitzBirkenau State Museum, the presidium of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites [Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa], and the Auschwitz Preservation Society.”33 The final decision in this matter was taken by the Polish Minister of Culture Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa in consultation with the local Catholic bishop. In other words, the final settlement was makeshift and illusory; the debate was cut off by means of evacuating the problem, moving it outside of the context and field of debate. Instead of forbidding anti-Semitic actions (or, indeed, addressing anti-Semitism at all), it proclaimed that the cross had to be moved for purely formal reasons: as an element posterior to the historical camp.

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When one reflects upon the events on Chłodna Street, the public actualization of the cultural pattern that occurred on the site of the former Auschwitz camp in reaction to the Jewish presence is of clear significance. In 1996, in the field of ashes in Birkenau, there occurred a performative renewal of the notion that the Jewish presence threatened both the identity narrative and territorial holdings (material and non-material alike) of the dominant Polish majority. In a situation thus defined, the imperative of self-defense through attack by means of the cross was repeated and reinforced. Conditions were produced that allowed for the conscious application of symbolic aggression without jeopardizing the collective self-image. On Chłodna Street, the crucifix has been used in order to seal the space, with the intention of confiscating it. At the same time, the tried-and-tested apotropaic method “for the Jews” was put into practice. The crucifix, the obelisk, and the square can therefore be understood as a form of protocommemoration of the bridge over Chłodna Street—an indirect one, because the entire symbolic set was staged in indirect connection to the footbridge. These symbols could also be interpreted as a collective reaction to the memory practices of the group considered a counter-group, a constitutive enemy. In accordance with such understanding, one can term the crucifix with the obelisk an apotropaic counter-commemoration. During the revitalization on Chłodna Street in 2011, both objects were surrounded by acacia trees. As a result, they are lost today in a green thicket, remaining invisible to the observer not in the know. FREEZE-FRAME (1942): THE VIEW OF POWER Throughout the decade following the 1996 installation, Chłodna Street remained dormant. The area near the intersection with Żelazna Street then experienced, one year after another, the appearances of the Adam Jastrzębski a.k.a. Adam X mural (2007) and the stela (a concrete, vertical slab) by Eleonora Bergman and Tomasz Lec (2008). These were two vastly different art pieces, yet both referred to the same image of the bridge over Chłodna Street. The point of reference was perhaps the most well-known representation: a still from the German Nazi propaganda film produced in 1942. The photograph we are talking about is a freeze-frame, and therefore a hybrid form, an element of the bigger picture. What exactly constitutes the latter? The German Nazi “film functionaries” or the “filmers” [filmiarze], as Czerniaków (the chairman of the Judenrat) called them, arrived in the ghetto on May 1, 1942, and immediately began the production. Anja Horstmann provides evidence that the German cameramen Willy Wist and Helmut Rudolph were not members of “a propaganda company.” According to her

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findings, the Nazis most probably organized them into a separate film team whose sole task was to shoot the film. Horstmann also writes that there are no documents—or that no documents have been found—permitting us to establish on whose order and for what purposes the film material was produced.34 The film was never edited, and there is no proof that it was ever screened. Eight rolls of film belonging to the Reichsfilmarchiv were discovered in the 1950s in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). They are currently being stored under the classification “Ghetto” in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. They are also classified there under the title Asien in Mitteleuropa [Asia in Middle Europe], which is most probably the original Nazi title. Whatever the case, as professionals, Wist and Rudolph adhered to a film genre: that of creative documentary (dokument kreacyjny). The list of topics of interest to them included socioeconomic contrasts (the immoral social set-up), crime (degeneration), self-government (privilege), and traditional customs (freedom of religious practices)—in other words, everything that one could portray as exotic and/or repulsive and abhorrent in a physical or moral sense, preferably both at the same time. The German film crew filmed the Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Order Service) dispersing smugglers (the filmmakers focused especially on the ill treatment of children); the prisoners in the overcrowded prison on Gęsia Street; the refugees in the building formerly housing the Main Judaic Library on Tłomackie Street, which was full to bursting; and Adam Czermiaków in his office. The masters of the situation realize their own vision, disposing at will of Jewish time and space, Jewish things, and Jewish bodies. From this material, they construct their tableaux vivant: still—though barely—living pictures. Czerniaków attempted to protest the film crew’s choice of subjects. In response to this, the following day, he has a camera aimed at his temple: “At 4 o’clock, on my return home, I found uniformed filmmakers [funkcjonariusze filmowi, ‘film functionaries’], etc. [They decided to shoot a scene in my apartment.] Romcia [Roma] is ill in bed. Niunia, as usual of late, was not feeling well.”35 (Translator’s note: The sentence in brackets is missing in the English translation. The translation is mine.) The next day, he wrote in his diary: At 8:30 A.M. I am waiting at home for the film crew. I requested that a couple be engaged to be actors. The movie men arrived at 8:45 and were shooting until 12:30. They placed a sign on the door with something written on it. Two women and a male “star” were brought to the apartment. Then an old Jew. They started shooting.36

The shooting of the film lasted over a month. The last entry about the presence of the filmmakers in the ghetto is dated June 2, 1942, when Czerniaków

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is once again filmed in his office. Rumors about deportation accompany the film sequence in Czerniaków’s diary, like a refrain. The word “Treblinka” also appears. Czerniaków clearly takes it as a reference to Treblinka I, the labor camp. The construction of Treblinka II, the extermination camp, was, however, already under way. In their introduction to the English edition of Adam Czerniaków’s diary, Raul Hilberg and Stanislaw Staron emphasize: “All that time Czerniaków was unaware that the deportees to the labor camp, Treblinka I, would be used to erect the lethal Treblinka II.”37 The great liquidation Aktion began on July 22, 1942. A day later, Czerniaków took his own life. In the course of two months, the Germans deported the majority of the prisoners of the ghetto to the gas chambers of Treblinka—at least 300,000 in total, with some estimates reaching higher. This was done within the framework of the Aktion Reinhardt: the German murder, in an industrial manner, of Jews from the Generalgouvernement and the Bezirk Bialystok. The Warsaw ghetto Jews were thus filmed by the Germans as the “deceased on vacation,” as “living corpses,” as Emanuel Ringelblum and Calel Perechodnik, respectively, described their own status. One can also describe them as being immured, walled up alive. The perpetrators are taking pictures of the victims before their death. The task of the “film functionaries” is to produce a posthumous mask from still-living faces, ordered to make grimaces according to the will of the Germans. The posthumous mask is what will be presented, once things are over, as evidence that this is how it was—that this is what it looked like at the moment of transition from life to death. What we are watching in action here is the final solution in search of a problem. The mechanical image is a type of mechanical reproduction; it is a trace—like an imprint or a cast.38 As such, it is endowed with the “authority of realness (autorytet realności),” which, in this case, was additionally reinforced by using the convention of the documentary. The “authority of realness” is transformed here into the terror of truth, which has its director, producer, and distributor. (The architecture of the German Nazi omnipotence was further addressed and deconstructed by Yael Hersonski, who analyzed footage from Warsaw from 1942 in her 2010 film A Film Unfinished.) The most well-known image of the bridge over Chłodna Street is a still from Nazi material: the view of the bridge—probably taken on May 14 or 15, 1942—from the window of Adam Czerniaków’s apartment on the second floor of Lewin’s tenement on 20 Chłodna Street. On the right edge of the still, in the foreground, part of a sculpture ornamenting the façade is visible. The location of the sculpture can be precisely determined because the building still exists. It is situated next to the frame of one of the apartment windows, on the left-hand side when viewing the building from the street. This photograph

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is an extremely charged cultural text because of both the content and the circumstances under which it was produced. From Czerniaków’s diary, we know that nobody asked him for permission to enter his apartment and to start filming. Nobody saw fit to even inform him in advance about the decision to do so. The occupant becomes an intruder in his own home. The other occupants, who are also ill and indisposed, are deprived of privacy. The backstage is spot-lit. The interior no longer protects from the exterior. The Germans make the decision, invade, let into the apartment whomever they want, then sit there for hours. What Czerniaków describes as “disturbance of domestic peace” in the film image is a figure of rape. We are watching the penetration of the inside by means of a sharp instrument with which the eye was armed; an eye that wants everything, can do everything, and is not embarrassed by anything—least of all, by what was formerly a subject and is now turned into an object (still animate, but already less significant than non-animate objects). We have here a piercing through violated space: from the entrance through the front door to the exit through the window. This piercing, all-encompassing gaze is figure of a panopticon, allowing perpetrators full access to victims with or without victims’ knowledge. It epitomizes the total power of gaze and the total power tout court. The overhead perspective emphasizes the omnipotence of the supervisor and commander, of master and ruler. “The gaze from above has something of the arrogance and desire to dominate the city about it.”39 The arrogance of knowledge and power manifests itself in the desire to see “what others are not able to see.”40 We are dealing with a view from medium height, from a slanting angle. This view is different from the bird’s-eye view, which is perpendicular to the ground and eliminates the horizon, resulting in a flat image. Here, there is a horizon, there is a succession of planes, hence the impression of spatiality and of the plasticity of the image. It is a combination of a long shot with a medium close-up, a standard close-up, and even a detail shot (as in the case of the texture of a part of the sculpture on the façade). The author of the photograph does not only look at his object; he also looks into it. To put it colloquially: a gaze with which one sticks one’s beak into people’s lives. That which is not visible from street level stands open to such a gaze. It does not necessarily have to be, but in this case is the gaze of the “masters of the situation,” to cite Władysław Szlengel’s expression panowie sytuacji for the Germans decreeing and supervising the extermination of the Jews41—that may also be translated as “the lords of the circumstance.”42 The analyzed photograph can be termed an administrative view. It is also a view of power:43 the real power (the Germans) watches here from a place of illusory power (Czerniaków). (I borrow the category view of power from Konrad Pustoła, who has photographed views from windows of the loci of power [instancje władzy]—state power, local administration power, financial

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and economic as well as symbolic power—in Warsaw and Cracow.) The building at 20 Chłodna Street was called the White House by ghetto inhabitants, owing to both the color of the façade and the status of some of its residents: Adam Czerniaków, the chairman of the Judenrat, and Józef Szeryński, the head of the Ordnungsdienst. Looking out of the window of illusory power, the real power documents its holdings of both movable and immovable property. Yet the description of space, which is a kind of stocktaking, is difficult to distinguish from narcissistic self-contemplation. The author of the representation of the object looks at himself in the object of representation. For the object of the picture is space, albeit one highly processed by the Germans. What one sees through the window at 20 Chłodna Street is a full-sized spatial scale model of a desired form of culture and society. Jacek Leociak describes the ghetto as a “drastic interference in the earlier urban organization,”44 an ensemble of “topographic aberrations,” an absurdum.45 He terms the ghetto an “insane order”46 and a cywilizacyjna patologia47 or “destructive of civilization.”48 It seems, however, that for the camera-wielding perpetrators, the management of the intersection of Żelazna and Chłodna Streets reflected their notion of order and civilization tout court: of spatial order as societal order as moral order. The view from Czerniaków’s window is a visual treatise about divisions to which one can relate in terms of a formulation used by Jakub Majmurek in a different context: “Views of power or a new division of the land, this land.”49 The division was not all that new, either; the idea of the ghetto dates back to sixteenth-century Christian practices. One can also convincingly support the assertion that the ghetto was a performance of Polish majority culture, absolutely not only in the interwar period.50 What we are dealing with in this case, however, is an exceptionally spectacular visualization of divisions, of hierarchy, of configuration of power, and of fate in the sense of the trajectory which the dominant established for the dominated. The window of illusory power is an opening, a peephole through which one sees a spectacle of marking space as a practice of real power. This view is the result of classification/ separation, followed by stigmatization, segregation, isolation, and so on. The last link in this chain, and the logical conclusion of this view, will be added shortly. Exactly two months and one week elapsed from mid-May 1942 to the beginning of the “Great Action” on July 22. MURAL (2007): SYMBOLIC URBAN GUERRILLA The 1942 freeze-frame of the bridge is referred to by the authors of two commemorative works that appeared on Chłodna Street in two consecutive

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years. The first commemoration of the bridge over Chłodna Street is the mural by Adam Jastrzębski, who uses the artistic pseudonym Adam X. His work was situated on the west side of the street and thus on the opposite side of the crossroads of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets, where the bridge was originally located. As painting support, the artist used an existing object: a three-element concrete wall vis-à-vis an extant modernist building at 25 Chłodna Street (on the corner with Żelazna Street), in which a police station of the German gendarmerie, the so-called Nordwache, was located. The small wall was an insignificant creation, deprived of any functional and proprietary assignment, located accidentally in this and not another place. Created in 2007, the mural was the artist’s second work in this very place. A year earlier, Adam X had painted on the small wall a scene representing Miron Białoszewski producing a pile of excrements in the pile of debris on Chłodna Street. The mural was painted using a variety of shades of pink. The very choice of color already placed the representation at the polar opposite to the heroic paradigm, while at the same time constituting a reference to the poet Białoszewski’s sexual orientation. The work was adorned with an inscription referring to A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising, Białoszewski’s masterpiece of poetic prose and a manifesto of civil ethos: “Miron Białoszewski holds on to the constructive pile.”51 The fixed phrase trzymać się kupy (“to hold on,” “to stick to the pile”) implies coherence or lack thereof (to się nie trzyma kupy, “this does not stick to the pile” means “this does not add up”). In Polish kupa designates a pooh as well as a pile. During the Warsaw uprising in 1944, Miron Białoszewski and Swen Czachorowski would go for a pooh (chodzili na kupę) in a cellar where they would read and recite their literary works to each other. In a nutshell, they would discuss literature “while having a pooh” (na kupie). Indeed, Adam X placed the (anti)aesthetic category of constructive pile in the semantic field of pile as excrement and rubble. The project had therefore both an anti-heroic and anti-martyrological meaning, protesting coercion to heroism and suffering, combating the terror of the myth52 to which the civilian population of Warsaw was subjected in 1944 in the name of the heroicmartyrological imperative constitutive of the dominant version of Polish national identity.53 The mural was also an engagement with the Romantic topos of the ruins used by high culture—and, after the war, also by photographers who, while photographing ruins, often demonstrated artistry of a pictorial provenance. Adam X’s 2006 mural was a manifesto of an alternative attitude toward the aggressive nationalist paradigm that has dominated the Polish public sphere and taken possession of Polish history politics, in conjunction with the rise to power of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in 2005. Exposing obscenity, the pink plane invaded the space of the street that had been established as a

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symbolic domain of the national ethos—via a plaque placed on the building at 25 Chłodna Street, right in front of the mural. The inscription on the plaque exalts the heroism of the Polish soldiers who participated to the 1944 Warsaw uprising. Made from black granite with golden letters and massive brass screws, the plaque is endowed with all of the attributes of cultural nobility, attesting to the importance and seriousness of the cause represented. Thus, the provisional small wall constitutes the plaque’s absolute negation, as an unimportant and non-serious surface and painting support. The apotheosis of victory over the enemy at 25 Chłodna Street eliminates from the field of vision the historical context and reality: the fact that the 1944 Polish uprising ended in a military defeat at an exorbitant cost, namely 200,000 victims and a city reduced to ruins. In this sense, the Białoszewski mural, demonstrating the final result of the operation, was the embarrassing and pitiful reverse of the plaque. It discredited, in fact, the pathos-laden narrative about Polish heroism. In 2007, Adam X replaced the Białoszewski mural with a new one, featuring the wooden bridge over Chłodna Street. “The painting was a shared idea of Grzegorz Lewandowski, a co-owner of Chłodna 25 Coffee Bar and Club, and Adam X.”54 The unveiling of the mural took place on April 21, 2007. The tendency to connect the creation of the mural with the sixty-fourth anniversary of the outbreak of the uprising in the ghetto is understandable, given the proximity of the dates. However, this proximity emphasizes the deeply civilian character of Jastrzębski’s thinking. The succession of the artistic representations is worthy of commentary because of the sociocultural context involved. In Polish dominant culture, it is unique that out of the two narratives concerning two histories occurring in the same place at different times—within the space of two years (1942, 1944)— the narrative about Polish martyrdom peaceably gives way to the narrative about Jewish martyrdom. It is even more puzzling than it might appear at first glance because the small wall on Chłodna Street has, like every wall, two sides. The mural featuring the footbridge thus could have been painted on the north side, on the reverse of the Białoszewski mural. On one hand, this would have created an impression of symmetry between the non-symmetrical histories; on the other, such a solution would have reproduced asymmetry—and de facto violence and exclusion—by creating disproportional access to sunlight and visibility. The mural on the northern side, namely the Jewish one, would have remained in the shadows and have thus been rendered invisible. A disposition of this type would have reflected the symbolic opposition of Ecclesia versus Synagoga (light versus darkness, truth versus falsehood),55 which is also typical of the urbanistic arrangement of the cities of Christian Europe. Adam X’s 2007 mural is composed of a transformation of the photographic freeze-frame from 1942, a site map with three inscriptions, one below the

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other: in Yiddish, in Hebrew, and in Polish, from the top down. The inscriptions read, respectively: “Here was the bridge,” “Here was the bridge,” “There was the footbridge.” A superficial glance thrown in its direction by a pedestrian in a hurry may lead to the perception of the entire object as just providing information. However, each of the three elements mentioned above is a complex signifying construct. What draws attention, first and foremost, are the choice and the order of languages and, following from that, the question: Who is being addressed? The lack of English indicates the non-touristic character of Jastrzębski’s gesture. What we have here, then, is a rejection of the commercial, consumerist practice of producing Holocaust-themed tourist attractions. The language chosen for the first inscription is Yiddish. For the second, it is Hebrew. These are not languages of communication because, in practice, nobody with a command of these languages visits this place. Until the “revitalization” of Chłodna Street, groups and individual visitors would stop under the crucifix; after “revitalization,” they assemble at the symbolic reconstruction of the bridge, on the east side of the crossroads. Polish appears as the third language of the sequence, and therefore as another Jewish language alongside the others. (This has been observed by Elisa Klapheck, a professor at Paderborn University and rabbi in Frankfurt am Main, whom I had the opportunity to meet thanks to Helena Datner and Agata Patalas.) The choice and sequence of the languages might, therefore, refer to possible variants of Jewish identity—not so much indicators of the audience addressed as they are reminders of the murder and the murdered. In order to provide a fully precise description, one has to speak of absence versus presence, for the Jews are made present here—as the absent ones. With the full right to self-definition annihilated by the common denominator of the ghetto bridge, they emerge here as people who should have the full rights of presence and to their own mark in the public sphere. If we interpret the Polish language as the language of the dominant group, to place it last is a gesture of positioning: the establishment of a hierarchy and an act of questioning the majority group’s conviction that they have exclusive rights to the place. The dominant group is, after all, the de facto recipient of the message here. However, it is certainly not the main addressees. The low-key, non-imposing character of the mural is notable. On the one hand, the painted message is visible; on the other, in contrast to the pink Białoszewski mural, it does not demand to be seen—even though the eye of the Polish majority is prone to perceive the presence of the Hebrew alphabet in the public space as a form of ostentation and arrogance (termed “Jewish insolence” in Polish), if not an outright act of aggression. This is why the mural may also work as a kind of charge, detonated by the viewer’s gaze. Jastrzębski’s gesture is therefore a paradoxical intervention. Seemingly non-invasive, once noticed,

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it performs a symbolic invasion into the system of the Polish majority’s attachments, emotions, and notion of the sociocultural order. It constitutes a penetration of the ob-scene (off-scene) into the sphere of visibility. We are dealing here with a painted image that emerged from a photographic image that emerged from a film image. The gesture of the painting was not hidden; on the contrary, it was underlined by means of choosing a convention completely remote from hyperrealism or realism. Jastrzębski successfully steered clear of the risk inherent in the use of an image produced by the perpetrators. He managed to do so by means of highlighting the repeated shifting and transformations of the image connected with the use of various media. The point—or points—of view make viewers additionally aware that they are looking at somebody’s gaze. The point of view represented in the image is familiar (known from the iconosphere).56 However, it is impossible to find it or to place it in the real space. On the mural, the cardinal points are not indicated. The map of the crossroad further confuses the tropes; it is congruent with the view from the building at 25 Chłodna Street—from its east side, in the north-east direction. In the drawing, unlike in reality, the streets do not cross perpendicularly. The expected referentiality of the representation is a trap here: an instrument of dislocation and destabilization through which the artist constructed a multi-layered, almost Escher-like trompe l’oeil, giving the viewer an exercise in Das Unheimliche. In attempting to accord the given parameters with each other, one ends up confusing one thing with another. The result is a state of vertigo. There remains the question of the status of the viewer, the actual audience of the mural, sitting on the opposite side of the street at a table of Klubokawiarnia Chłodna 25. This is a viewer belonging to a definite social class and milieu. Klubokawiarnia was established within a young liberalprogressive intelligentsia. The gesture of maintaining distance and emphasizing its various forms makes the mural a treatise on distance. Hans-Georg Gadamer noticed that the distance to past objects unknown to the subject is usually filled by the latter with its own prejudices and pre-judgments. Here, this would consist in investing present emotions in the representation of the past object—if not in the past object tout court. The way Jastrzębski’s mural works is akin to the mechanism of anamnesis, or Plato’s idea of rediscovering ancestral knowledge one supposedly possesses without learning (possibly even from before one’s own birth). If we assume that the inscriptions give direction to the entire piece (in other words, if the piece respects the order of Hebrew reading from right to left), the mural becomes something akin to an opening through which perception descends into the depths, from the totality to the detail: from linguistic mapping, through cartographic mapping, up to painted mapping of film and photographic origin,

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descending simultaneously into time. De facto, however, anamnesis consists here in projection. In this sense, the mural turns out to be a projection screen. One can assume with a high degree of probability that the content of that projection consists of the majority’s shared illusion of the critical liberalprogressive intelligentsia. An illusion in which people imagine the situation of the Holocaust according to Hilberg’s triad of “perpetrator—victim— bystander,” translated into the theatrical categories of “director—actor— spectator.”57 The actual object of anamnesis, then, is the imagined position of the majority group—at least, the today’s spectators’ own group of reference (the intelligentsia)—as a forced witness to somebody else’s suffering. One can understand this as an attempt at experiencing the non-experienced—with reference to what Hanna Świda-Ziemba wrote concerning the intelligentsia’s non-experience of the Holocaust: [T]he Jewish problem was expressed in such a way as if the world had moved back to the prewar period, and the Holocaust had never taken place. The memory of the tragedy was suspended. The anti-Semites used prewar reproaches. [. . .] The Holocaust [. . .] as a shock, as a fundamental argument, did not figure in these discussions.58

Thus, experience “reconstructed” as the today’s intelligentsia does is mystified experience. It is also a mystification to endow the past image with a present affect: grief and mourning. What is at stake on Chłodna Street is the well-being of the intelligentsia. In considering the mural on Chłodna Street as a voice of a milieu, one has to emphasize that this voice speaks against both the poetics of tourist attraction and the paradigms of consumption and national self-defense (the latter resting on an ethnic-religious definition of nation). The task it sets out for itself is to widen the field of social self-awareness. At the same time, however, it backs away from a revision of the liberal-progressive paradigm, seeing in it a kind of unproblematic counterbalance to these two paradigms. Jan Tomasz Gross was probably the first to draw attention to the violence and exclusion characterizing the mere premises of “the reflection on PolishJewish war-time relations—the most open and comprehensive one, conducted in the spirit of tolerance and appreciation for those who believe and think in a different way—within the circle of the secular, progressive, liberal intelligentsia, the best intelligentsia that one can imagine.”59,60 This does not mean that there were no exceptions, before, during, and immediately after the war. However, they did not shape the canon of intelligentsia and broader community thinking. The message of the mural, indeed, attempts to avoid the trap of instrumentalizing the sight of Jewish suffering. Unintentionally, however, it has

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metamorphosed into a kind of sparing operation, if not an alibi for the elite, who refuse to place the history of their own group in a continuum of violence and exclusion. This continuum encompasses repression or the neutralizing discursive processing of the Holocaust and the phenomenon of philosemitic violence, the latter of which has intensified since 1989. STELA (2008): MARKING THE PLACE, ESTABLISHING A TRACE The freeze-frame of 1942 appeared once again in the area of the crossroads of Żelazna and Chłodna Streets, a year after the creation of Jastrzębski’s/ Adam X’s second mural. This time, it took the form of a traditional mechanical reproduction and was an element of a larger whole, part of a set of material markings-commemorations (oznaczenie-upamiętnienie) designed by Eleonora Bergman and Tomasz Lec and positioned in twenty-two spots, indicating the maximum extent of the former Warsaw ghetto and coinciding in several places with the location of the former ghetto gates. The author of this idea was Eleonora Bergman, who submitted the project to the deputy president of the city of Warsaw in 1997. Bergman’s thinking was embedded in the context of historical architectural research that she had conducted in the Department of the Documentation of Historical Monuments (Dział Dokumentacji Zabytków) of the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, ŻIH) in Warsaw. Her thinking also owed much to the work of three other specialists. Of particular significance to Bergman was the unpublished work Inwentaryzacja reliktów granic getta warszawskiego [Inventory of the Relics of the Warsaw Ghetto Borders] by Ewa Pustoła-Kozłowska and Marek Witecki, carried out in 1993 within the framework of The Workshop for the Conservation of Monuments (Pracownia Konserwacji Zabytków, PKZ).61 Not long after that, in 1997, Jan Jagielski’s book Niezatarte ślady getta warszawskiego (The Remnants of the Warsaw Ghetto), which grew out of his work conducted in the Dział Dokumentacji Zabytków at ŻIH, was published.62 In the same year, Bergman and Jagielski drew up an expert assessment of the territorial extent of the former Umschlagplatz.63 The Warsaw ghetto was still an abstraction then, associated at best with the Monument to the Fighters and Martyrs of the Ghetto in Warsaw’s district Muranów. Apart from that, it was not cast in real space. In 1997, Eleonora Bergman’s initiative did not attract the attention of the city authorities. Ten years later, the Conservator of Historical Monuments for the city of Warsaw, Ewa Nekanda-Trepka, returned to the matter. The intervention of Paweł Śpiewak, at the time a member of parliament for the party Civic Platform

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(Platforma Obywatelska, PO), played a part in this development. His stance was supported by the Jewish Community of Warsaw. The outcropping of the former ghetto, the process of making it real in the field of common consciousness, was already going on. The year 2001 saw the publication of the monumental compendium and reconstruction Getto warszawskie: Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście (The Warsaw Ghetto: Guide to a Non-Existing City) by Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak. The text was accompanied by maps by Paweł E. Weszpiński, superimposing on each other plans of two cities—of contemporary Warsaw and of the Warsaw ghetto—and indicating the few remaining buildings. The publication of Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście was unquestionably a consequential event. Yet what accorded the Warsaw ghetto its status—no longer as a place of memory in Pierre Nora’s meaning, but as a pop culture phenomenon— proved to be Roman Polański’s feature film The Pianist, released that same year. In 2007, nobody needed any further persuasion to be in favor of Bergman’s idea. Even though it concerned a wide extent of the city, securing the approval of the councilors of two Warsaw districts—Śródmieście (Midtown) and Wola—did not require any special effort. The remaining stages were also instantly realized. Eleonora Bergman invited Tomasz Lec—with whom she had previously worked on Ringelblum Archive exhibits displayed in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, New York, Brussels, and Madrid—to participate in the project. Ewa Pustoła-Kozłowska and Jan Jagielski were involved, as well. Pustoła-Kozłowska made a major contribution to outlining the locations of individual objects. Jagielski participated in the selection of the iconography and acted as a consultant on the inscriptions. The project was financed by the city’s Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments (Biuro Stołecznego Konserwatora Zabytków), together with the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.64 Delineating the area of the former ghetto entails highlighting the divergent history of Poles and Jews. The difference manifests itself in the different fates of the two parts of the city: the Polish part and the Jewish part. Tomasz Lec clearly articulated the issue: It is often said that 80 per cent of Warsaw was destroyed. This muddles our thinking. The high rate of destruction results first and foremost from the total destruction of the district formerly called the North District. Before the war, it was the main residential area of the Jewish population. In 1940, Jews who had been [forcefully] resettled from other districts, also ended up there. Over time, the site of the ghetto was restricted to the area in which the uprising in the ghetto took place, which ended with the extermination of its last inhabitants as well as with the systematic destruction of all buildings. The Germans wanted a city not

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only without Jews but also without a memory of them. [. . .] What remained was a desert of rubble, the only such place in Warsaw. On these piles of rubble, a district was established, built in accordance with a modernist concept, different from the previous architectural-urbanist concept, with another way of thinking about houses and the space surrounding them, with housing of adequate standard and attention to green space. A completely new fabric of the city emerged, from which it is impossible to read its past.65

Creating awareness of the territorial extent and sheer scale of the ghetto meant exposing its central positioning in the city fabric. The markers stretch across the area between the wall of the Teatr Studio at the Palace of Culture and Science (PKiN) in the south up to the rondo Babka located in the Powązki area in the north; and from Freta Street in the New Town in the east up to the wall of the Jewish cemetery at Młynarska Street in the west. The establishment of this seemingly neutral fact belied the common conviction that the place of Jews, as well as of the Holocaust, was marginal to the history of Poland. It disturbed the common mental and emotional automatism at the core of which lies the notion that the ghetto—not only the Warsaw ghetto, but also the historical ghetto and all ghettos dating back to World War II—was “somewhere else.” Warsaw, as the capital city and therefore emblematic of the country as a whole, constitutes in this respect both a representational and a representative space. The risk involved with the project, then, concerned the visualization of that which took place in the center of Polish culture and society—and that which Polish culture and society had strenuously attempted to omit.66 The visibility of the Holocaust in Poland is subjected to “rigorous negotiations and restrictions”: Even if Jewish experience is revealed, and not “obscured or glossed over,” it cannot strip bare its conflicted position within Polish history and Polish culture. If it is to be expressed openly, it should have a “universal character.” It is to be performed within the bounds of a carefully prepared ideological contract. If it provokes conflict [and it does provoke conflict because of what it was—E. J.], then its historical concreteness should be effaced.67,68

After transgressing this boundary, expression and visibility do not merely “provoke” rejection but, first and foremost, moral panic. They also “provoke” aggression, depicted as self-defense. Eleonora Bergman’s project was therefore both simple and fraught with risk. From statements made by Bergman and Lec, we learn that it was important to them that the form the commemoration would take was not “imposing itself nor in any other way aggressive.”69

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At the same time, they emphasized that the markings were to be “noticeable, permanent and coherent with the structure of the city. Not only appropriately befitting the dramatism of events but also connected to Warsaw’s history.”70 The creators’ thinking was therefore disciplined by the category of appropriateness related in at least equal measure to the object of commemoration and the sensitivity of the recipients. Ultimately, the project provoked interest and met a friendly reception. It was inaugurated on November 19, 2008. This date was chosen due to its proximity to the anniversary of the closing of the ghetto by the Germans, which took place on November 16, 1940. None of the twenty-two markers have ever been damaged or vandalized in any way. The markers were designed as one uniform series of elements. At each of the selected sites, we encounter a set consisting of incrustation in the pavement as well as a stela made of concrete, with two information plaques on it. The bronze plaque displays a map of the ghetto against the background of the city. The plexiglass plaque comprises texts, as well as photographs of the ghetto taken during its existence. The incrustation in the pavement is a strip of the width of the ghetto wall, with the bilingual inscription “Mur Getta / Ghetto Wall 1940–1943.” We distinctly feel the pavement markers under our feet, even through the thick soles of our shoes. We therefore come into contact, are subjected to touch. Because one cannot touch without being touched oneself: Touching is a reciprocal act. It is the world that touches us when we touch it. [. . .] One also needs to consider the possible costs of a potential state of awakening. The hitherto pushing away of touching to the cultural underground might have resulted from the conviction that it was not only useless for the intellect and the soul, but that it furthermore threatened a very important, invigorating function of culture as an imaginative protection from the torment caused by tangible reality. [. . .] The act of touching is the guardian of reality and when we are imaginatively absorbed, it reminds us of where we are.71

Even if we walk without looking down, the disturbance of the surface on which we tread attracts our attention. It is in the same way—by means of a bump in the ground—that the proximity of tracks, rails, and of the precipice at metro or railway platforms is marked. The alarm signal works in a destabilizing way: it shakes our certainty and feeling of security at an elementary level. It causes a sense of unease in the body. It is touch activating the senses that transforms the commemorative markers into an experience. The question of the conclusiveness of touch needs to be raised here—the same question that is raised by the philosopher:

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[B]efore the act of touching is able to explain something to us, it at least permits contact with the real and the regaining of consciousness within it. But does it have the power to break tradition, transform consciousness and allow for an impartial, or if this is not possible, at least a down-to-earth way of finding one’s bearings in the world? As a matter of fact, one could doubt that. Until now, the act of touching has evaded our thinking, one should not have high hopes that this could suddenly change.72

In the case that is of interest to us, the situation is additionally mastered by means of a verbal message we encounter on the plexiglass plaque: By order of the German occupation authorities, the ghetto was cut off from the rest of the city on November 16, 1940. The ghetto area, surrounded by a wall, was initially 307 hectares (759 acres); with time, it was reduced. Starting in January 1942, it was divided in[to] two parts called the small and large ghettos. Approximately 360,000 Warsaw Jews and 90,000 from other towns were herded into the ghetto. Nearly 100,000 died of hunger. During the summer of 1942, the Germans deported and murdered close to 300,000 people in the gas chambers of Treblinka. On April 19, 1943, an uprising broke out in the ghetto. Until mid-May, fighters and civilians perished in combat or in the systematically burned ghetto buildings. The remaining population was murdered by Germans in November 1943 in the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps. Only a few survived. To the memory of those who suffered, fought and perished. The City of Warsaw, 2008.

The very first sentence restores to “us” a sense of security. The Warsaw ghetto here is a matter between Jews and Germans. What is demonstrated, then—via introduction into the sphere of visibility—is an enclosed history: the history of a minority hermetically separated from the history of the majority by an outside force. The city of Warsaw pays homage to the victims of the Germans, being itself a victim of the Germans. Touching and simultaneously recognizing through it a tamed, banal space as the space of the former ghetto is highly uncomfortable for the majority. However, that which the act of touching as well as the identity of space inflame—that sense that it happened here, not there; and that the Polish majority was complicit, not compelled—is subsequently soothed by emphasis on distance in time and the distinct segregation of collective trajectories. A factor that additionally cushions the severity of the sharp reduction of distance (zbliżenie) is—apart from the content of the texts—also the choice of languages for the plaques. The authors opted for Polish and English. Next to English, Polish loses its status as a Jewish language and appears

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as unproblematic: the transparent language of the local majority. English is the international language of the globalized non-local majority, that is, of all possible non-differentiated others. Jews and Israelis also come under the category of tourists receiving professional service, that is, visitors or—even better—foreign guests. Everybody here is on an equal footing, which successfully masks the historical reality—the same reality that Adam X dragged into the street, suddenly revealing the ob-scene in the city center. English cools down, objectivizes, and creates distance with regard to the reality it describes. The presence of English on the plaques persuades pedestrians that they are dealing with an object of globalized tourism. Both the set of twenty-two stelae and the incrustations reading “Mur Getta / Ghetto Wall 1940–1943” have been reduced to objects of tourism. It seems, as a matter of fact, that in the recipients’ perception the commemoration in its entirety works in a back-and-forth movement, in a dialectic of invasive gestures and protective measures. Once the crack carved out in one’s perception by means of the act of touching is filled in with words, one has to confront oneself with the map of the ghetto. It is a sign of that time and that space. At the same time, it says to the beholder: “You are here.” Due to the spatial stretching of the Bergman and Lec’s commemorative series, its impact unfolds over time, provided that it does constitute itself as a totality in the recipients’ perception. We usually experience subsequent commemorative elements along the way, as we roam through the city. Spread out over a large area of the city center, the stelae fall upon the pedestrians somewhat by surprise, thereby constituting a punctum, a twinge of pain. Another feature is that one can quickly forget about them. This does not protect us, however, from being touched again, at unexpected moments. The sense of obviousness, destabilized by reality, quickly regains balance—though now perhaps reconstructed on a slightly weakened foundation. Amid near-complete obliteration of all traces of the ghetto in both the architectural and urbanist fabrics of the city, Bergman and Lec have managed to establish a trace with clear parameters and ambitions: informational, educational, and commemorative, with a shade of mourning. Eleonora Bergman insists that the word “stela” be used for what is colloquially called a pedestable. The commemoration at the corner of Żelazna and Chłodna Streets, while adhering to the format of the project, contains specific elements connected with its location. First, there is the following text: In December 1941, the entire area west of Żelazna Street up to Wronia Street, between Leszno and Grzybowska Streets, was excluded from the ghetto. The ghetto was thus divided into two parts called the large and the small ghettos. On January 26, 1942, the two ghettos were connected by a wooden bridge over Chłodna Street.

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The second specific element is the freeze-frame from the Nazi propaganda film, with “Aryan” pedestrians, tram, and cars. When looking at the photograph, we have our backs turned to the place it depicts. (We are facing east, whereas the view in the photograph extends in a south-west direction.) Eleonora Bergman attests that when she and Jan Jagielski were selecting the photograph to be placed on the stela, they took into consideration all known photographs of the wooden bridge, taken at different times, from different directions and perspectives—mostly from street level, from the “Aryan side.” She does not remember, however, why they eventually chose the German freeze-frame. It might have been determined by the privileged perspective of the view of power, by that insight “into,” in-sight, which offered the most complete description of the space. With the installation of the stela from Bergman and Lec’s project at the intersection of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets, the process of marking the space and commemorating events from the time of the ghetto appeared to have come to an end in this place. THE PIANIST (2001): DISLOCATED RECONSTRUCTION Subsequent commemorations of the bridge over Chłodna Street made reference to more and more mimetic forms. They grew gradually closer to where the original object was located. The stela was generally perceived as a sufficient and definitive commemoration of the crossroads of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets—one of the icons of the Warsaw ghetto. This conviction was, as it turned out, not shared by one of the authors of the project. Tomasz Lec confessed his lack of satisfaction (niedosyt) in an interview for Tygodnik Powszechny: Generally speaking, I am skeptical when it comes to reconstructing the former space. [. . .] However, there was a strong need to commemorate the footbridge connecting the small and the large ghettos. Even though it only functioned for half a year, for many reasons (among others because of the film The Pianist) it became a symbol of the Warsaw ghetto around the world.73

For Eleonora Bergman, there were, however, already “too many objects in the space, too many emotions, too much of everything.” In order to understand the path from the dislocated commemoration constituted by the crucifix with the patriotic obelisk, via two direct commemorations (although spatially shifted and mediated through painting and photography), to a full-height, three-dimensional symbolic reconstruction of the bridge in its original location, one has to consider Roman Polański’s film The Pianist based on Władysław Szpilman’s memoirs. The role The Pianist played during the

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final stage of the commemorative process is absolutely fundamental; without it, there would have been no symbolic reconstruction of the bridge. With its popularity and recognizability, the image of the bridge in The Pianist dethroned the Nazi film images of 1942. The whole thing was set within the framework of a big show, with popcorn; and a broader narrative meant to soothe the fears and anxieties of the majority. Since then, the bridge over Chłodna Street has referred to the conceptualization of the ghetto featured in The Pianist, not the actual ghetto. And the vision of the ghetto in The Pianist is the actual object of the reconstruction carried out on Chłodna Street. The situation that thus emerged had, to a certain degree, already been foreseen and described by another entertainment and cabaret artist than Szpilman: a user of the ghetto bridge too and, like Szpilman, a representative of the Polish intelligentsia. While his songs enjoyed no less popularity among the “Aryan” audience in Poland than Szpilman’s songs, Władysław Szlengel was unlike Szpilman in that he did not survive; he had absolutely nowhere to go. Szlengel was a poet, a clear-sighted chronicler, and an analyst of culture (including popular culture and show business). He was murdered behind the walls during the uprising in the ghetto. While gradually dying, he pre-sensed who would be the architect and beneficiary of the image of the Holocaust in mass culture on a global scale: Chaplin will build a Hollywood wall around a cardboard ghetto, and all “extras” and actors will, for a dollar, in well-fed bodies (in English) holler, while Charlie Chaplin will rake up money making a Pinkert or Gepner funny. Huberman will fiddle, Wells write and babble, Mann, in 4 volumes, publish a novel, they will weep buckets showing their pain, they will be screaming out their disdain, and how we moved them

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to nth degree. I beg your pardon— What about me? They will have fortunes, fuss and renown out of what happened in Warsaw town, have celebrations, a saint make of me— what will that matter, when I—R.I.P.?74

Szlengel was an expert on mechanisms of domination and subordination, as well as violence characterizing social relations in Poland. From within the experience of Polish anti-Semitism, he emitted rhyming messages such as Futro [Fur], Rzeczy [Things], or Telefon [The Telephone] into a sociocultural void. In spite of all of his perceptiveness and far-sightedness, he was not capable of foreseeing that the ghetto made of cardboard in true Hollywood style—in the original English language—would cause a sensation in his native country (despite the fact that Poland would not undergo any social transformation with regard to anti-Semitism). Anti-Semitism has remained a political tool and a mode of communication there. In other words, Władysław Szlengel did not foresee the patriotic fervor that reached its peak in Poland in connection with the Palme d’Or for The Pianist. (The reaction to the winning of the Oscar only echoed the discursive patents worked out then.) In the unanimous opinion of the filmmaking authorities, the Cannes laurel was evidence that “Poland is what is most important”—as the election campaign slogan of the antidemocratic right-wing party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) from the year 2010 claimed:75 Stefan Laudyn, director of the Warsaw International Film Festival: The winning of the Palme d’Or by Roman Polański at the festival in Cannes is one of the greatest successes of Polish cinema ever. Janusz Zaorski, director: I am very happy about the Golden Palme for The Pianist, even though the film is not a Polish production. However, it was in part produced exactly here, and Roman Polański is connected with our country, in a certain sense he represents Poland on the world film market. Krzysztof Piesiewicz, screenwriter: This is a special, very important moment for us. The award-winning film concerns a painful period of Polish history, and the award will have the effect of giving it strong presence worldwide. The awardwinning film was made by an artist who through his origins is strongly rooted in the history of Polish cinema.

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Wojciech Kilar, composer: The award came for a great, simple, humanist film speaking of the most important issues, the most important threats which, contrary to how it might appear in Europe, are still hanging over us. In particular after 11 September last year. This award is also very important for Polish cinema and for Poland. Andrzej Wajda, director: The jury’s decision can also be considered as an award for Polish cinema. [. . .] This film was produced to a large extent in Poland. The novel on which the screenplay is based is Polish. Roman Polański, coming to Poland and taking up a Polish subject, has become a Polish director again. His fellow-workers—Paweł Edelman and Allan Starski—are Poles. The costumes, the make-up and the organization of the whole enterprise was carried out by the efforts of Poles. The Golden Palme for The Pianist is in some sense a confirmation that such a difficult film can be made on a high level in Poland.76

Those who did not sufficiently enthuse about the film were reproached for lack of patriotism: “Roughly speaking, it concerns those who had written that the film awarded the Golden Palm was good instead of writing that it was outstanding. The journalists returning from Cannes have been first and foremost reproached for a lack of patriotic feelings, which is the most serious sin [. . .].”77 Apart from Zdzisław Pietrasik from Polityka, Tadeusz Sobolewski from Gazeta Wyborcza also encountered such reproaches. The duo Tomasz Raczek and Zygmunt Kałużyński came to the defense of the “accused,” attempting to ascribe to the patriots materialistic motives, namely instrumental polonization of The Pianist in the struggle for continued state financial support of the film industry.78 Elsewhere, Raczek added: I protest against associating this award with a success of Polish cinema. That is not true. One has to look soberly at it. [. . .] For me, it seems like taking credit for someone else’s accomplishments (Odbieram to trochę, jakby konia kuli, a żaba nogę podstawiała). In the same way, one could say that Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is a success for the Polish film industry because Polish artists were among people working on it and some of them even received Oscars. [. . .] This award, at best, testifies to the value of Polański’s work, not to the value of the Polish film industry.79

Nothing helped. The biggest newspaper in the country announced: “The whole world will now watch this film,”80 and thereafter—in the editor’s commentary— brandished Polański’s Golden Palme like a moral club: The Pianist is something more than a film. It is an incredible but true history of a Jew who survived the Holocaust because decent people—Poles and Germans— helped him. It is an important and topical subject; it inscribes itself in the heated

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disputes about the attitude of Poles towards Jews during the occupation. The Pianist shows a history which was made by both good and bad people. Such a vision—simple but wise—strips the past of stereotypes and prejudices. It brings to the discussion the great value that is just judgement.81 One appreciates the position, free of stereotypes, of the author-observer who rejects the unequivocalness of evaluations.82

In this statement, the German occupation and the Holocaust—abstracted from their historical and sociocultural context—acquire the status of a natural disaster: a universal experience, featuring good and bad people. All this in the name of the symmetry principle, in accordance with which the balancesheet always adds up to zero; the truth lies in the middle, and justice consists in complete non-conclusiveness. In other words, The Pianist enabled the obliteration of the preliminary insight that had been gained during the debate a year earlier about the participation of Poles in the Holocaust. During that debate, it very quickly became evident that the truth does not lie in the middle but in the shallow graves scattered by the roadsides, in the meadows, in forests, in carcass disposal sites, in the gardens adjacent to private houses, etc. In short—in the graves of about 200,000 Jews who Poles either handed over to death or else simply killed. The realities of these crimes, their open and collective character, unambiguously indicated that the dominant majority regarded them as endowed with sociocultural legitimacy. In other words, they stemmed from the dominant culture—a culture whose patterns have at no point, neither in the 1940s nor subsequently, been named or deconstructed (let alone rejected on a societal scale). These neutralizing procedures—universalization, the establishment of symmetry, and polonization—had come to the fore during the film’s production. In the realm of collective emotions, they were of particular importance, and perhaps even foundational to how recognition of Polish participation in the Holocaust has since been blocked. A considerable part of the filming, including the ghetto sequences, took place in Poland during the climactic phase of the impassioned nationwide debate about the crime in Jedwabne. Roman Polański’s opinion on this matter was sought. The daily newspapers reached the film set. Despite being cut off from the world, the film crew and the extras were aware that in the press, “they are writing about Jedwabne again.”83 Interaction between the journalists and the film set took place on a daily basis. The tone of the press was alarming. One of the then nationwide editions of Gazeta Wyborcza opened with Jan Turnau’s comments “Tak ojczyzny nie

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obronimy” [We will not defend our fatherland this way] on the anti-Semitic statements of the bishop of Łomża,84 whereas in the home news section another religious authority gave it everything he had and then some more: “Jedwabne should be a symbol of reconciliation,” said Michael Schudrich, the rabbi of Warsaw and Łódź in an interview for KAI [Catholic Information Agency]. [. . .] Asked if one could charge the Poles with complicity in the Holocaust, Schudrich replied: “Definitely not. The very question already arouses my objection. One must not ask such questions! It is unbelievable that somebody can make such assertions! It is not only against Poland but against the truth and history.”85

The discursive processing of The Pianist demonstrated how to cope with and manage a situation whereby facts come to light in a way which makes further silence or denial impossible.86 What was at stake in the operation was the emotional comfort and psychological safety of the Polish majority. Roman Polański provided reassurance that Szpilman’s book, on which the screenplay was based, “wasn’t another chapter in the martyrology known to all of us”87 and averred that its optimism was its most important feature: “I treat Szpilman’s memoirs as a story about survival. It’s a story full of extraordinary optimism which attracts me.”88 There is never so much optimism that there couldn’t be some more. Even in the book by Władysław Szpilman. The director decided to augment Szpilman’s ending—which he clearly considered a happy one, though insufficiently so. A popular cultural pattern manifested itself forcefully here, resembling an afterimage of Pan Tadeusz, Adam Mickiewicz’s national epic, in which the happy ending cannot do without a solemn gathering of the dominant group and a Polonaise performed by a “good Jew.” By virtue of the same law of symbolic gravitation, Roman Polański’s film ends with the main character performing as a soloist in the National Concert Hall (Filharmonia Narodowa). The film Szpilman treats us to the Grande Polonaise in E-Flat Major (Opus 22) by Frédéric Chopin. In French: Grande Polonaise Brillante— “with an important contribution of the wind instruments,” which appear particularly spectacular on screen. Allegro molto (literally: very joyfully), as the young Chopin expressed himself in his annotation to the Grande Polonaise. Optimism, in its turn, was underpinned by objectivism, understood as specific symmetry and harmony: Objectivism matters greatly to me. This is why we will see good Poles and bad Poles. Good Germans and bad Germans. Good Jews and bad Jews. The role of German soldiers will of course be played by German actors.89

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The discursive mix of good and bad Poles, Jews, and Germans made Szpilman’s history a story about a German and Poles saving Jews—Jews who, incidentally, were not without guilt, either. From the very beginning, The Pianist was perceived as a polonized version of Schindler’s List.90 It was a film about a “Polish Oscar,” opening the door to colossal abreaction of a provincial inferiority complex.91 The comparisons were of a quantitative character and always served to the benefit of The Pianist: The Pianist was in color, the shooting lasted for four weeks more, the world premiere of the film would take place in Poland. “While we were realizing Spielberg’s film, we clung on to the ship and floated at the back. Now we have taken the helm,” said Lew Rywin, one of the Polish members of both film crews.92 Before filming was complete, a short article, characteristically entitled “The Pianist and the scent of the great world,” was published. It was about a preview advertisement of the end product: On the Boulevard de la Croisette [. . .] a billboard with the title The Pianist, Roman Polański’s name, Adrien Brody’s sad face and the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto attract the attention of the public. Unlike the garish billboards advertising international productions, “our” billboard is kept in steel grey colors. It contrasts with the glitz of limousines, elegant crowds, palm trees, and the scent of the most expensive perfume. The Hollywood Reporter published a picture of Roman Polański on the first page.93

The report did not even attempt to conceal the frustration and complexes that gave rise to it: “There are no Polish films in the main competition, but the crews of In Desert and Wilderness and Quo Vadis are promoting their films elsewhere in Cannes.”94 The regret that it is difficult to impress anybody with the classics of Polish ethno-religious nationalism was immediately compensated for, thanks to Polański. The ghetto—hitherto an abject95 one does not exactly know what to do with—proved to be a “breakthrough” export commodity. It transformed from the ob-scene to the scenic. It became an exotic thing that “takes off,” as in the old days; only this time, the exotic thing was Polish—“ours.” White armbands bearing a Star of David, originally a sign of extreme humiliation and death, went missing en masse from the film set: “The armbands go missing; in the end, there is no better souvenir, no better proof that one performed in Polański’s The Pianist.”96 The characters with the armbands evoked fond feelings and prompted people to coo: “How nice they look with these Stars on their sleeves.”97 The extras became heroes of mass imagination,98 celebrities giving interviews and publishing their memoirs from the set.99 The ghetto and the Holocaust became glamorous, and this confirmed the expectation of

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world splendor on the part of the elite, in the sociological sense of the term. The consensus in this matter comprised all echelons of society. Polonization proceeded not only on the discursive level in the debate but also on the level of embodiment of the Jewish fate. “I Became a Jew for Polański,” announced one of the extras in an extensive press article under the same title.100 Another extra published a reportage entitled “On the Other Side of the Wall”: I am a Jew. [. . .] I could have been a Pole, not a Jew; I do not know how on Earth that happened, but they counted me among this very nation, even though I do not really have Semitic features, I have a straight nose. It doesn’t take much, yet for the first time in my life I allowed myself to think I could be a Jew. I really have nothing against it, it is even more interesting than being a Pole. This role I have known from birth and it doesn’t seem like anything extraordinary to me, whereas with the armband it is completely different, more interesting, mysterious, rich in new and unexpected experiences, with a slight shiver of uncertainty.101

Another female extra expressed pride in the fact that a woman working for the casting agency assured her she was an “awesome ‘Jewish woman,’” even if the “financial conditions somewhat cooled her zeal.”102 The incarnation was not burdened with any consequences. It was completely safe and paid for according to a fixed price. Nevertheless, it was experienced as authentic, not to say legitimate. The Warsaw ghetto—including the bridge over Chłodna Street—became an instrument of incarnation: I was so impressed seeing such realistic scenery that I almost felt that time had moved several decades back. I was handed a feather pillow and some bundle. The director yelled that at a predetermined signal we were supposed to walk up the steps of the wooden bridge. Over and over again, we were going up and down. I was reminded of an old riddle: which weighs more, a kilogram of feather or a kilogram of iron? The pillow was heavy as hell, and the constantly slipping stockings turned out to be so irritating that they almost brought me to tears. I looked around and saw that I wasn’t the only one who had had enough. [. . .] Everybody was stone-faced, silent, as they humbly traipsed up and down the stairs. Exactly as Szpilman describes it in his memoirs. [. . .] I was so exhausted that I barely made it home, and the next day my muscles hurt from carrying the bundles.103

A consensus is therefore produced, according to which the phantasmatic “we” directly participate in the “here and then.” Even if the ghetto of 2001— along with the reconstruction of the wall104 and the wooden bridge—was also described as a dummy,105 the poetics of mimesis dominated. The director personally assured the audience that:

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“I deeply care about objectivism. [. . .] I wanted the film to be close to a document. As authentic as possible [. . .].”106 “I know that epoch. I know Germans and Poles from that time,” Polański says [. . .] “When it comes to this film, my point is that everything is realistic.”107 The truth. The word hangs in the air above the set. Everyone knows that there cannot be even the tiniest bit of falsehood in The Pianist.108

Only on one occasion, having been asked about his position concerning the debate on the participation of Poles in the Holocaust, did Polański retreat to the realms of fiction: “It does not seem to me here that my film is somehow useful because it is after all artistic creation, not an objective historical document.”109 The author of the script, Ronald Harwood, however, vouchsafed that the horror had been—literally—resurrected. Polonization through declaration and embodiment, even if spontaneous, was sanctioned by a two-way equation: “The way it is in the film is the way it was in reality” / “The way it was in reality is the way it is in the film.” It was an effect of self-persuasion on the part of the dominant majority members, underpinned by persuasion on the part of the filmmaking authorities. Collective hallucination ensued. This led to collective emotional investment, which—instead of passing over and omitting the Holocaust—transformed it into a collection of safe and friendly props evoking pleasant memories: “For the inhabitants of the capital city, the film set for The Pianist has become a tourist attraction. People go to Praga in order to have a look and take some pictures.”110 The armband bearing the Star of David began to evoke euphoria. The so-called everybody wanted to have one—along with a photographic selfportrait with the wall, the bridge, and the artificial Jewish corpses, which occasioned great animation. These gadgets became associated with the epoch of colorful adventures on the film set, shrouded in the splendor of the Golden Palm for “a Polish film” and an Oscar for “a Polish director,” who managed to narrate so wisely and beautifully about hope and belief in man. THE POLES FACING THE HOLOCAUST IN THE PIANIST (2001): INDULGING IN RETROSPECTIVE HALLUCINATION Behind the historical reconstruction there is a fundamental need—not to say vital symbolic interest—of the memory group creating it. The designer of the

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footbridge referred to an outside gaze as the stimulus triggering the “strong need” to commemorate the footbridge over Chłodna Street. It is not the object itself but only its world renown that has mobilized Polish collective emotions. The Pianist establishes the parameters of that gaze from the outside. Thus, it was not first and foremost the footbridge and the ghetto that found themselves at the center of attention on Chłodna Street, but rather their cinematic representation by Roman Polański—a representation constituting a mediation and containing within it further layers of mediation as Władysław’s Szpilman account, originally published back in 1946 as Śmierć miasta (Death of a City), was written down and edited by Jerzy Waldorff, a Polish publicist and a pre-war activist of the far-right. In other words, the so-called original story has been shaped by a member of the dominant majority who never set foot in the ghetto. The conceptualization of the footbridge and the ghetto is de facto the conceptualization of the Holocaust. It is therefore an issue central to the image of Poland and Poles, since it is not the history of the Jews and their experience of persecution which has the power to mobilize Polish collective emotions but care for one’s own image. It took a long time for this fact to be problematized. It was touched upon by Jan Błoński: In almost everything written on this topic in Poland [. . .] a hidden or repressed fear is evident that we, Poles, “might come out badly,” that we might be taken to be people lacking in heart and conscience.111

This mechanism has been termed social automatism by Grzegorz Niziołek. It was also this mechanism which made him reflect on the danger the narrative of the Holocaust is charged with in the context of Polish dominant culture, and therefore also within the context of the architecture of collective identity and of collective memory of the past. [W]e should ask the simple question as to whether every account of the Jewish fate during the Holocaust is not basically “anti-Polish.” [. . .] Every account of the extermination (not only that told “incorrectly”) inevitably exacerbates antisemitism, because every such account undermines the myth of Unity and in so doing becomes an anti-Polish or anti-French account. [It does not permit those who feel Polish, i.e. those having an affirmative attitude towards Polish majority culture, to feel good.] One can only add that this state of affairs was characteristic not only of the immediate post-war years, but lasted in Poland for decades. It became established as a form of social automatism, i.e. it took on the features of involuntary reaction.112

Niziołek finds an ally in Przemysław Czapliński, who noticed that

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Every account of the Holocaust provokes in Poland a “repulsive reaction,” since it releases an instinctive fear that this account will inevitably, sooner or later, reveal Polish participation in the process of the Holocaust.113

As it turned out, although one does have to display vigilance with reference to the narrative about the Holocaust, one need not always be fearful of discussing it. The conceptualization of the Holocaust in The Pianist eliminated this threat, and its success unlocked emotions and awoke collective enthusiasm. One can therefore consider the reconstruction of the footbridge in The Pianist as the prototype for the reconstruction in situ on Chłodna Street—along with the entire phantasmatic baggage, which, besides the Cannes and Hollywood red carpets, contains a conceptualization of Polish-Jewish relations that is safe for the Polish majority. Crucial to that conceptualization is the figure of the cellist, non-existent in the book: a blonde woman whose appearance corresponds to the idea of the so-called Polish beauty. Interestingly, critics noted the changes introduced into the screenplay at variance with Szpilman’s history (as taken down right after the war by Jerzy Waldorff), and considered them senseless: Innovations are not always fortunate. [. . .] It’s anybody’s guess why new characters, not appearing in the book and not playing any significant role, have been introduced. But these are trifles of no great importance.114

To my mind, the exact opposite is true. The appearance of additional characters in the film defines more precisely the image of Polish-Jewish relations in a way that suggests they were mutual and equal until the outbreak of World War II. The Szpilman in the film works in the Polish Radio (the Polish national radio broadcaster), where—in contrast to the Polish Radio where the actual Szpilman worked—the relations are characterized by mutual goodwill and kindness, with equality taken for granted. After the outbreak of the war and the capitulation of Warsaw, Polański’s Szpilman begins to flirt with the cellist. At that very time—according to Emanuel Ringelblum, as well as female and male authors of numerous accounts—a pogrom atmosphere reigned, both in the capital city and elsewhere. Its scenery was neither the backstreets of the Northern District nor the periphery of the city but Warsaw’s representative and central locations. It is in such a location that Polański’s couple goes for a walk. The problem, however, appears only at the entrance to the coffeehouse marked with a notice saying Żydom wstęp wzbroniony (“no Jews allowed”). The film’s Szpilman comments: “They want to be better Nazis than Hitler,” while the cellist, as much shocked as outraged by the content of the inscription, wants to lodge a complaint.

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Both characters give the impression that this comes as a bolt from the blue—as if there had not been both formal and informal apartheid in prewar Poland, the former manifesting itself in, for example, the ghetto benches at universities, separate professional associations, the education system, and scouting organizations of an identical regime but separate for Jews and Poles.115 Meanwhile, the latter raged in prewar Poland in such forms as an economic boycott, the public display of notices such as “Christian boarding house,” and the practice of walking on separate pavements. What also disappears from sight is the question of what exactly makes it impossible for an elegantly dressed middle-class man belonging to the intelligentsia and speaking literary Polish, with impeccable manners and in company of a personable woman, to enter the coffeehouse. Given the fact that this happens before the Germans issued a decree ordering Jews to wear white armbands bearing a blue Star of David, and given that there are no Germans around, who would identify him as a Jew, and on the basis of what criteria? The “Who” in this case would be Christians—the staff and the customers of the coffeehouse—employing racist criteria far more rigorous than the Nuremberg Laws. The viewer has no time to consider all of this, as the verbal exchange repeats itself—this time in connection with the cellist’s idea of going to the park. Visiting the park also proves to be impossible by virtue of the German order forbidding Jews from entering all public parks, as well as sitting on park benches. The cellist learns about this from Szpilman. Shaken, she comments in disbelief: “You are joking. It is absurd.” It is beyond doubt that both are being confronted with these forms of anti-Semitism for the first time in their lives. We find ourselves in a world in which—in contrast to interwar Poland—there was no prohibition on entrance to the Saxon Garden or to the Royal Baths (Łazienki Królewskie) Park for Jews in attire associated with Jews, and all benches in public spaces were always accessible for everybody. There is no end to the characters’ amazement, since the German order to wear the armbands is followed by the German order to establish a ghetto. It is a ghetto to which the Jews go in silence, driven by nobody and practically unguarded. They walk, without offering any resistance, on their own. Mainstream European culture cherishes this image of supposed Jewish obedience and passivity in a situation in which, according to the perspective adopted by this culture, every human being worthy of the term would have offered resistance. A characteristic feature of this mechanism is depriving Jews of the possibility of choice, putting them under extreme pressure, and subsequently presenting their actions as the result of their sovereign, unhindered decision—an enigmatic, unfathomable decision, beyond comprehension for the so-called ordinary man, if not man tout court. Depicting

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individuals’ choices, attitudes, and behavior, caused by oppression, as resulting from the allegedly innate characteristics of their reference group, is what Pierre Bourdieu has called the paradigm of all the fallacies of racist hatred.116 The point of departure and point of arrival of the analyzed reasoning is the exclusion of Jews from humanity. Exclusion from humanity, as an unarticulated assumption, remains invisible and renders invisible the non-Jewish context of what is termed “the Jewish fate.” In Polański’s film, we see a docile procession heading for the ghetto, and afterward, for the Umschlagplatz—“like sheep to the slaughterhouse.” However, we do not learn anything about the continuum of Polish prewar, wartime, and postwar anti-Semitism, let alone the interaction of Polish anti-Semitism with German anti-Semitism and vice-versa. The picture of prewar Poland in The Pianist amounts to several shots of exclusive districts of Warsaw from a Polish propaganda film—an excerpt from which we see to the accompaniment of Frédéric Chopin’s music. No mention is made of the fascization of the State. In the film, there is no marking of Jewish shops or university record books (grade transcripts) of students of Mosaic persuasion. There are no posters saying, “Jews to the ghetto!” which were put up in Warsaw in 1938. There is no Polish state persecution of the Jewish citizens of Poland expelled from the Third Reich to Poland by the Nazi authorities in the framework of the so-called Polenaktion. There is no prewar series of pogroms and no Easter pogrom in Warsaw in 1940, referred to by Adam Czerniaków as the largest pogrom after that of 1881. Szpilman’s family had no intention of wearing the armbands; we never learn why they put them on eventually. The German order explains nothing in this case: It has often been said that the blackmailing of Jews began with the closure of the ghetto, i.e. from November 15, 1940, onwards. Nothing could be more false. The blackmailing of Jews began with the entry of the German army into Warsaw and increased in intensity with every new anti-Jewish decree. [. . .] The first step facilitating blackmail was the issuing, on December 1, 1939, of the order for Jews to wear armbands bearing the Star of David. All Jews (regardless of creed) over the age of ten were compulsorily subjected to it. As the atmosphere of terror intensified, there was an increase in the punishments imposed on Jews not complying with the orders of the [German occupation] authorities. Along with more severe punishments the threat of blackmail increased. While the financial penalties amounted to ca. 30–150 złoty (until mid-1941), the concomitant detention constituted a cruel punishment, sometimes lasting for several months. [. . .] The very threat of ending up in a detention center for several months proved a sufficient motive to pay the blackmailers or—as they were called in the then current jargon—szmalcownicy.117

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As far as the period before the establishment of the ghetto is concerned, Polański depicts German violence against people wearing the armbands; but he does not show Polish violence against people attempting not to wear them. The persecution of Jews both before the establishment of the ghetto and outside of the ghetto would have been neither prevalent nor effective without Polish social control—both formal and informal, institutionalized and non-institutionalized: In some cases, functionaries or German citizens carried out the arrests. Yet while Jews handed over by Poles to the [German] police had stayed incognito outside the ghetto, without [wearing] armbands, persons arrested by the Germans were wearing the armbands with the Star of David, prescribed by law. The Germans intervened when Jews wore the armbands in a way contrary to regulations (i.e. below the elbows or coiled up). Poles most evidently were able to recognize a Jew on the basis of experience.118

In the film, there are no Polish denunciations of those who did not wear the armbands.119 There are also no gawkers, no insults, no beatings, and no robberies of the Jews being driven to the ghetto by the former Polish state police and the German gendarmerie. There is no driving Jews out of their houses by the janitors and the Polish police. There are no Dantesque scenes during the enforced occupancy of new apartments. That is not all. In Polański’s film, the Jews heading to the ghetto are shrouded in silence, while pensive expressions mark the faces of those few non-Jewish pedestrians who decided to stop at the sight of the procession. Such is not the behavior of a mob of gawkers but of people who, by means of their compassionate look, solemnly bid farewell to a suffering neighbor. The cellist, whom Szpilman spots among those gathered, says expressis verbis: “I did not want to come. I did not want to see all this, but I couldn’t stop myself.” “It is too absurd,” she says, in pain, trying with difficulty not to burst out crying. Her eyes are full of tears. One tear—a telling pars pro toto—rolls down her alabaster cheek. A poor Christian, a poor Polish woman looks at the ghetto. Polański strips off irony and exorcizes a figure of Polish culture called into existence by Czesław Miłosz in his poem Biedny chrześcijanin patrzy na getto [A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto], recalled years later by Jan Błoński in his text Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto [The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto]. This is a horrifying figure, crushingly ironic, that had become an emblem of the narrative of co-responsibility for the course of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland (even if, for a long time, this narrative respected the restrictions dictated by the Polish majority). In The Pianist, this figure is “retrieved” and converted into the figure of Polish bystander or, even better, witness: a

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passive and helpless witness of Jewish suffering and death, a witness totally separated from the suffering and death brought about by foreign violence—as incomprehensible as it is irrevocable. This figure of the Polish witness is a key figure of Polish innocence. It is difficult to understand the loss of contact, lasting for two years, between the film’s Szpilman and the cellist—two people who, as Polański suggest, are fascinated by each other, when telephones were functioning non-stop in the ghetto120 until the end of the Ghetto uprising.121 But the cellist has more important tasks. She supplements the world presented by Polański in The Pianist with the Polish context. Through her, the viewer is informed about Polish martyrdom and Polish armed struggle: about the Nazi policy of repression against Polish majority culture and society, in particular against the intelligentsia. We learn of the arrest of the cellist’s cousin, the death of her brother, and preparations for the Polish uprising. Despite this enormity of suffering, the oppressed Poles, in their majority—from a simple artisan to members of the intellectual elite—remain ready to actively help the Jews. Polish self-sacrifice, including the sacrifice of one’s own life, finds its way to the very ghetto. We are not spared the details about Professor Franciszek Raszeja, a surgeon who entered the ghetto with a pass in order to operate on a patient and who was shot to death, together with his Polish assistant, the Jewish patient, and the patient’s family. It is noteworthy that the Pole is named in this narrative, whereas the name of the Jew remains unspecified. Meanwhile, Raszeja’s patient was Abe Gutnajer, who was a famous art dealer and art collector before the war, extraordinarily well-connected and affluent—a proverbial figure. There was even a neologism functioning in Polish coined after his name, abegutnajeryzm. Before 1939, his antiques salon belonged to the fanciest ones. It was located in the elegant center of Warsaw, frequented by cultivated and cultured people: To make the reader aware of the quality of the artworks presented [in Gutnajer’s salon—E. J.], suffice to say that the Warsaw National Museum bought a significant part of them from Gutnajer and that to this day, they are considered as outstanding works of their creators.122

It is not difficult to understand why Gutnajer was erased from the majority narrative about Raszeja. Such a narrative could not have emerged if his personal details had been mentioned. By the same token, adding that element to this narrative annihilates it. The figure of Gutnajer is emblematic of colossal amounts of money, which explains both the technicalities and the financial aspect of an action considered thus far as a model example of Polish altruism.

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Furthermore, the name Gutnajer—by virtue of the pars pro toto principle— would direct attention to the phenomenon of the boom in the antique market of “Aryan” Warsaw during the German occupation. Nawojka CieślińskaLobkowicz, who has conducted research on this subject, writes: From autumn 1940 onwards, respect for the right of ownership with regard to circulating antique objects belonging to Jews started to undergo gradual corrosion. [. . .] Until mid-November 1940, the price for the objects was probably still arranged with the owners forced to give them up, who were maybe [sic!— E. J.] also paid the amount due for the objects. Thereafter, i.e. from the time of the closure of the ghetto onwards, Jewish collectors and those in possession of valuable objects of arts and crafts could only count on the decency of the antiquarians and mediators on the Aryan side to whom they had entrusted their goods.123

In other words, Gutnajer had to disappear from the history of Polish help for Jews before he appeared in it. We are touching here upon the mechanism of the production of the dominant majority narrative. At the same time, we are looking at a case that is paradigmatic for Polański’s narrative. The Polish context is depicted in The Pianist in such a way that contextualization means de facto a decontextualization of the Jewish experience. This applies specifically to the intersection of the trajectory of the dominant group with the trajectory of the minority group. Admittedly, there are in The Pianist two Poles who are not good—because “bad” would be an exaggeration: the deceitful purchaser of the piano, and the deceitful radio technician who is supposed to look after Szpilman in his hiding place. Both are presented in an abject way. This is, however, nothing in comparison with the figures of the morally repulsive Jews—the prominent smuggler, and the member of the Ordnungsdienst—who are depicted on screen. No less important are the abject Jews about whom there is talk in the film: the remaining smugglers, the remaining Ordnungsdienst members, the passive mass being led to its death like “sheep to the slaughter.” And there was no shortage of icing on the cake of phantasma: American Jews, the mythical Jewish lobby consisting of mythical Jewish bankers. Thus, we are dealing here with a first-class narrative device: the Jews themselves inform us about the depth of the moral abyss filled with this entire monstrosity. The father of the main character utters the sacramental formula of the majority discourse about the Holocaust: I blame the Americans. American Jews. And there are lots of them. What have they done for us? What do they think they are doing? People here are dying.

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Haven’t got a bite to eat. The Jewish bankers over there should be persuading America to declare war on Germany.

The brother of the main protagonist, in turn, speaks the language of the clandestine ghetto press—edited by young people whose gender was male and who were members of different political organizations, socialized in a system of rigid reference to the ideals of the majority (among them, the honor-dignity paradigm, which they considered emancipatory). In the realities of the ghetto, the abject of this paradigm turned out to be the Jews leading “a Jewish war”—the struggle for survival, with all means available and at all costs—instead of a war for higher values, worthy of human beings. In the scene at the Umschlagplatz, the same Henryk Szpilman even quotes Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, commenting on the problem of proverbial Jewish passivity. What interests him in the face of impending death is the question of whether Jews are human beings, since they do not respond to the blows inflicted upon them. For all its anti-Semitic load, The Merchant of Venice is more honest insofar as it shows the context and consequences of a Jew striving to return the blow to the Christians. What The Pianist omits is no less important than what can be viewed onscreen. The list of omissions is long and symptomatic; they all refer to the dependence of Jews on Poles. Smuggling, for instance, is represented solely by two Jewish figures: the figure of the little smuggler and, contrasting with it, the figure of the wholesale smuggler. The child is killed (by Germans) while crawling through the hole in the wall, whereas the necessarily (from the point of view of the Polish narrative embraced by the film) demoralized adult prospers, doing business in a ghetto restaurant guarded by the equally necessarily demoralized Jewish Ordnungsdienst. The rich do not even think about the poor, who die in the streets. It is not difficult to arrange these facts in a sequence of causes and effects. The Polish majority audience does not need to watch The Pianist to know that this is exactly how it was. The fact that smuggled goods constituted 98 percent of the overall supply of the ghetto would come as a shock to them. The scale of the Polish business done with the ghetto, on terms nothing short of robbery, is similarly obscured whereas, as testified by Ludwik Hering: The smuggling followed a great arch from Parysiak [colloquial name for Parysowski Square] to Leszno Street. Eternal circulation, commotion, shouts, calls from the windows of the ghetto to the windows on “that” side, bargains, arguments of rivals, the crying of the losers, the rumblings of carts, the bustling— did not stop, not even for a moment. Even the quiet of Jewish holiday evenings was shattered by the choir of the paupers calling out to the hearts of the wealthy.

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The ghetto lived on Warsaw—Warsaw lived on the ghetto. Everybody knew about it, everybody took advantage of it, apart from those pure ones, who while taking advantage of it, did not want to know about it. Warsaw still lived on the ghetto long after its death—until its own end. The ghetto was the heart of Warsaw. In constant pulsation, it received and doled out: through guard’s posts, dens [mety], holes—like through the aortae, arteries and countless branches of veins, to the reviving capillaries, feeding the most secret soft tissues of the city. Through checkpoints manned by bribed guards the smuggling went on in cars, trolleys, carts, and hearses. The smuggling went through permanent hiding places [mety]: secret passages in Aryan areas adjacent to the ghetto; it went through holes in the wall—knocked out and walled up again a dozen times in the course of one night; the smuggling [went] through the sewer system and gutters under the wall; finally, the smuggling went through the wall spiked with glass, any point of which over a space of several dozens of kilometers of guarded circumference—at any one time—could be crossed in exchange for money and at the risk of one’s life. The process of the conversion of smuggling into money and money into one thing or another affected everybody. Everybody was a link in this chain.124

Besides Ludwik Hering also Jerzy Jurandot presents a similar image in Miasto skazanych [City of the Damned]. Both texts were published only in the 2010s, which is seventy years after the described events. Meanwhile, in the version of the events currently in force, smuggling and trading of personal assets take place within a social void. Nobody knows how and whence goods get through to the ghetto, apart from the final phase of the process within the walls. The same goes for the trading of personal assets, as well as the attitude of the “Aryan side” toward the members of the work details forced to work outside the ghetto (so different in Polański’s film from the one in Szpilman and Waldorff’s book). The same goes for the question of where God was, in a situation in which—despite the permanently closed church archives—we know well where the Church was. As a result of constructing the film scenery in the Warsaw district of Praga, the building of the Saint Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, which is inseparable from the real footbridge, has disappeared from the film image. The facelift of one’s image, already recurrent in the book, becomes the rule in the film, with no exception. From the perspective of the Polish dominant majority, the film The Pianist is a narrative that is both comfortable and safe. The guarantee of safety is provided by manifold concealments as well as the patching in by Polański of the “Polish bystander,” a key figure of Polish innocence. The director has thus visualized Hilberg’s triad of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders—at considerable costs for the victims (which was characteristic of Hilberg’s thinking, as

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well, until he came into contact with the diary of the chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat, Adam Czerniaków). The footbridge is of special importance in this image, as a visualization of a rigorous tri-partite division. Thus, it serves as a distributor of roles and an alibi—verified positively in the so-called West. Similarly, the phantasmatic figures of Jan Karski and Irena Sendlerowa legitimize the emblematic image of the “Polish Righteous,” and this collective Polish alibi was embraced by the West European and American audience in roughly the same period. Polański acted like a sapper, using all of his know-how not to detonate the charge, but to defuse it. One can say that he cooled the Holocaust. He did this in relation to that aspect of it which remains burning in Poland. Nothing to do with the American situation observed and commented upon by Jean Baudrillard. In a text about the American mini-series Holocaust (1978), Baudrillard considered the Holocaust a cold historical event, with attempts being undertaken to warm it up by means of cold media—which for this very reason prove unsuccessful: “One attempts [. . .] to rekindle this cold event through a cold medium, television, and for the masses who are themselves cold, who will only have the opportunity for a tactile thrill and posthumous emotion, a deterrent thrill as well, which will make them spill into forgetting with a kind of good aesthetic conscience of the catastrophe.”125 The Pianist played a decisive part in both the decontextualization and the legitimization of decontextualizing the Holocaust. Instead of a modification of the dominant narrative, Polański ushered in its superficial transformation. The Holocaust was not only decontextualized but—given the happy ending to the main character’s adventures, to the tunes of Frédéric Chopin—also hollowed out of its meaning. As such, it proved fit for inclusion in the dominant narrative without infringing its rules. As a result of Polański’s film, the bridge over Chłodna Street—an emblem of the ghetto and, indirectly, of the Holocaust—ceased to be a threatening sign. Previously, its image had accompanied the discourse on the Polish witness to the Holocaust. It featured on the covers of books such as Jan Błoński’s Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto [Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto] or Juifs et Polonais [Jews and Poles], edited by Jean-Charles Szurek and Annette Wieviorka. This was, however, not enough to soothe that fear named and described by Czapliński and connected with every single narrative about the Holocaust: the “fear that this account will inevitably, sooner or later, reveal Polish participation in the process of the Holocaust.”126 After The Pianist, the bridge over Chłodna Street lost its potential for revealing the ob-scene and was tamed. One could thus turn one’s gaze toward it with a feeling of complete safety. In other words, it became the sign of a safe narrative. This, I think, is why it was granted, without pain and difficulty, the right of citizenship and a place in public space: the real, physical space of the

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Polish capital and the symbolic space of the Polish narrative. From that time on—mutated according to the precept established by The Pianist—it not only began to take root in the Polish ground but also revealed its potential as a tourist attraction and an export commodity. It provided the members of the dominant group with the possibility of “indulging in retrospective hallucination”127—no longer only individually but also collectively. THE BRIDGE OVER CHŁODNA STREET (2011): IN SITU RECONSTRUCTION OF A DISLOCATED RECONSTRUCTION The inauguration of the symbolic reconstruction of the bridge over Chłodna Street took place in a festive atmosphere. The event was eternalized in a press report under the title “Stare klimaty na odnowionej Chłodnej” [Old Vibes on Renovated Chłodna Street], and it resembled a festival of Freudian slips, if not a parade of ghouls, which the Foreign Consultant himself would not hesitate to host at his apartment on Sadovaya Street, in Moscow: There were also politicians doing pre-election campaigning, there was music, and bread with lard. [. . .] The renovated Chłodna Street changed into a bazaar for Saturday’s opening. [. . .] “How much is a kilo of this sausage? And the bacon, how much does it cost?,” inquired the residents of [the district of] Wola. [. . .] Guided tours of Chłodna Street were offered. There were old automobiles on the street. [. . .] Next to them stood a blue policeman, as if from the prewar times or the time of the occupation. “Here was the ghetto wall, there the bunker,” recalls Mr. Henryk Moszczyński, eating cake from the Baptists. He recalled that closer to Żelazna Street had stood a wooden bridge, connecting the small ghetto and the large ghetto, in the place where the metal posts symbolizing this crossing are today. He recounts how, as a sixteen-year-old, during the time of the Warsaw uprising he landed in a work camp in Gross Wartenberg in Lower Silesia (Syców). From Wola he remembers the shooting of ten people (“I saw it with my own eyes”) and the smell of burning corpses during the Wola massacre. “They have renovated Chłodna Street so nicely. I bought some home-brew there, excuse me, fruit liqueur, and bacon. Would you like to try?,” he asks.128

A subtenant voice appears in its traditional emploi: On the square in front of the church, Ms. Mira (she does not want to mention her surname to Gazeta [Wyborcza]) says: “I am from the Jews [Ja jestem z Żydów]. Three years ago, the party on Chłodna Street was cheerful. There were

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boards [a wooden dancefloor], one could dance. There was tripe soup. It was nice, some heart was put into it so that people would cheer up. And today, this atmosphere is gone.”129

This, despite the fact that in the press photograph, one can clearly see a couple of dancers whirling on Father Jerzy Square with the figure of the Gracious Mother of God and the outline of the Saint Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church in the background. (The innocent eye of the editor who prepared the material was not able to notice in this picture a macabre reminiscence.) The symbolic reconstruction of the ghetto bridge constituted the crowning achievement of the so-called revitalization of the street, impatiently awaited and announced in the press as a return to the “true and beautiful old Chłodna Street.”130 The designer of the installation was Tomasz Lec. Krzysztof Pasternak’s topometric investigations enabled it to be situated exactly in the place of the wooden ghetto bridge. On the pavement, on both sides of the street, vertical projections of steps were precisely marked using basalt stones. A new element was also added to the existing commemoration of the course of the ghetto borders. The cast-iron incrustation in the pavement from the year 2008 corresponds to the course the wall took in 1940. In January 1942, however, in connection with the reorganization of the traffic at the crossroads and the building of the bridge, the wall was moved. It was dismantled and erected anew, closer to the middle of the street, extending part of the pavement in such a way as to make space for the construction of the steps of the new structure. The entries in Czerniaków’s diary concerning the breaking, by the Christian population, of the windowpanes in the ghetto houses originate from this time. In the twenty-first century, the two-phase operation of the division of space was repeated: in 2011, a twin memorial with the inscription “Mur Getta styczeń–sierpień / Ghetto Wall January–August 1942” was added to the incrustation that had been set into the pavement in 2008. Two pairs of spans in the original position correspond to the main part of the bridge. They were made from patinated bronze, the texture of which is meant to resemble wooden beams. The dimensions of the reconstruction are identical to the dimensions of the original. Between the spans, over the street, at the height of the platform of the ghetto bridge, fiber-optic cables have been stretched across. At night, they are illuminated in a delicate, phosphorescent light. The ornamental construction made from patinated cast-iron variegated by fiber-optic cables—the quintessence of today’s revitalization style—only makes sense as an element of a set. One can consider it at once the crowning and an emblem of the process instituted on the eastern part of the street. As a result, to quote Eleonora Bergman’s observation, “Chłodna Street became

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colder” (Chłodna stała się bardziej chłodna). (In Polish, the street name means “cold.”) The postwar trees in the square in front of the church were uprooted and replaced with a low hedge, trimmed according to the spirit level. The aim of the operation was to expose the façade of the building. In contrast, the farther part of the square—previously deprived of trees—has been covered with low-lying acacia bushes in the form of geometric figures. One wonders whether or not the aim here was to eclipse the crucifix, perhaps considered a troublesome symbolic intervention; nobody knows for certain. What is certain is that the result of the operation was indeed the hiding of the crucifix. Flower beds have been installed. Flowers have been planted in these flower beds. A part of the roadway has been permanently closed off to traffic. Money has been invested in clinker brick, pavement slabs, and cobblestone of different colors and forms with which sections have been marked in the ground: the boundaries of the ghetto near Żelazna Street and the former exit of Biała Street, as well as the borders of the plots and the continuous frontage of now non-existent buildings. The German bunkers conquered in heavy fighting during the uprising of 1944, place therefore linked with Polish “heroic history,” have also been marked: the first on Chłodna Street at the exit of Waliców Street and the second adjacent to the headquarters of the former Nordwache, at the crossings of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets—a building that has survived the war. Both bunkers have a view of the symbolic reconstruction of the bridge, and both had been marked in 2010, a year before the reconstruction was put up. The second of them duplicates the already-described plaque in honor of the AK battalion “Chrobry” under the command of Captain “Sosna.” A palimpsest of time layers and corresponding events has thus been made visible. In the middle of this great symbolic accumulation, café terraces are set up during the summer. In winter, there are Christmas markets offering traditional smoked cheese made from ewe’s milk from the Tatra Mountains (oscypki), along with Christmas carols. At the Waliców Street exit, one can find a richly decorated and lit up Christmas tree, sponsored by big corporations. Most revitalization practices, including the symbolic reconstruction at the intersection of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets, fall squarely within the category of glamour, which creates its own world on the antipodes of realness (realność): of corporeality, or of the social-economic concretum. The installation by Tomasz Lec is a ghetto bridge in a demo version. Hygienic, neat, and even luminous. Except for the meticulously recreated positioning and dimensions, it has nothing to do with the crowds, the dirt, the stench, or the streams of mud flowing down from the original wooden construction on wet days. In physical contact with the reconstruction, we do not run the risk that a splinter from a poorly planed plank of wood will get stuck in our body. We similarly run no risk of a splinter getting stuck in our souls. Today’s bridge

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has been conceived as a piece of salon furniture. This is how it was described in the press report entitled “Salon z ziemi wolskiej” [Salon from the Land of Wola], in the section dealing with the installation carries the title “Most z muzyczką” [A Bridge with a Tune]. Yesterday, the authorities of Wola boasted about the district salon, costing 13 million. Every district would like to have a salon like that. [. . .] The civil servants started praising the [visible] changes at the junction of [Chłodna Street and] Żelazna Street centered around four mega posts. [. . .] Contained in the posts are peepholes as in a Kaiserpanorama. On the stereoscopic photos with captions one can see the walls of the ghetto and the bridge from the time of the German occupation. “The handle to rotate the photographs is at the bottom. And when one presses the button, there’s a tune [. . .],” explained Ryszard Modzelewski, the deputy mayor of Wola. In other words, it is a multimedia [device] and it is modern. [. . .] “All the residents are invited to the opening on October 1. There will be a party recreating the atmosphere of the interwar period. Tunes, musicians, and fiddles,” are [among] the enticements offered by mayor Modzelewski.131

The new, better bridge over Chłodna Street is also a sort of sarcophagus. Sarcophagus means “flesh-eater.” Its purpose is to absorb that which is ephemeral—subject to decomposition, unclean—and then produce an incorporeal image of the consumed. Having put in that which is menacing and beyond control, we retrieve the safe and the tamed. In literal terms, what appears within our field of vision is not a decomposing body but instead the phosphorescent contour of a skeleton. It is with such a phosphorescent skeleton that we are dealing with at the crossroads of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets. As it is a ghost from a cartoon, and we are the cartoon’s authors, we do not have any reason to be afraid of it—or we can pretend to be afraid of it, or we can be afraid of it from a safe distance. Distance—according to the Kantian definition of beauty and sublimity—transforms our fear into an aesthetical experience, a source of enjoyment. The status of distance in a reconstruction is a subject of reflection conducted in the artistic field. Katarzyna Urbańska gives an account of this: Why does the artist revive an image of suffering, evoke this specter, which at the same time haunts and enraptures us? There is in this mixture of realism with evocativeness and aestheticization, a specific kind of pornography, pointing to the ambivalence of the gesture of commemoration, which pushes away and creates distance, but at the same time gives the spectator the possibility of coming close, of a cool examination of the destruction, and of deriving perverse enjoyment from communing with the past. [. . .] If we have so many layers of reconfiguration and new narratives, do we have any sort of access to the past?

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And, looking more broadly, do the archives, the museums, and in particular the photographs not bring with them the same risk of falsification, mediation, and unconscious creation and projection?132

Thus, what we are dealing with here is an act of approaching that moves away, an unmasking which masks, a making real which makes unreal. The ghetto that appears before our eyes performs its own exorcism. A significant challenge in relation to the symbolic reconstruction on Chłodna Street was to make it visually attractive, which would translate into audience ratings. Tomasz Lec expressed this as follows: I have tried to sculpt a form that would be a place for contemplation, a structure open to various interpretations. This is why what has emerged is an object subject to constant transformations: it is different in the sunlight, different in rain, different at night. An object which does not bore people.133

What would, then, constitute a negation of boredom, or a safeguard against it? What would meet the exorbitant demands of spectacularity? The creator of the installation decided that it should be a Kaiserpanorama installed in the spans of the bridge, with a pair of magnifying glasses, views selected manually by use of a handle, as well as background music. The installation on the crossroads of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets is one big interpellation. It entices with a description of its qualities. It urges people to act, instructing in two languages: “Obróć pokrętło na spodzie i ustaw obraz stereo (4 slajdy) / Turn the knob underneath until you see all 4 slides in 3D.” The brass binoculars feature the ornamental inscription “1942.” The mysterious button underneath the inscription rivets the eyes with a red light. We are dealing here with the directing of perception, including its emotional formatting. By way of comparison: Bergman and Lec’s photographs on the stelae are uncovered and overt. Their presentation is raw and informative. The photographs in the spans of the bridge are hidden; one has to bend over and look through a hole to see them. This endows them with an aura of secrecy and uncanniness specific to a situation of pure voyeurism. This form of presentation works like a lure, the promise of revealing a secret: “Surprise inside!” We walk up to the optical dispositive, already intrigued and excited. This intrigued and excited state is connected with the Jews and the images of their suffering. It is hard not to notice here the repetition of a collective gesture or a cultural script of gawking, ritual gawking at a predictable thing: at exactly this and no other kind of show or spectacle, at which one is free to gawk with a clear conscience. The show itself is preceded by the gathering of the audience, as described so many times in Holocaust testimonies. After the Holocaust, to gawk at Jewish suffering is an extremely loaded act which—it

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would seem—should be tantamount to its loss of previous sociocultural legitimacy. As implemented on Chłodna Street, however, it looks completely different. The repetition—or reenactment—of the situation together with its choreography amounts to a restitution of its legitimacy. The Kaiserpanorama provided access to photographic views of distant countries, supposedly “savage” people, wild animals, and pornography. Here, it’s the Nazi photographs of Chłodna Street and “the people with armbands” on the bridge that fulfill the role of exotica and forbidden fruit. One does not have to be an expert in critical theory to classify the elicited way of looking and being exposed to looking. Jerzy Jurandot, a user of the bridge, wrote: Other people stand there, people without armbands, and look at us as if we’re animals in a zoo.134 They looked at us with disgust or with pity, but not with human empathy. They looked at us with the pity a human might show an animal. But one and the other were always humiliating.135

The origin of the viewed images is no secret: Every so often a beautiful civilian car would drive along the streets of the ghetto, packed with officers and their dressed-up companions. Cameras clicked, comments were passed. The comments must have been witty because amusement was visible on all their faces. We hated these tourists no less than our tormentors. It is not nice to be made to feel like an animal in a zoo.136 In May 1942 the leaders of the Polish Underground State informed the Polish government in exile that: “Big tour coaches come here every day, taking [German—E. J.] soldiers around the ghetto as though it were a zoo. Upsetting the animals is all part of it. Often soldiers lean out of their vehicles and hit pedestrians with leather whips.”137

The originators and sponsors of the Kaiserpanorama on Chłodna Street were scared off neither by the authorship of the original photographs nor the circumstances of their production. Analyzing what it means to install a voyeuristic dispositive with reference to the convention of the peep show in this exact place entails raising the question of the viewer’s identity. Pondering the question of who looks at whom here, through whose mediation and from what position, we realize that the perspective and the look of the spectator today overlap with the perspective and the look of the perpetrator back then.

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Moreover, the viewer holds in his hand a handle, which all the more confirms them in their role of Szlengel’s “master of the situation.” The Jews—incapacitated and humiliated, pinned down by the look of the perpetrator—parade for the viewer, according to his whim. The journey back in time to 1942 is offered as a package to tourists, along with the guarantee of safety and security. The viewers are protected from undesired association by the reconstructed bridge authenticating the truthfulness of Hilberg’s triad, in which they are cast in the position of bystanders understood as helpless witnesses. This, however, does not alter the fact that, both then and now, looking proves to be a form of power and violence—not just a source of enjoyment. After all, it was, and is, about enjoyment: entertainment and amusement, a tourist attraction that would ensure that people will not get bored. The creators and sponsors of the open-air theater of domination and subordination—and, in fact, of unpunished sadism—fully deserve Jerzy Jurandot’s comment: “A time of contempt? No, it was not even contempt anymore. It was complete and astonishing, naïve lack of awareness that this other was also a human being.”138 The improvements, diversifications of, and supplements applied to the metal structure on Chłodna Street inevitably affect the status of the object. Because of the illustrated supplement, as well as the audio, the symbolic reconstruction of the ghetto bridge continually loses its symbolic character and leans toward literalness. It has metamorphosed from a symbol into a simulation, desiring to become the thing itself. The photographs and the music quite literally attempt to enliven the metal construction. In other words, they attempt to impose attributes of life upon them. However, this reanimation resembles the colorization of a black-and-white photograph, a procedure that Roland Barthes compared to cosmetics applied to corpses. Having pressed the button with the red light, we hear the hubbub of the street, the bell of a tram, a clarinet phrase. Clarinet phrase is a trademark of klezmer music. Klezmer music, in turn, is a trademark of an imagined construct or product called Jewish culture, shaped by mass events called festivals of Jewish culture that can be compared to the U.S. “indigenous festivals.”139 This standardization, based on turning a multiplicity into a unity, tailormade to the average expectations of the majority group, has been termed klezmerization by Henryk Grynberg. What he means is the construction of an image of “the Jew”/Jewishness as well as the designing of the modes of its visibility and audibility. The operation is generated by the expectation of a visible and audible identity of the Other, thus enabling their recognition by the dominant majority. The clarinet phrase, then, would be a sort of identifier—the philosemitic version of the armband. Another manifestation of philo-Semitism is the enjoyment the majority derives from the klezmerization of the minority. A significant component of

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the enjoyment lies in the fact that the Jews appearing through the glass and hand-cranked with a handle, with their Jewish music activated by the button— a little bit familiar, a little bit Orientalized, a little bit Americanized—are kept at a safe emotional and mental distance, while remaining at the same time completely in the hands of their operators. The Kaiserpanorama on Chłodna Street is a sort of embodiment which constitutes a dis-embodiment according to a mechanism analyzed by Roland Barthes with reference to striptease. Striptease is not about the body but about the image of the body. It is a negation of contact and a “meticulous exorcism,” in the course of which the body “by the very situation on which the show is based, [is] in fact absorbed in a reassuring ritual which negates the flesh as surely as the vaccine or the taboo circumscribe and control the illness or the crime.”140 In any case, this is a repetition of the historical structure founded on domination/subordination and the priority not to bore oneself and others, a priority with historical antecedents in this place: If you walked down Żelazna Street, you could see a crowd of people on the corner of Chłodna Street at quite a distance [. . .] waiting for the police to be kind enough to stop the traffic. [. . .] As the crowd grew so did its agitation, nervousness and restlessness, for the German guards were bored at their posts here and tried to amuse themselves at best they could. One of their favorite entertainments was dancing. Musicians were fetched from the nearby side streets—the number of street bands grew with the general misery. The soldiers chose people out of the waiting crowd whose appearance they thought particularly comic and ordered them to dance waltzes. [. . .] The Germans stood around this “dance floor,” roaring with laughter and shouting, “Faster! Go on, faster! Everybody dance!”141

The waltz is mentioned twice in the text by Waldorff/Szpilman. It does not appear, however, in Polański’s film—even though the scene itself has been preserved. On the crossroads of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets, at a space called the Tanzplatz by the German guards, we hear a violin, an accordion and, sure enough, a clarinet—playing a melody from Jewish folk repertoire. The background sound in the exterior Kaiserpanorama is therefore an imitation of the soundtrack from The Pianist—in accordance with the assumption that The Pianist constitutes a point of reference for the whole installation. Without The Pianist, the transformation of the ob-scene into the scenic, of the cause of shame into a reason for pride—in a word, the application of the nineteenthcentury procedure of egzymowanie of the area of the junction—would not have been possible. (Ulice egzymowane—“exempted streets”—were streets which could not be inhabited by Jews classified as non-assimilated. First

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introduced by a 1809 decree in Warsaw, with time they gave rise to Jewish districts in cities and towns throughout the Kingdom of Poland.)142 Characterizing the structure of the reconstruction, Katarzyna Urbańska writes: Theoretically, [. . .] it has all that against to which we are denied access by black-white-photography: weight, heaviness, mass, color, real dimensions. [. . .] [T]hat which is a product of the present time overlaps each other in a multilayered way on the foundation of authentic history, brought to light by the illusion of its original substance. The fragment [. . .], the façade [. . .] become a false depository of the past, thanks to which in our own imagination we move “there,” being present and not present at the same time, suspended between fiction and fact. [. . .] This state brings to mind the [condition of] dream[ing] during which our relation to the past is disturbed, in which, as Segal writes: “Mobility and action are suspended and repressed desires seek expression ‘in a harmless hallucinatory experience’ [Freud]” [Hanna Segal, Dream, Phantasy and Art, Routledge, London 1991, p. 2].143

The work of a reconstructionist artist is a formulation of a warning and a realization of a postulate: [I]mitating the pornographic strategy of revealing, of the plastic realization of our “desire to see,” [the work] encourages us to engage in “dreaming,” to project our own subconscious contents on the matter of the past. [. . .] At the same time, however, the “artificial” character [. . .] of the reconstruction makes us dream consciously (lucid dreaming) and analyze the processes occurring in us when we look backwards and when we immerse ourselves in our own narrative and in our own ideas about the past.144

Robert Kuśmirowski is an artist who works in this spirit, classifying his work as psychoarchitecture: Kuśmirowski’s work points to the voyeuristic and creative character of the act of peeping at history, to the fact that when an insight into that which draws us into the past, we project onto the observed object our unconscious desires. In this way, the process of physical, even sculptural formation of a quasi-historical object becomes the metaphor of political processes of forming collective memory and social identity.145

The reconstruction on Chłodna Street—an afterimage of the highly processed narrative palimpsest that is The Pianist by Polański—enables the majority

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to indulge in safe and comfortable fantasies about the past, meticulously blocking the mechanisms of consciousness. The voyeurism and projection involved in this, which have so much in common with one another, position the entire process within the context of pornography. The extreme objectification of the object (the Holocaust) that stimulates these fantasies culminates here in an act of autistic autoeroticism. All’s well that ends well. The happy ending of the operation was foretold by the mayor of Warsaw’s Wola district, struggling in an unequal duel with the Polish language on behalf of the Wola District Administration on a noticeboard put up at the junction of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets during the period of the revitalization works: Dear residents, After many years, we have finally begun the revitalization of Chłodna Street on the section from Żelazna Street to John Paul II Avenue. The works also comprise the redevelopment of Elektoralna Street and the junction with Żelazna Street. After the revitalization, Chłodna Street will become the most elegant [reprezentacyjna] part of the Wola District. I hope that the appearance of Chłodna Street and Elektoralna Street after revitalization will be a compensation for you for all disconveniences [wszelkie uniedogodnienia].

“All disconveniences” (sic) faded into oblivion. It was done to us all according to his word. STATUS QUO ANTE, RETRIEVED In his text “History: A Retro Scenario,” Jean Baudrillard writes that the “reinjection” of history “has no value as conscious awareness but only as nostalgia for a lost referential.”146 He does not, however, problematize the status of the referential itself. On Chłodna Street, we are dealing with the production of a referential, of a history, of a screenplay—specifically: the circumstances of the powerless, empathetic Poles witnessing of the Holocaust. Nostalgia can only be activated when the undesirable is substituted by the desirable. The bridge over Chłodna Street is far from being a mere object or a gadget. It signified then—and signifies now—by virtue of being a model for a situation of spectacle, including the mutual positioning of the participants of the social scene. It fulfills the role of a distributor of roles, according to the assumptions of Hilberg’s triad: perpetrators, victims, bystanders (rendered as świadek, “witness,” in Polish). In this distribution, the Polish majority is assigned the role of the bystander/ witness. Thus created, the Polish witness is not so much an indifferent as a

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powerless bystander or onlooker: completely, helplessly separated from the Jewish victim by the German perpetrator. The Pianist legitimizes this conceptualization, supplementing it with a heroic epic of Polish help for Jews despite objective difficulty (often presented as impossibility), not to mention the deadly risk. This conceptualization is the real subject of the reconstruction at the crossroads of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets. Although there are many places of important to the history of the Holocaust on Chłodna Street, the one on display is that which removes from sight the entanglement of the trajectories of the Jews of Warsaw with the trajectories of the non-Jewish Warsaw dwellers. What is offered instead is a narrative of non-existence of such entanglement—with the exception of cases considered by the majority group as “Polish help for Jews.” What are the symbolic stakes of the whole operation? Revealing the entanglement of Jewish history with that of the dominant group and studying the form that entanglement took during the Holocaust brought about the greatest crisis of the dominant heroic-martyrological narrative, and thus the greatest crisis of collective identity, since 1945. Polish participation in the Holocaust has become the center of attention. The reconstruction of the border strip and of the bridge over Chłodna Street as a model of the social situation and the mutual location of its participants invalidates this problem, rendering it groundless. The bridge, an icon of Hilberg’s triad that was legitimized in the sphere of visibility by The Pianist and reinforced by international applause, has triggered collective enthusiasm. It directs societal energy onto new tracks heading in the old direction. It enables the majority group to perform a safe self-staging and a narcissistic self-contemplation in the role of the powerless, empathetic witness. One can call the reconstructed bridge an instrument for the (re)production of the group’s idea of itself, one based on the notion of clearly differentiated homogenous identities and tight inter-group borders. The bridge constitutes both a projection screen and a fetish enabling the obscuring of the actual state of affairs: the actual distribution of roles and their meaning for the course of the Holocaust—in other words, the actual position of the dominant majority in the structure of crime. As a consequence, the self-image and, thus, the well-being of the group are saved; the lost narrative has been retrieved. Translated from the Polish by Katrin Stoll (with Michael C. Fitzpatrick) NOTES 1. (. . .), ed. Ewa Toniak (Warszawa: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich), 2009. 2. DUB, “Dźwięki getta. Instalacja nad ulicą Chłodną” [Sounds of the ghetto. Installation over Chłodna street], Gazeta Wyborcza, Co jest grane, August 14–20, 2015, 18.

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3. Jacek Leociak, Tekst wobec Zagłady. O relacjach z getta warszawskiego (Wrocław: Fundacja na Rzecz Nauki Polskiej, 1997), 61. 4. Jacek Leociak, Text in the Face of Destruction: Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto Reconsidered (Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2004), 46–47. 5. Jan Mawult (Stanisław Gombiński), “Ałe głajch” [Everyone is equal], Biuletyn ŻIH 62 (1967): 108. 6. Jacek Leociak, Topography and Communications, in Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto. A Guide to the Perished City, trans. Emma Harris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 78. 7. Stanisław Gombiński (Jan Mawult), Wspomnienia policjanta z warszawskiego getta [Memories of the policeman from the Warsaw Ghetto], ed. M. Janczewska (Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2010), 55. 8. Jacek Leociak, “From the Historic Ghetto to the Nazi Ghetto,” in Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto. A Guide to the Perished City (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 42. 9. Josef Kirman, “Mosty, które dzielą” [Bridges Which Divide], trans. by Michał Friedman, Fołks Sztyme 11 (1978). Unpaginated clipping from the author’s archive. 10. Adolf Rudnicki, “The Great Stefan Konecki,” in The Dead and the Living Sea: and Other Stories, trans. Jadwiga Zwolska (Warsaw: Polonia Publishing House, 1957), 158–59. 11. Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto, 115. 12. Patrick Michel and Georges Mink, Mort d’un prêtre. Affaire Popieluszko. Analyse d’une logique normalisatrice [Death of a Priest. Popiełuszko’s plot. Analysis of a normalization logic] (Paris: Fayard, 1985). 13. Jan Żaryn, Jolanta Mysiakowska, Jakub Gołębiewski, and Anna K. Piekarska, eds., Aparat represji wobec księdza Jerzego Popiełuszki 1982–1984 [The apparatus of repression on Father Jerzy Popiełuszko 1982–1984] (Warszawa: IPN, 2009). 14. Jerzy Popiełuszko, Zapiski 1980-1984 [Notes 1980–1984], ed. Klemens Szaniawski (Paris: Éditions Spotkania, 1985), 44–56. 15. Andrzej Bieńkowski (ethnographer and painter), private conversation with author, September 2014. 16. Ewa Weinberg, “Pamiętny rok 1942” [The memorable year 1942], Studia Litteraria et Historica 2 (2013): 573–84. 17. Ewa Kaltenberg-Kwiatkowska, “O oznaczaniu i naznaczaniu przestrzeni miasta” [About indicating and marking the city space], Przegląd Socjologiczny, vol. LX/2–3 (2011): 135–65. 18. Manuel Castells, The Urban Question. A Marxist Approach, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 229. 19. Lech M. Nijakowski, Domeny symboliczne. Konflikty narodowe i etniczne w wymiarze symbolicznym [Symbolic domains. National and ethnic conflicts in the symbolic dimension] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2007), 108. 20. Bohdan Jałowiecki, “Przestrzeń jako pamięć” [Space as memory], Studia Socjologiczne 2 (1985): 125–40. 21. Janusz Tazbir, “Krucyfiks na miedzy” [The crucifix on the baulk], Polityka, September 19, 1998, 83.

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22. Translator’s note: The former SS headquarters building “had not been included in the State Museum, and after the war, was consecrated as the parish church for Brzezinka,” as Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt emphasize. The building, including the large cross standing next to it and the smaller cross atop of it, “did not, therefore, fall under the section of the Declaration dealing with the removal of religious symbols from the terrain of the State Museum. But directly visible to all visitors of Birkenau, and marking a building of great historic and symbolic importance in the history of the camp, it was a problem” (Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, “The politics of strategy for Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Cardozo Law Review 20, no. 2 (1998–1999): 691). 23. Jonathan Huener, Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003). 24. Geneviève Zubrzycki, The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 2009). 25. Piotr Forecki, “Spór o symbole religijne na ‘polu popiołów’ w Brzezince (1996–1997)” [A dispute over religious symbols in the “field of ashes” in Brzezinka (1996–1997)], in Od “Shoah” do “Strachu.” Spory o polsko-żydowską przeszłość i pamięć w debatach publicznych [From “Shoah” to “Fear.” Disputes over the PolishJewish past and memory in public debates] (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2010), 211–29. 26. Piotr Forecki, Reconstructing memory: The Holocaust in Polish public debates (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013). 27. Antoni Zambrowski, “Nie stanął Pan po stronie Żydów, ale po stronie czerwonego Nerona” [You did not side with the Jews but with red Nero], Gazeta Polska, August 1, 1996, 9. 28. Kołtun (Latin: Plica polonica or Plica neuropathica) or Polish plait— head hair formation glued together with tallow and other secretions. Commonly evaluated negatively as a symbol of lack of hygiene but also good manners, and education. 29. Jan Turnau, “Krzyż” [The cross], Gazeta Wyborcza, July 13, 1996, 7. 30. Forecki, Od “Shoah” do “Strachu,” 222–29. 31. Adam Rok, “Od redaktora” [From the editor], Słowo Żydowskie, August 9, 1996, 3. 32. Konstanty Gebert, “Nad popiołami” [Over the ashes], Gazeta Wyborcza, July 18, 1996, 11. 33. Forecki, Od “Shoah” do “Strachu,” 228. 34. Anja Horstmann, Das Filmfragment “Ghetto”: Erzwungene Realität und vorgeformte Bilder. Retrieved April 12, 2019, from http:​/​/www​​.bpb.​​de​/ge​​schic​​hte​/ n​​ation​​alsoz​​ialis​​mus​/g​​eheim​​sache​​-ghet​​tofil​​m​/156​​549​/d​​as​-fi​​​lmfra​​gment​​-ghet​​to. I wish to thank Katrin Stoll for drawing my attention to this article and for translating excerpts from it for me. 35. Raul Hilberg, Stanisław Staroń and Josef Kermisz, ed., The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom, trans. Stanisław Staroń (New York: Stein & Day, 1979), 353. Entry dated May 14, 1942. 36. Ibid., 353–354. Entry dated May 15, 1942.

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37. Raul Hilberg and Stanislaw Staron, “Introduction,” in Adam Czerniakow, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to doom, eds. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron and Josef Kermisz; trans. Stanislaw Staron and the staff of Yad Vashem (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), 63. 38. Urszula Czartoryska, “Okrutna jasność” [Cruel brightness], in Alina Szapocznikow 1926–1973, ed. Anda Rottenberg (Warsaw: Zachęta, 1998), 22. 39. Gabriela Świtek, “Grunt i horyzont” [Ground and horizon], in Janicka & Wilczyk. Inne Miasto / Janicka & Wilczyk: Other City, eds. Elżbieta Janicka and Wojciech Wilczyk; trans. Marcin Wawrzyńczak (Warsaw: Zachęta–Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, 2013), 18. 40. Ibid., 8, 18–19 and photograph on p. 8. 41. Władysław Szlengel, “Kartka z dziennika ‘akcji’” [A page from the diary of the Aktion], in Władysław Szlengel, Co czytałem umarłym [What I read to the dead], ed. I. Maciejewska (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1977), 76. Poem dated August 10, 1942. 42. Władysław Szlengel, “A page from the diary of an ‘action’ / Kartka z dziennika ‘akcji’,” in What I read to the dead / Co czytałem umarłym, trans. Marcel Weyland, foreword John Kinsella (Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2012), 109. 43. Konrad Pustoła, Widoki władzy [Views of power] (Warsaw: Fundacja Nowej Kultury Bęc Zmiana, 2011). 44. Engelking and Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto, 71. 45. Leociak, Tekst wobec Zagłady, 65. 46. Ibid., 67. 47. Engelking and Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto, 71. 48. Engelking and Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto, 71. 49. Jakub Majmurek, “Widoki władzy albo nowy podział ziemi (tej ziemi)” [The views of power or the new division of the land (this land)], Dziennik Opinii Krytyki Politycznej, February 29, 2012, https​:/​/kr​​ytyka​​polit​​yczna​​.pl​/k​​ultur​​a​/maj​​murek​​-wido​​ki​ -wl​​adzy-​​albo-​​nowy-​​podzi​​al​-​zi​​emi​-t​​ej​-zi​​emi. 50. Elżbieta Janicka, “Pamięć przyswojona. Koncepcja polskiego doświadczenia zagłady Żydów jako traumy zbiorowej w świetle rewizji kategorii świadka” [Memory acquired. The conception of the Polish experience of the Holocaust as collective trauma in the light of revision of the concept of witness], Studia Litteraria et Historica 3–4 (2014–2015): 148–227, doi: 10.11649/slh.2015.009, https​:/​/is​​pan​.w​​aw​ .pl​​/jour​​nals/​​index​​.php/​​slh​/a​​rticl​​e​/dow​​nload​​/slh.​​​2015.​​009​/1​​628. 51. Joanna Niżyńska, The Kingdom of Insignificance: Miron Białoszewski and the Quotidian, the Queer and the Traumatic (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2013), 79. 52. Maria Janion, “Początki mitycznej przemocy” [The beginnings of mythical violence], in Płacz generała. Eseje o wojnie [The general’s weeping. Essays about the war] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sic!, 1998), 5–22. 53. Maria Janion, “Mityczny imperatyw” [Mythical imperative], in Płacz generała. Eseje o wojnie [The general’s weeping. Essays about the war] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sic!, 1998), 257–59.

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54. Tomasz Urzykowski, “Tam, gdzie była kładka” [Where the footbridge used to be], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, April 21–22, 2007, 4. 55. Elżbieta Janicka, “Instead of negationism. The symbolic topography of the former Warsaw ghetto’s vis-à-vis Holocaust narratives,” Holocaust. Studies and Materials 4 (2017): 212–61, doi: 10.32927/zzsim.717, https​:/​/za​​glada​​zydow​​.pl​/i​​ndex.​​ php​/z​​z​/art​​icle/​​downl​​oad​/7​​​17​/67​​6​/129​​9. 56. Mieczysław Porębski, Ikonosfera [Iconosphere] (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1971), 18. 57. Grzegorz Niziołek, The Polish Theatre of the Holocaust, trans. Ursula Phillips (London: Methuen Drama, 2019), 72. 58. Hanna Świda-Ziemba, Urwany lot. Pokolenie inteligenckiej młodzieży powojennej w świetle listów i pamiętników z lat 1945–1948 [The interrupted flight. The generation of post-war young intellectuals in the light of letters and diaries from 1945–1948] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2003), 93–94. 59. Jan Tomasz Gross, Upiorna dekada. Eseje o stereotypach na temat Żydów, Polaków, Niemców, komunistów i kolaboracji 1939–1948 [The horrible decade. Essays about stereotypes of Jews, Poles, Germans, Communists and collaboration 1939–1948] (Kraków: Austeria, 2007), 19. 60. Jan T. Gross, A Tangled Web. Confronting Stereotypes Concerning Relations between Poles, Germans, Jews, and Communists, in: The Politics of Retribution. World War II and Its Aftermath, eds. István Deák, Jan T. Gross, Tony Judt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 74–129. 61. Ewa Pustoła-Kozłowska, Marek Witecki, Inwentaryzacja reliktów granic getta warszawskiego (Warszawa, 1993). Unpublished typescript in Eleonora Bergman’s archive. 62. Jan Jagielski, Niezatarte ślady getta warszawskiego [The Remnants of the Warsaw ghetto] (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny IN-B, 1997). 63. Eleonora Bergman and Jan Jagielski, Opinia na temat zakresu terytorialnego i merytorycznego objęcia ochroną konserwatorską Umschlagplatzu w Warszawie zlecona przez Ośrodek Ochrony i Konserwacji Zabytków w Warszawie [Opinion on the territorial and factual scope of the proposed conservation protection of the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw ordered by the Monument Protection and Conservation Centre in Warsaw], December 10, 1997, 11 pages (including two A3 pages). Unpublished typescript in the collection of the Department of Monument Documentation at JHI. 64. Tomasz Urzykowski, “Tutaj był mur getta” [Ghetto wall was here], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, November 20, 2008, 2. 65. Piotr Kosiewski and Tomasz Lec, “Zaznaczyć miejsce.” Z Tomaszem Lecem rozmawia Piotr Kosiewski [Marking the site. Piotr Kosiewski talks to Tomasz Lec], Tygodnik Powszechny (supplement Opór i Zagłada. Żydzi w Polsce. Rok 1943 [Resistance and the Holocaust. Jews in Poland. Year 1943]), April 21, 2013, 29. 66. “Warsaw. Poland. The unrepresented world. Lidia Ostałowska talks to Elżbieta Janicka and Wojciech Wilczyk,” in Janicka & Wilczyk. Inne Miasto / Janicka & Wilczyk. Other City, eds. Elżbieta Janicka and Wojciech Wilczyk; trans. Marcin Wawrzyńczak (Warszawa: Zachęta–Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, 2013), 91–105.

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67. Niziołek, The Polish Theatre of the Holocaust, 34. 68. Niziołek points to the emergence of beautified images in this field, which have paralyzed the work of memory, preventing a recognition of the past: “For example, the beautiful melancholy image of the Jewish cemetery, created by Krystyna Zachwatowicz for the Stary Teatr’s scenery in the The Dybkuk [by An-ski, staged by Andrzej Wajda—E. J.], was frequently applauded by audiences as soon as the curtain rose. The imposing beauty of the image, however, may [have masked] fear on the part of the creators of the performance; fear of the hostility or indifference of the spectators toward the Jewish world invoked on stage. Provoking admiration would allow such unwelcome attitudes to be disarmed” (Niziołek, 2019, p. 102). Another strategy of disarmament was the incorporation of Dybuk into the Polish romantic tradition: “Wajda treated Ansky’s play as a Jewish Forefather’s Eve [Dziady]; the beginning of the performance makes reference to Stanisław Wyspiański’s production of Mickiewicz’s drama in 1901” (Niziołek, 2019, p. 102). Translator’s note: Ursula Phillips translated piękno obrazu być może jednak maskowało lęk as “[. . .] may reveal fear.” However, “may have masked” or “camouflaged fear” might be more apt. 69. Eleonora Bergman, conversation with author, September 2, 2014. Notes preserved in Elżbieta Janicka’s archive. 70. Kosiewski and Lec, “Zaznaczyć miejsce,” Tygodnik Powszechny, 29. 71. Jolanta Brach-Czaina, “Dotknięcie świata” [Touching the world], in eadem, Błony umysłu [Mind membranes] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sic!, 2003), 59–61. 72. Ibid., 60. 73. Kosiewski and Lec, “Zaznaczyć miejsce,” Tygodnik Powszechny, 29. 74. Władysław Szlengel, “I beg your pardon / Bardzo przepraszam,” in What I read to the dead / Co czytałem umarłym, trans. Marcel Weyland, foreword John Kinsella (Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2012), 125, 127. 75. Lew Rywin and Wojciech Fibak, no title, Gala 23, no. 47 (June 2002), 28. 76. PAP [Polska Agencja Prasowa], DP, “Sukces polskiego kina?” [Polish cinema success?], Dziennik Łódzki, May 28, 2002, 20. 77. Zdzisław Pietrasik, “Nie strzelajcie do ‘Pianisty’” [Do not shoot at The Pianist], Polityka, June 8, 2002, 46. 78. Zygmunt Kałużyński and Tomasz Raczek, “Alibi dla zwycięstwa. Rozmawiają Zygmunt Kałużyński i Tomasz Raczek” [Alibi for victory. Conversation between Zygmunt Kałużyński and Tomasz Raczek], Wprost, June 23, 2002, 114–15. 79. Joanna Leszczyńska and Tomasz Raczek, “Na czerwonym dywanie w Cannes.” Z Tomaszem Raczkiem rozmawia Joanna Leszczyńska [On the red carpet in Cannes. Joanna Leszczyńska talks to Tomasz Raczek], Dziennik Łódzki, May 28, 2002, 2. 80. Tadeusz Sobolewski, “Złota Palma dla ‘Pianisty’” [Palme d’Or for The Pianist], Gazeta Wyborcza, May 27, 2002, 1. 81. Marek Beylin, no title, Gazeta Wyborcza, May 27, 2002, 1. 82. Jolanta Gajda-Zadworna, “Historia szukana przez lata” [History pursued for years], Życie Warszawy, March 28, 2001, 14. 83. Paweł Szaniawski, “Zostałem Żydem dla Polańskiego” [I became a Jew for Polański], Życie Warszawy, April 12, 2001, 14.

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84. Jan Turnau, “Tak ojczyzny nie obronimy. List otwarty do biskupa Stanisława Stefanka” [We will not defend our fatherland this way. Open letter to Bishop Stanisław Stefanek], Gazeta Wyborcza, 13 March 2001, 1. 85. KAI [Katolicka Agencja Informacyjna], KRZEM, “Holocaust to nie wina Polaków.” Wywiad rabina Schudricha [The Holocaust is not the Poles’ fault. Interview with Rabbi Schudrich], Gazeta Wyborcza, 13 March 2001, 6. 86. Robert Winnicki, “Wizja lokalna w Jedwabnem. Badania na miejscu zbrodni sprzed 60 lat” [Site inspection in Jedwabne. Research at the scene of crime from 60 years ago], Gazeta Wyborcza, March 29, 2001, 6. 87. Agnieszka Kowalska, “To nie będzie hollywoodzka bajka” [It will not be a Hollywood tale], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, March 29, 2001, 3. 88. Beata Kęczkowska, “Budują ruiny miasta” [They are building city ruins], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 13 March 2001, 8. 89. Krzysztof Lis, “‘Pianista.’ Nowy film Romana Polańskiego” [The Pianist. New film by Roman Polański], TeleTydzień 16 (2001). Unpaginated clipping from the archive of Filmoteka Narodowa. 90. Barbara Hollender, “Kiedy wraca strach” [When fear comes back], Rzeczpospolita, May 2–3, 2001, A8. 91. Henryk Tronowicz, “Ocalenie Szpilmana” [Szpilman’s rescue], Dziennik Bałtycki, March 23, 2011, 22. 92. Krystyna Lubelska, “Pamiętam ten mur” [I remember that wall], Polityka, April 7, 2001, 18. 93. Mariola Wiktor, “‘Pianista’ i zapach wielkiego świata” [The Pianist and the scent of the great world] Dziennik Łódzki, May 11, 2001. Unpaginated clipping in the archive of Filmoteka Narodowa. 94. Ibid. 95. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon Samuel Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 96. Izolda Szolc, “Pianista” [The Pianist], Polityka, May 26, 2001, 109. 97. Ibid., 113. 98. Małgorzata Kroczyńska, “Zagrały w ‘Pianiście’. Najgorsze było to, że dobrze jeść dawali . . .” [They acted in The Pianist. The worst thing was that they fed us well . . .], Nowa Trybuna Opolska, August 10, 2001, 16. 99. Natalia Piotrowska, “Zagrałam u Polańskiego!” [I acted in Polański’s film!], Dziennik Łódzki, May 4, 2001, 18. 100. Paweł Szaniawski, “Zostałem Żydem dla Polańskiego,” Życie Warszawy, 14. 101. Stefan Gieysztor, “Po drugiej stronie muru” [On the other side of the wall], Cinema 6 (2001), 63. 102. Natalia Piotrowska, “Zagrałam u Polańskiego!,” Dziennik Łódzki, 18. 103. Ibid. 104. “The wall separating the film ghetto from contemporary Warsaw consists of a wooden skeleton and paper bricks, which had to be patinated to make them look old. The top of the wall, made of barbed wire and broken glass, will scare off daredevils who dream of leaving the territory marked out by the screenplay. Somebody from the film crew had to work very hard, stuffing pieces of broken glass into the polystyrene”

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(Edyta Grabowska-Woźniak, “Świat według ‘Pianisty’” [World according to The Pianist], Życie Warszawy, March 17–18, 2001, 12). 105. “In a room suffused with the smell of paint and lacquer one of the apartments of the Szpilman family, the one on Chłodna Street, is being ‘built.’ Right next to it is the almost completed basement, which also appears in the film. The wooden footbridge towers above it. It stands on Stalowa Street in order to connect the film’s small [ghetto] and large ghetto. ‘It is light, and was built in such a way that it can easily be put up and dismantled,’ says Marek Kukawski, the assistant set designer of The Pianist” (Beata Kęczkowska, “Budują ruiny miasta,” Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 8). 106. Krzysztof Lis, “’Pianista’. Nowy film Romana Polańskiego,” TeleTydzień. 107. Piotr K. Piotrowski, “Pianista” [The Pianist], Dziennik Polski, Pejzaż Polski. Sobotnio-niedzielny magazyn Dziennika Polskiego, April 7, 2001, 36. 108. Barbara Hollender, “Kiedy wraca strach,” Rzeczpospolita, A8. 109. Agnieszka Kwiecień, “Powrót do przeszłości i muzyki” [Return to the past and music], Rzeczpospolita, May 4, 2001, 9. 110. Krystyna Lubelska, “Pamiętam ten mur,” Polityka, 18. 111. Jan Błoński, “Myśleć przeciw własnemu komfortowi” [Thinking against one’s own comfort], in Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto [Poor Poles look at the ghetto] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2008), 44. 112. Niziołek, The Polish Theatre of the Holocaust, 119–20. 113. Przemysław Czapliński, “Prześladowcy, pomocnicy, świadkowie. Zagłada i polska literatura późnej nowoczesności” [Persecutors, helpers, witnesses. The Holocaust and the Polish literature of late modernity], in Zagłada. Współczesne problemy rozumienia i przedstawiania [The Holocaust. Contemporary problems of understanding and representation], eds. Przemysław Czapliński, Ewa Domańska (Poznań: Wydawnictwo “Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne,” 2009), 157. 114. Zdzisław Pietrasik, “Rewizja osobista” [Body search], Polityka, June 1, 2002, 18. 115. This does not refer to a Jewish school network and Jewish scouting organization but to separate school and scouting structures identical in terms of both language and program to those of the dominant majority. This situation was extraordinary, even set against the background of the generally bad situation experienced by the minority. It concerned people classified as Jews without any consideration of their sense of identity (see Jan Szczepański, Foreword, in Stowarzyszenie społeczne jako środowisko wychowawcze [Social association as an educational environment], ed. I. Lepalczyk, foreword by J. Szczepański [Warszawa: PWN, 1974], pp. 16–17). 116. Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, trans. R. Nice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 72. 117. Jan Grabowski, “Ja tego Żyda znam!” Szantażowanie Żydów w Warszawie, 1939–1943 [I know that Jew! Blackmailing Jews in Warsaw, 1939–1943] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN, 2004), 17–18. 118. Ibid., 40. 119. Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, Brak opaski “syjońskiej” oraz ucieczka z getta [Lack of the “Zionist” armband and escape from the ghetto], in Żydów

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łamiących prawo należy karać śmiercią! “Przestępczość” Żydów w Warszawie 1939–1942 [Jews breaking the law should be sentenced to death! Jewish “delinquency” in Warsaw 1939–1942] (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, 2010), 137–52. 120. Władysław Szlengel, “The Telephone / Telefon,” in What I read to the dead / Co czytałem umarłym, trans. Marcel Weyland, foreword John Kinsella (Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2012), 74–81. 121. Justyna Gregorowicz, “Komunikacja telefoniczna w życiu społeczności getta warszawskiego” [Telephone communications in the life of the Warsaw ghetto community], Zagłada Żydów 1, no. 10 (2014): 409–27. 122. Nawojka Cieślińska-Lobkowicz, “’Habent sua fata libelli’. Okupacyjny rynek sztuki w Warszawie a własność żydowska” [Habent sua fata libelli. Occupation art market in Warsaw and Jewish property], Zagłada Żydów 1, no. 10 (2014): 187–88. 123. Ibid., 198–99. 124. Ludwik Hering, “Meta” [Den], in idem Ślady. Opowiadania [Traces. Short stories], afterword Ludmiła Murawska-Péju (Warszawa: Czarna Owca, 2011), 36–37, 39. 125. Jean Baudrillard, “Holocaust,” in idem, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 53. 126. Przemysław Czapliński, “Prześladowcy, pomocnicy, świadkowie. Zagłada i polska literatura późnej nowoczesności,” in Przemysław Czapliński, Ewa Domańska eds., Zagłada. Współczesne problemy rozumienia i przedstawiania [The Holocaust. Contemporary problems of understanding and representation] (Poznań: Wydawnictwo “Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne,” 2009), 157. 127. Jean Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra,” in Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 11. 128. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Stare klimaty na odnowionej Chłodnej” [Old vibes on renovated Chłodna Street], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, October 2, 2011, 8. 129. Idem. 130. Jerzy S. Majewski, “Prawdziwa i piękna stara Chłodna” [True and beautiful old Chłodna Street], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, December 23, 2009, 5. 131. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Salon z ziemi wolskiej” [The salon from the land of Wola District], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, September 21, 2011, 1. 132. Katarzyna Urbańska, “Śnić świadomie” [To Dream Lucidly], in Robert Kuśmirowski, Träumgutstraße (Warszawa: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, 2014), XXIX. 133. Kosiewski and Lec, “Zaznaczyć miejsce,” Tygodnik Powszechny, 29. 134. Jerzy Jurandot, “Playmaker,” in Jerzy Jurandot and Stefania Grodzieńska, City of the damned: Two years in the Warsaw Ghetto; Ghetto children, eds. Agnieszka Arnold, Paweł Szapiro; trans. Jolanta Scicińska (Warszawa: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich, 2015), 253. 135. Jerzy Jurandot, “Fifty grams,” in Jerzy Jurandot and Stefania Grodzieńska, City of the damned: Two years in the Warsaw Ghetto; Ghetto children, eds. Agnieszka

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Arnold, Paweł Szapiro; trans. Jolanta Scicińska (Warszawa: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich, 2015), 281. 136. Jerzy Jurandot, “City of the damned: Two years in the Warsaw Ghetto,” in Jerzy Jurandot and Stefania Grodzieńska, City of the damned: Two years in the Warsaw Ghetto; Ghetto children, eds. Agnieszka Arnold, Paweł Szapiro; trans. Jolanta Scicińska (Warszawa: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich, 2015), 67–68. 137. Ibid., 69. 138. Ibid., 65. 139. Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 140. Roland Barthes, “Striptease,” trans. Annette Lavers, in Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1991), 84. 141. Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The extraordinary story of one man’s survival in Warsaw, 1939–1945, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Phoenix, 2000), 66–67. 142. Rafał Żebrowski, “Rewiry żydowskie” [Jewish territories], in: Polski Słownik Judaistyczny [Polish Judaic Dictionary], https://www​.jhi​.pl​/psj​/rewiry​_zydowskie n.d., accessed October 12, 2019. 143. Urbańska, “Śnić świadomie” [To Dream Lucidly], in Robert Kuśmirowski, Träumgutstraße (Warszawa: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, 2014), XLVII–XLVIII. 144. Ibid., XLVIII. 145. Idem. 146. Jean Baudrillard, “History: A retro scenario,” in Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 47–48.

Keret House by Jakub Szczęsny (2012) at Żelazna Street—Warsaw, 2012. Source: Photo by Elżbieta Janicka.

Chapter 5

A Freudian Slip The Keret House at Żelazna Street in Warsaw (2012) Elżbieta Janicka

“Because the Polish nation [. . .] is an extraordinary nation. Casimir the Great received the Jews and pampered them, and to this day he loves them.” —Marek Edelman, 19851

WHAT WILL THEY SAY ABOUT US ABROAD? Concern for one’s collective image on the part of the dominant majority in Poland is usually not accompanied by sensitivity to the very phenomena that cause problems with the image. If such sensitivity did exist, the majority would counteract such phenomena in a long-term and systematic way, regardless of outside opinion. The problems with self-image would then be incomparably smaller; indeed, perhaps they would not even arise. Surely, however, if treated more rationally, they would not be capable of exciting a moral panic of the kind that accompanied the nationwide debates on Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah, the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, the “Papal cross” at the gravel-heap in Auschwitz, the religious symbols on the field of ashes in Birkenau, or the books by Jan Tomasz Gross.2 These examples highlight a connection between fixation with self-image and fixation on identity, whereby affiliations—identification with a group and identity within a group—are considered axiological categories based on the concept of nation, as defined in ethnic-religious terms. Such is the dominant identity model transmitted by the state through public education as binding all citizens. In effect, “contemporary Poland is a country where the idea of 195

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a uniform collective identity is widely accepted, according to which liberal pluralism is suspiciously close to moral relativism or even nihilism.”3 The collective dependence on one’s own reputation constitutes a form of collective narcissism. It is rooted in an internal reluctance to make an independent decision about oneself and, hence, to take responsibility for the decision made. In the Polish context, the refusal to confront the consequences of one’s own choices is a symptom of cultural inertia. The Polish compulsive attitude toward one’s own collective image outside Poland manifested on the threshold of interwar Poland in 1918, when a wave of pogroms swept through the country and, in London and New York, demonstrations took place under the banners: “We appeal to Great Britain to stop the butchery of Jews in Poland,” “We protest against the continued slaughter of innocent Jewish men, women and children in Poland,” “Poland, stop killing!” The demonstrations were regarded as slandering of Poland, whereas the pogroms themselves “were not firmly condemned by any important Polish group.”4 Fixation with the collective image not only colors Poles’ perception of reality; it is also reflected and preserved in a firm, ritualistic formula that testifies to both its sociocultural and its linguistic obviousness. “What will they say about us abroad?” is a formula in which the categories “abroad” and “they” are immediately comprehensible for every user of the Polish language. On the occasion of the debate about the Jedwabne massacre Jan Tomasz Gross noticed that: Anxious comments in the press such as “what will they say about us abroad?” are rather misplaced here: at the most they give further testimony to the Poles’ alienated collective identity due to the falsification of Polish-Jewish relations during the war years. I write “further” because it is not the first time that the concerned patriots react to the persecution of Jews in Poland in such a way. “At the protest gatherings after the Kielce pogrom the Polish speakers very often repeated—as the Zionist Opinia wrote on 25 July 1946—the formula ‘What will they say about us abroad?’ How much one would wish to hear something as simple and as pleasant-sounding as: ‘What will our fellow Jewish citizens think about us?’” The fact of the matter is that we will not lay the foundation for a free and creative collective existence by nervously following the reflection of our own face in the eyes of others.5

The mental-emotional deficit—namely, the inability to perceive reality as it actually is and accept one’s role in the course of history—generates a compulsion to behave in a repetitive, predictable way. This compulsion finds its expression in the way Poles have engaged in spectacular PR actions, addressed to an external authority for judgment. The

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oracle—necessarily external vis-à-vis the community—is imagined as powerful and influential, if not omnipotent. It is also often thought to be under the influence of an additional, surreptitious power working behind the scenes and thus considered particularly dangerous for the community. Within the imaginarium of periphery cultures, the imagined authority of this type is situated within the cultural center, that is, the so-called West. In the Polish idiom—at least, from the 1980s onward—one of the most distinguishable embodiments of such an oracle is the daily newspaper The New York Times (or to be precise, the common notions concerning its omnipotence). The history of the phantasma of “The New York Times” as organ of the proverbial “New York Jews” and the no-less-proverbial “international Jewry” remains to be written. Generically and morphologically, however, it is a variant of the anti-Semitic conspiratorial theory codified in, for example, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.6 Of the most recent Polish self-image initiatives, one stands out in this context. The universally acclaimed Keret House is both an installation and a performance, an object and an event, a symbol and a narrative. It was generated as such by various actors: its initiators-authors, participating observers, and the nominal hero (Etgar Keret). As both a social fact and a media event, the Keret House has produced an entire discursive universe that, in turn, solidifies and upgrades its status. An inherent part of my reflection will be devoted to the analysis of discourse—which, in the case of the Keret House, had its own unofficial variant. However, this unofficial, skeptical discourse yielded to the superiority of the official format: representational and representative not only in a statistical sense but also in that of sociocultural legitimacy. The Keret House attracted crowds of spectators and produced unanimous, positive resonance throughout a whole cross-section of society. It mainly addressed the liberal intelligentsia of the young generation but was appreciated by a wider community. It hit a communal nerve: the need for belonging and the sense of identity as well as image aspirations transcending societal divisions. In examining the various aspects and layers of meaning of the Keret House, the question to be addressed is: To what extent do they form a coherent and consistent thought pattern, allowing us to draw conclusions about the community, its worldview, boundaries, structure and the distribution of roles within it? In addition, the following issues are of interest to me: What is the relationship between image-building success and the causes of the problem with the image? To what extent did the Keret House PR campaign expose these causes? Did it help in working through and overcoming them, thereby proposing a new order? This chapter is an attempt to view the Keret House as a miniature model of the culture that brought it into existence.

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THE LOGIC “This is an event on a global scale.” So announced the biggest newspaper in Poland.7 In the country’s capital, Warsaw—where Żelazna Street intersects with Chłodna Street, with the buildings practically touching each other, with hardly any space in-between—an architect saw potential. In a cranny he termed “abandoned and forgotten,”8 the architect installed something (hereafter referred to as the object). The object is not visible from the outside. “Passers-by do not notice it.”9 If it is noticed at all from the street, it resembles at best a ventilation shaft or discarded metal item. Until recently, “the tenants used this cranny as a storage space for large household appliances, specifically the old and unwanted ones which were too large to fit in the normal bin.”10 The press put it as: The constructed object concerned is situated between the pre-war house at 73 Żelazna Str. and an apartment building on Chłodna Str. At its widest it is 152 cm.11 In 1942, not too far away from this cranny, there was a wooden footbridge, which connected the two parts of the ghetto over the “Aryan” Chłodna Street. On ground level within this cranny a steel construction was successfully installed; a number of steep stairs leading up from the street, and the whole thing looks a bit like a space vehicle.12 One enters up the stairs and through a trap door and then up a ladder to the space where there is a bed. We have a comfortable Sultan mattress, bedclothes with colorful polka-dots, an orange stool, on which lies a copy of Dad Runs Away with the Circus.13 There is water in the tap above the sink in a mini-kitchen, as well as a heater—everything functions as it should. The project displays clockwork precision, ergonomics to the millimeter, the whole house measuring in sum approximately 14 m². The WC with a shower is bigger and more comfortable than a toilet in an airplane.14 The size of the building determines the furnishings. The top stairs serves as a doormat and the refrigerator can only hold a few bottles. Like a little house for dwarfs.15 The elevations are made of polycarbonate, and the front is covered with stainless steel.16

On October 20, 2012, on a Saturday, at high noon, the ceremonial inauguration of the object—the moving in and the handing over of keys—took place.

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It involved the participation of the mayor of the city and crowds of Warsaw residents. In order to understand phenomena, one must place them within context. What is incomprehensible in one constellation will be clear, or even banal, in another. In this way, a provisional and ephemeral object, at first neither recognizable nor acceptable as a house, appears as a house if there is a change of context and a resulting relativization of the category “house.” This would apply to a container or a night shelter. Conditions that would not be acceptable for a typical taxpayer would appear as a gift from above to a homeless person or a refugee. However, if a socially excluded person would nonetheless raise objections to these conditions, they would be reminded by the beneficiaries of the system that they are superfluous; therefore, their lives deserve to be torn to shreds and wasted, which is what actully happens. The dislocation and relativization of the object that is of interest to us consist in ascribing it to a particular addressee. It cannot be the owner, given the fact that the object is not mentioned in the mortgage register and, from a legal point of view, does not exist. It wouldn’t apply to a tenant, either, given that, according to the regulations, it is not a residential building. “In such an object no one can live permanently or even be registered in it.”17 We are therefore not dealing here with a house tout court, but with something that can be thought of as a house only as a result of the dedication of this something to . . . Etgar Keret. We get an idea of how all of this came about if we study the architect’s declaration. The statement, formulated in English, is entitled Keret House: The Logic by Jakub Szczęsny: It all started one afternoon on my way to a nearby club: I stumbled upon this strange gap between a post-war coop prefab building and a pre-war ex-Jewish tenement block. This lack of communication seemed quite representative for Warsaw, a city-Frankenstein. I thought: “How can one make these two buildings communicate?” “By putting life in-between.” A voice said: “Sure, but how?” It should be a space for one person, a loner, a hermit, a writer! Someone to be close to the reality but distant at the same time. . . . What kind of writer would like to stay in something as narrow as this? Someone with a pretty good sense of humor, for sure. . . . Then I thought about the context: the place is where the small and big ghetto[s—E. J.] were divided by a street! A Jewish writer with a sense of humor writing short stories. This is when I called Etgar.18

The transformation is happening before our eyes: “a strange gap, a space, this, something as narrow as this, the place”—all of this results in the eponymous Keret House. (My computer’s spellcheck program, created surely by some Art Spiegelman enthusiast, patiently changes House into Mouse.)

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We could leave things at this, if it weren’t for the conceptualization and contextualization formulated in the architect’s statement. The represented world to which we are introduced focuses on two semantic fields. The first one is connected with the cranny/gulf/recess/discrepancy—the gap—and results in discontinuity, separation, and lack of communication between that which is Jewish and that which is Polish within a climate of the bizarre punctuated by the ghastly. The second semantic field comprises that which is Jewish, seen within the context of the former ghetto, and perceived as the so-called pożydowskie (“post-Jewish”—the term refers to the act of robbing Jewish property) also in the climate of horror. The unity of place where the events occur seems to reduce the discrepancy between the timelines (here and now/here and then). The figure of Frankenstein fulfills a connecting role, thanks to its characteristic feature of double meaning. In both cases, we have a commonplace, pop-cultural vision of Frankenstein as a horror film monster, remote from the original character of the New Prometheus, Victor Frankenstein, as created by Mary Wollstonecraft-Shelley. Today’s Warsaw resembles a ghost, rather like Frankenstein’s city. The Warsaw ghetto as that part of the city where the action takes place also lived, or rather died, under the symbol of Frankenstein. Frankenstein was the nickname for a German gendarme whose post—the so-called Wache (“sentry box”)—was situated on Żelazna Street, at the intersection with Leszno Street (today Solidarności Street): He was a soldier who amused himself by shooting at children as if they were sparrows. When children came back to the ghetto after begging, they’d slip in through a hole in the wall one after another. He’d wait until there were a few of them, four or five “pieces” and then fire, dealing with them all in one go.19,20

JUDAEUS EX MACHINA The effect of temporal compression, if not a feeling of going back in time, is exacerbated by the fact that an Israeli is named a “Jewish writer” and is placed within the context of the ghetto and the Holocaust. The ascription of this particular individual to this particular place, as proposed in the Keret House’s Logic, may appear logical to some people. However, it is also possible to imagine a configuration of knowledge, imagination and expectations, in which one cannot make out anything logical about The Logic. From the perspective of contemporary critical art, “the narrowest house in the world”—at first sight, a sign of the condition of the Pariah—seems to have been created for the purposes of an artistic intervention aiming to denounce

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phenomena such as visible and hidden homelessness, lack of public housing at the state and city level, and the increasing number of the working poor who, in spite of their hard work, are not able to climb out of extreme poverty. This recalls to mind Krzysztof Wodiczko’s American project Pojazd dla bezdomnych (Vehicle for the Homeless, 1988–1989), which is composed of an object and a series of performances: Built out of aluminum, sheet metal, steel net and Plexiglas the vehicle, intended for mass production, was supposed to afford protection for and improve the living conditions of homeless people. In the years 1987–88, according to official statistics, there were approximately 70,000 homeless people on the streets of New York. The majority of shelters for the homeless, and social housing in general, imposed upon the residents a strict prison-like discipline, which resulted in violence and abuse. This is why some homeless people, despite the harsh conditions, chose life on the street. The vehicle for the homeless, while affording protection, allowing for a certain autonomy of life, providing transport, and being at the same time a work instrument (for collecting bottles and cans), was also supposed to bear witness to the living conditions of the homeless and their existence on the margins of society.21

Both the narrowest house in the world and its location could serve as a visualization of the ideal of a community without community—as manifested in neoliberal Poland, where both open and hidden forms of economic exclusion are morally sanctioned and accepted as givens. Had this been the intention, it would have been difficult to expect the partnership of the National Centre for Culture, the honorary patronage from the city authorities, or financing from the city’s budget. One probably also could not have counted on support from the comedy club Chłodna. The interest of the media might have been considerably smaller, as well. But the intention behind Keret House was affirmative. It is hard to believe that such a Judaeus ex machina22 (a post-Holocaust Polish version of the ancient Greek deus ex machina device since my conviction is that Wistrich’s category remains valid in the context of today’s Polish philosemitic practices) appeared in this place for image and marketing reasons. If we put the matter in the contexts of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, it is hard to think of a more devastating anti-advertising statement and a more catastrophic image than that which emanated on Żelazna Street in Warsaw, courtesy of the Poles. With respect to Keret House, the neutralization of both the historicalsocietal context and of concrete events—an act practiced in Poland with great proficiency—comes into play. This neutralization is the necessary condition

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for both the success of the spectacle as a whole and the production and reproduction of the dominant majority’s narrative about the Holocaust. The myth of a radical, essential distinction between Polish anti-Semitism (exclusionary) and German anti-Semitism (exterminatory) is characteristic of this narrative. Then, there is the myth of the Polish majority as bystanders, deprived of any contact with the Jews and, consequently, without any meaningful influence over their situation. As knowledge about the extent and character of Polish crimes against Jews grows, there emerges alongside it a new narrative rationalizing the Holocaust by inscribing it into the logic of a group conflict. The very foundation of this narrative is the equation of Nazism with Communism (as well as the myth of Judeo-Communism, or żydokomuna). Seen in this light, both Polish crimes against the Jews and the dominant type of Polish behavior toward Jews allegedly serve as penalties for the Soviet (and, in conjecture, Jewish) crimes against the Poles, as well as necessary forms of self-defense against Communism.23 This narrative is in the process of being deconstructed, thanks to the research efforts of cultural anthropologists, historians, and discourse analysts, among others. In the public sphere, however, it is stubbornly persistent, as exemplified by the fact that Gazeta Wyborcza, a mainstream newspaper, printed the following about the narrowest house in the world: “The project is fantastic, but the most important thing about it is its location.” The personal logic of The Logic (i.e., its aspect pertaining to Etgar Keret) is additionally problematic since the entire endeavor is organized by the principle of representativity. At the intersection of Żelazna and Chłodna Streets we enter into the area of allegory. The architect designs the addressee of the narrowest house as an emblem. This means placing [T]his person in a category of which there can only be one current member, yet a category is nonetheless involved, and [the individual] is merely a member of it. Unique, historically entangled features are likely to tint the edges of our relation to this person; still, at the center is a full array of socially standardized anticipations that we have regarding [his or her] conduct and nature as an instance of the category.24

The selection process is threefold. Etgar Keret appears as a perfect example of an ideal type: “a loner, a hermit, a writer/a kind of writer, someone with a pretty good sense of humor.” The subset of the type is: “a Jewish writer with a sense of humor.” Consequently, Etgar Keret is just one piece of a set—a piece for which there are substitutes in the form of “Etgar Keret’s prominent friends.”25 It is therefore neither Etgar Keret nor Jakub Szczęsny who appears on the scene of identity. It is not even a writer and an architect

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who we see, but simply a Jew and a Pole. A Jew appointed by a Pole as a pièce de résistance of an architectural-media construction. Both the Pole and the Jew are predictable, even if it is possible to imagine them in several variants. Everybody can see for themselves what the Pole is like. For example, everybody sees that the Pole is able to achieve seemingly impossible things. The Pole can (Polak potrafi) as we know from a slogan emblematic of the People’s Republic of Poland propaganda of success: If the Pole is able to achieve passable quality for the A2 highway from Berlin to Warsaw for the Euro 2012, 40 hours before the first kick-off, then he can come up with a bed for Keret before the latter arrives on the doorstep with a pillow.26

Pole and Jew. Read: Poles and Jews. To the Jews, on behalf of the Poles? The Logic is a narrative about a situation full of tension and negative energy. It contains, however, the promise of a happy ending. The fatal gap here is set against a stopgap with magical attributes: “Journalists from all over the world will arrive, because everything with the suffix ‘-est’ plus a known writer works like a magnet. Heads and cameras will squeeze themselves into it and repeat: ‘Wow!,’ squealing with delight.”27 Indeed, they did arrive. They did squeal with delight. “A war was waged over the right of precedence over the publication of photographs and films of the mini-house. The winner: The New York Times.”28 The New York Times itself. The New York Times, in the flesh. An oracle when it comes to the image of Poland and the Poles. On a global scale. What else do we have? The Keret House may serve the Polish-Jewish rapprochement. It should really because here just next to it was the ghetto wall and the wooden bridge, which connected the two parts of the ghetto in 1942 over Chłodna Street.29

(The Warsaw ghetto had two main areas: the northern part, known as the large ghetto, and the southern part, known as the small ghetto). It is difficult to figure out what the implication might be. If p, then q. According to which principle, from the vicinity in which there was the ghetto wall and the ghetto bridge (p), shall it follow that the narrowest house in the world serves Polish-Jewish rapprochement (q)? Whatever it is that the object might bring us closer to or connect us with remains unclear, given the fact that “it could not so much as touch the neighboring houses, which had just been equipped with heat insulation, still under guarantee.”30 However, let’s not be petty-minded. Hocus-pocus, abracadabra; a magical, pseudo-logical show and, hey, presto! Based on the principle Judaeus ex machina, there appears a form of communication in a place marked by lack of communication—life in a place of death. A technical term for cranny is

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“settlement joint.” Even though it is not technically habitable, the term itself combines a connecting and a sedentary element. It sounds like a Polish joke. What does Keret House look like, and what impact does it have as a result? The narrowest house in the world is already the most famous Polish architectural-artistic project. It is the subject of description and commentary in both the mass media and alternative media—in the papers, in blogs, and on Facebook. Enthusiasm predominates, even though comments such as the following also occur: “I think it looks like a tampon” (www​.zgeek​.com). John Metcalfe from The Atlantic Cities has a different opinion: “like an Aspirin pill, which fell between the cushions of a sofa” (because of a horizontal “parting” in the middle). The associations could have been more subtle on different stages of the project. A muslin screen? Fluttering net curtains? A shroud? A white spine of a book with the binding already ripped off?31 “One can get used to everything, even to living in such a thing,” thinks Mr. Piotr, the cleaning-man at 22 Chłodna Street. “A cage for an artist,” wryly comments Beata Saratowicz who has been living in this apartment block from the very beginning, that is for thirty-seven years. People should have better ideas than a coffin for an artist. And I don’t like these four towers (symbolizing the bridge from the year 1942, which connected the Large Ghetto and the Small Ghetto at Chłodna Street). There one can press a button and then music is heard. Continuously, I hear this musical phrase on the clarinet through the window. The owner of a grocery store on Chłodna Street, who lives nearby, is pleased with the writer’s hermitage in a cranny. “I wouldn’t work or live in such a way, I like having space,” says Urszula Poniatowska while arranging the goods on the shelf. She insists that: “I don’t mind. And if it will attract additional customers, that is good because this year business has been poor as never before.”32

HISTORICAL REENACTMENT: GENERAL PLAN The object on Żelazna Street and various performances connected with it took on an unintentional form of reenactment, historical as well as macabre, given the scenario according to which the fate of the Jews played itself out on the “Aryan side” in occupied Poland from the beginning of the Aktion Reinhardt. In this respect, “the event on a global scale” creates the impression of a collective Freudian slip. The photographs of the narrowest house in the world could have appeared in the report by Friedrich Katzmann, SS-und Polizeiführer in the district of Galicia, who was one of the organizers of the Aktion Reinhardt. Friedrich Katzmann reported to his superiors:

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During the course of the actions (Aktionen) there arose other tremendous difficulties because the Jews strove to evade resettlement (Aussiedlung) at all costs. They not only tried to escape but also hid in all sorts of inconceivable spots, in drainage channels, in chimneys, even in liquid manure pits etc. They barricaded themselves in underground passages, in cellars extended into bunkers, in pits in the ground, in cunning hide-outs in attics and sheds, inside furniture etc.33

The photographs from the report documenting the outside of various buildings, as well as the entrances to the shelters through a trapdoor on the floor, the inside ladders, beds with bedclothes and the heads looking inwards are more than informative.34 The description provided by Katzmann finds completion in Emanuel Ringelbum’s words: The Blue Police [Polish State Police before 1939—E. J.] took an active part in the ‘resettlement actions’ everywhere. It was the rule for them to look for Jews in the various towns after the ‘liquidation.’ Without aid from local elements, it was difficult for the Germans to look for Jews who were hiding. They had to be sought in attics, cellars, barns, etc., and for this, it was best to utilize police who were familiar with the terrain, with the lay-out of the flats, etc. This followup ‘action’ would go on for several weeks and even sometimes for as long as several months, and as a result greater and greater number of Jews would be discovered. [. . .] punishment for hiding Jews and rewards for giving them away also helped. It is difficult to estimate the number of Jews in this country who fell victim thanks to the Blue Police; it must certainly amount to tens of thousands of those who managed to escape the German slaughterers.35

The Aktion Reinhardt meant the liquidation of the ghettos in the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region and in the Białystok Region, and the industrial extermination of Jews in the gas chambers of Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór. From that time onward, those Jews who managed to avoid deportation and extermination—and indeed, their number was actually quite high—had to disappear. There was no place left for them in Poland where they could exist. The Aktion Reinhardt, whose seventieth anniversary was in 2012, marked the beginning of the history of Jewish hiding. It was also the beginning of the final phase of the Holocaust: This phase—which the Germans termed Judenjagd, or “hunt for Jews” had two stages: the first one [. . .] when the Germans (often with the help of the local Polish police) systematically caught those who were in hiding [. . .], and the second stage—which practically lasted until the end of the war, and involved tracking down, catching and murdering all those Jews who were still in hiding.

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During this final phase the Germans did not catch the Jews themselves—they only arrived after having been summoned or else they killed those whom the inhabitants of the villages and little towns had previously turned over to the gendarmerie outposts (in the big cities it was the szmalcownicy [blackmailers] and informers—having betrayed their hiding places—who handed over the Jews).36

“As the behavior of the Poles often decided whether it was life or death for Jews, the role of the former became crucial from the point of view of the victims.”37 In this context, Barbara Engelking points to “a shift of the object of the Jewish fear—from the Germans to the Poles.”38 Tadeusz Markiel described Poles hunting down Jews and handing them over to their death as being the commissioners of the crimes, with the Germans as their executioners.39 As Alina Skibińska noticed, in the Rejestr miejsc i faktów zbrodni popełnionych przez okupanta hitlerowskiego (Directory of places and facts concerning the crimes committed by the Hitlerist occupier), the only accounts that remained after the social routine and collective stagings of the hunt for Jews—which included robbery, torture, and rape—went along the lines of “At this or that place, at this or that time, the Germans from this or that formation murdered so many Jews.” The dominant Polish narrative about the Holocaust recorded solely the final phase of the process. Jan Grabowski introduces us to the result achieved by the combined efforts of Poles and Germans: As we know today, very few managed to survive under the German occupation that lasted until 1945. In the summer of 1942, despite years of hunger, epidemics, and terror, some 2.5 million Polish Jews were still alive. Assuming that around 10 percent of the Jewish population of the liquidated ghettos tried to flee the deportations, one can argue that 250,000 people made an active attempt to save themselves from the policies of extermination. Of that number [. . .] less than 50,000 survived the war. The question is whether the 200,000 future victims of the Judenjagd lacked a chance from the very beginning.40

Based on their analysis of the archive of the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów Polskich), Helena Datner and Alina Cała conclude that the majority of Jews who survived: [L]ived to see their liberation in the concentration camps and work camps. Considerably fewer, hid in forests, or survived thanks to the help of Polish society or in partisan units, in particular in the east of the country.41

From the perspective of Jews seeking rescue on the “Aryan side,” Barbara Engelking writes that “it was exactly the experience of lack [. . .] of

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community (civic, brotherly, human), which was one of the principal experiences of wandering around in Poland in the years 1942–1945.”42 Based on many years of research, I remain convinced that during the Holocaust, the Polish norm of treating their Jewish co-citizens as foreign elements, if not outright enemies, completed the German project of extermination. It made the extermination hermetic and, thereby, total.43 The foundation of this norm was the religious and “patriotic legitimacy of the anti-Jewish feeling.”44 For this reason, the majority of Jewish hiding places did not prove to be safe at all. Apart from inevitable questions about Polish societal norms and practices, what follows from this is the conclusion drawn by Marcin Zaremba: Until 1944, the German losses on the territory of occupied Poland did not exceed 3,000 men. Thus, [. . .] we were not on the side, on which it seemed to us that we actually were, if we killed more Jews than Germans.45

This, however, is far from the whole set of denotations and connotations carried by the phrase “Jewish hiding.” Apart from the Katzmann report, the representation of the narrowest house in the world could have also appeared in the work by Marta Cobel-Tokarska entitled Bezludna wyspa, nora, grób. Wojenne kryjówki Żydów w okupowanej Polsce (A Desert Island, a Den, a Grave. Wartime Hide-Outs of Jews in Occupied Poland).46 Both the inauguration of the object and the publication of the book took place at around the same time. As far as the book is concerned, I absolutely do not agree with the following points made by the author: (a) the equation of Nazism with Communism; (b) the Holocaustization of the suffering of the political prisoners after 1945; (c) the Stalinization of the People’s Republic of Poland, namely the lack of differentiation in describing the period from 1945 to 1989. Furthermore, I believe that the designation of Polish majority society under the category “witnesses” to the Holocaust conceals more than it reveals and permits us to understand. The same applies to the alternative categorization of the Poles as being simply indifferent to the persecution of the Jews, thereby providing a flawed characterization of Polish-Jewish relations.47 In December 2012, during the discussion at Joanna Tokarska-Bakir’s seminar at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw, Marta Cobel-Tokarska admitted that the Jewish hideouts would not have been necessary on such a large scale and in such extreme forms, if it had not been for the attitude of the society’s majority. However, this aspect is not considered in her book. I want to refer to the parts of Cobel-Tokarska’s argument in which she explores the difference between a house and a hideout (making use of the terms “homelessness” and “marginalization”). A hideout is not only a place in the physical sense but also a place within the structure of society. It is a

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place that is also a non-place. The essence of a hideout is its invisibility, its societal non-existence: Hide-outs inscribed themselves in the category of an unwanted, negatively characterized, troublesome space. [. . .] They were places ascribed to a stigmatized group in society and at the same time they represented the next, transitional phase from the pre-war existence of Jews in the public space to their complete disappearance. [. . .] The unstable status of those in hiding as illegal, in need of help, deprived of any rights and resources deciding about their power and place in the societal hierarchy, opened up various, mostly negative, perspectives for the inhabitants of the hideouts.48

A Christian from the region of Lubaczów puts it that: “Those, who decided to go into hiding, fared badly, that is, with a bullet in their head in a ditch at the side of the road.”49 There were different types of hideouts: temporary and long-term, those with assistance and those without, individual and collective ones, those in rural and urban areas (and those located in a no-man’s land). A hideout is the quintessence of marginalization, homelessness, perishability, rootlessness, and in this context came with a permanent threat of being denounced as a “Jew,” which meant death. Usually, hideouts meant a lucrative business for those on the outside of them. For those on the inside, a hideout was a place of exploitation, blackmail, hunger, and thirst; scorching heat or intolerable cold; a place characterized by humidity, stench, fear, and lack of air. Finally, a hideout is a “tight and uncomfortable case for the body”50 and for the psyche. The body of the individual in hiding: [I]s this “self,” a burden reduced to its physical dimensions. One can look at hiding one’s “self” as an act of separating the mind from the body. The mind must look at its body as if it were a package that one must hide. It cannot count on the package’s cooperation—it cannot be compressed; its size cannot be changed. It is hard to control it, it may play a dangerous trick. In spite of being an object, it [the body] has its biological needs. Thus, apart from hiding it from the sight, hearing and smell of others one still has to take care of at least its basic needs (air, food, water, temperature, excretion). In a hide-out, the individual remains an integrated whole, but is also his own enemy.51

The person in hiding wants to rescue something that represents an obstacle to rescue. For the ones in hiding, their own body is: an object of care—one has to hide it; a trouble—it has its demands, size, needs; a threat—it generates sounds, warmth, noises, so it might betray its presence;

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a currency—often one paid with sex in return for help; a burden and a source of suffering—illness in a hideout; a prison—the necessity of hiding one’s body, which cannot be “disguised” as non-Jewish. It’s all because of the body. Consequently, dreams often occur, for example, about transforming into an animal, whom nobody threatens, and which can walk safely wherever it wants to; a blessing—the idea of Kiddush Ha-Hayyim, the sanctification of life, was also adhered to in the hide-outs; and therefore, the principle of saving one’s body, which is a gift from God, at all cost; a helper—when it is fit, healthy, strong and does not cause problems—then, for example, one can manage with rebuilding a hide-out, escaping; a stronger [person] may take overpower in a group; a problem—when natural matters in connection with bodily issues arise. Sex, pregnancy, delivery, death—all of this within the conditions of the hideout generates unimaginable problems and practical complications.52

The author concludes that all of this is “actually not comprehensible for people who did not experience anything similar.”53 They did not succeed in concealing this fact at Żelazna Street. Not even a camouflaging net of stainless steel helped.

HISTORICAL REENACTMENT: CLOSE-UP The way in which Etgar Keret’s body is treated in the narrowest house in the world intrigues me. The formulation “ergonomics to the millimeter”—which repeatedly appears in the press reports about Keret House—causes doubt as to whether the roughly expected is not transformed here into the rigorously predictable. We understand that the writer is not at risk of performing futile, unproductive movements. What room for maneuver, if any, does he have, then? In comparison with the narrowest house in the world, Le Corbusier’s machine for living offers far more freedom and flexibility. The body that is placed in the settlement joint on Żelazna Street is constantly subjected to the power of its dispatcher. However, there is more: In the evenings one can expect the effect of a Chinese lantern and a theatre of shadows, when the writer sits on the toilet or takes a shower. The reason being that the whole wall, behind which there is the WC (but also a bedroom, which is 122 cm wide) made of frosted glass—as Jakub Szczęsny revealed.54

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The set WC/shower/bedroom, as a scene of the spectacle, appears under the pretext of humor. This comic quality of the urogenital system should be linked to the aforementioned declarative statement Keret House: The Logic by Jakub Szczęsny, which calls for a distance from reality. Culturally speaking, defecation and urination are understood within the category of “other sexual activities” and performed en spectacle. XTube is full of excreting anuses and urinating penises—circumcised and uncircumcised, all sizes and colors; the choice is yours. I assume, however, that the architect’s intention behind the reality show on Żelazna Street was not to create an erotic installation. That said, on the first night the writer received a proposition of group sex—a threesome. The aphrodisiac in this case proved to be his affiliation to a group considered as exotic, as it was hunters of rare specimens and collectors of curiosities who made the offer to him. They argued that “they had enjoyed previous success with a Chinese, a black man and many others, but never with an Israeli.”55 Indeed, the story of the narrowest house in the world, time after time, shockingly objectifies living beings. We still do not know the answer to the question about the function of the external eye for which the architect has designed the “effect of the Chinese lantern, when the writer sits on the toilet or takes a shower” or when he is in the bedroom. One can get the impression that this is a controller’s eye, with the power of surveillance. The Keret House, therefore, contains an element of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon: a building described by Michel Foucault as a “total institution.”56 The opposite of the panopticon would be Erving Goffman’s “theatre of everyday life,” in which, apart from the stage, we have a backstage and many places of retreat, reflecting varying degrees of public exposure and accessibility.57 In the narrowest house in the world, one can hide in the mini-kitchen or the mini-studio. The most intimate activities, however, were assigned to the front area, visible from the street. Keret admitted that he felt like a laureate of Big Brother on Żelazna Street; in fact, from the contemporaneous news bulletins, we learned that in the writer’s bedroom, there was a single-person bed measuring 90 centimeters (just over 35 inches) in terms of width.58,59 In the end, the lead paragraph of the article entitled “Keret with Sultan in Mini-House” informed us that in the writer’s bedroom, on a Sultan mattress that is “as much as ninety centimeters wide” “two persons can sleep comfortably.”60 The difference is that the program Big Brother—like most prisons, in which people are exposed twentyfour hours a day, respect the excreting part as a zone to be protected from the sight of the supervisor. The idea of the narrowest house in the world exploits, if not exposes, the drastic stripping away of intimacy that also characterized the Jewish hideouts. This much can be deduced from examining the phenomenon on its surface. On a level invisible to the naked eye, what we have is the history of two

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people on the “Aryan side” caught in a deadly trap. “My dad hated crowds,” Etgar Keret relates, and “he said that this was the consequence of the Polish war time hideouts.”61 During the war, Dad hid in some hole in a small Polish town. I don’t know what it was called. It was so small that those who were in hiding could neither stand up nor lie down. They could only sit for many months. When the Russians came and recovered them from below, they suffered from muscular atrophy. Nobody was able to walk.62

Efraim Keret, Etgar’s father, had a sister, called Dana: “The Germans killed her, but she did not disclose where the rest of the family was hiding.”63 We do not know, and probably never will, the circumstances in which Dana was killed. However, as she knew her brother’s hiding place, it is conceivable that she hid together with him. The most frequent scenario in the case of those in hiding was the following: before disappearing, they entrusted all of their belongings to Christians in order to withdraw it in tranches, with the aim of paying for the help of other Christians. The concern was to minimize the risk and not give up all of one’s autonomy to one and the same individual. The belongings were usually distributed throughout many places, with people expecting that some of their possessions would be seized, while at the same time believing (or at least speculating) that not all of their confidants would turn out to be thieves. Leaving their hiding places in order to retrieve subsequent items that belonged to them and that were held for them often resulted in betrayal by trustees. What should be mentioned here is a fragment of Calel Perechodnik’s Spowiedź [Confession], Indeed, each Pole had at least one Jewish friend who asked them with tears in his eyes to store his things. They generously agreed, and if the Jew was obedient, he went to Treblinka, and the matter was finished. Possessions increased, the conscience was clear, tout va très bien. It became worse when the Jew appeared to be bothersome, still wanted to live and asked about his things. Obviously, it was not worth returning them as the Jew would not survive the war anyway; he would not be able to repay the favor after the war nor sue them in court or cast any shadow on their unblemished name. So, admit it: It is not worth returning his things; it is just a sin. If we give them back, others will come and take them away.64

Jan Grabowski writes that: “The quality of the assistance rendered was so low that the perception of the Christian helpers in the consciousness of those in

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hiding did not deviate much from the way they perceived the Germans.”65,66 He goes on to speak of a “scheme of behavior,” which he characterizes as “depressingly uniform.”67 Dana could have perished in just such a banal, all-too-common way. The writer’s father survived. After the war, he went to Sicily as a right-wing Zionist and member of the Irgun. He bought weapons from the mafia for the partisans who fought against the British in Palestine. “He was very happy. It was the first moment in his adult life, when he did not have to hide the fact that he was a Jew.”68 Etgar Keret’s mother, a resident of Warsaw from an intelligentsia family (“very assimilated, even more Polish than Jewish”),69 was the only one from her side to survive. Her mother, her father, and her brother were murdered on the so-called Aryan side. When her family was still alive, enclosed in the Warsaw ghetto, the girl “crept into the Aryan side many times in order to get food and medicine.”70 “As a child, she found a way to feed her parents and her small brother. Children were able to get out of the ghetto and to smuggle food back in—through holes through which adults had not the slightest chance of squeezing themselves.” In other words, the writer’s mother was one of the child smugglers, one of the potential victims of Frankenstein from Żelazna Street. “She recognized the name of the street at once [. . .]. When my Mum smuggled food for the family, in this place one had to avoid the Wache of the Nazi soldiers. If she had been caught with even only a crumb of bread, they would have killed her on the spot.”71 “To escape was not a problem for her. It was more difficult to survive.”72 She left the ghetto along with adults. It is on the “Aryan side” that the following scene took place: “They escape in a big group but whence and where to, I don’t know. One carries on his back a clock, one of those huge cuckoo clocks. [. . .] They killed him, and the clock was ticking and ticking.” Or: They—Mum, her little brother, and her mother—are sitting somewhere in a cabbage field. They are scared because they hear the sounds of the hunt for the Jews. Grandma breastfeeds Mum’s little brother, he was crying. The Germans are getting closer. One of them spots Grandma. And he passes by as if hadn’t seen anybody. And he ought to have killed them.73

That was as far as the miracles went. After the death of her family, Etgar Keret’s mother went into hiding at the home of a Polish prostitute whose services German clients used. In 1944, “she was ten years old; she was travelling in Poland by train and some bastard threw her out. She had broken ribs, pierced lungs, she lost her shoes somewhere. She had to walk about 20 km to the next building with bare feet through the snow.” “From Mum’s narratives it became apparent from time to time that a fork lying close to a plate may in different circumstances be a terrible weapon and that one has to be careful

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with somebody holding a fork in their hand.”74 After the war, she never went to Poland again. From Etgar Keret’s report, we know that before the war, she had a happy childhood. Commenting on the remark that “Felicja” means “happy,” Keret said that: “Mum never used the Polish first name here, only the Hebrew one—Ornah.”75 The installation on Żelazna Street fulfills yet another defining criterion for reenactment. As with all historical reenactments, it does not relate to facts but to current representations of facts. The narrowest house in the world is a hideout in a demo version—in the show house sense (Shoah house sense?). It is clean, bright, and equipped in a modern style. The threat to life is absent, just like in the picaresque narrative about how Jews were saved during the Holocaust, which is so popular in Poland. The Germans were easy to trick, and no one was afraid of anybody or anything. The whole village, the whole community—everybody knew, and everybody hid his or her Jew. “It is as it was”—to echo the statement made by Pope John Paul II after he had watched Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ (2004).76 We also have pomp, celebrations, and media fuss contributing to this rosy fantasy. In these narratives, “our Jew” fulfills the function of a lucky mascot and a decorative ventilation shaft grating in the otherwise airtight system of oppression. It is an element of camouflage. However, it suffices to imagine the opposite of each of the parameters of the picaresque narrative in order to see a relevant and reliable picture, true to the facts. “JEWISH PLACE”: VISUALIZATION The most straightforward context for the installation on Żelazna Street in Warsaw is provided by the Holocaust in general and the personal history of Etgar Keret’s parents in particular. However, the narrowest house in the world also symbolizes the place of the Jews in Poland, both before and after the Holocaust. As noted in the Introduction, I persistently use the collective category “Jews” without delving into the self-identification of those categorized as “the Jews.” In doing so, I attempt to understand and describe Polish majority culture within its own categories. Polish culture is structurally dependent on the category “the Jews,” essentialized and perceived as diametrically opposed to the categories “we,” “us,” “ourselves.” “The Jews” is constitutive of mainstream Polish culture: it establishes and organizes the majority’s cultural identity. This constitutive function and essentialized construction determine both the actuality and the stability of the term “the Jews” (or “the Jew”), prioritizing its connotation over its denotation. From the perspective of the culture analyzed here, to differentiate between a Jew and an Israeli does not make sense at all. We are entering

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here the field of incapacitation, of depriving the other of autonomy, “since what an individual is, or could be, derives from the place of his kind in the social structure.”77 The majority culture possesses the ultimate decisionmaking authority with regard to those considered similar to their kind. Referring to terms external to the cultural idiom described above, “the Jews” has to be defined in the following way: Everybody who is subjected to anti-Semitic violence, both physical and non-physical, regardless of their self-identification. A “Jewish place” has achieved a cultural representation on Żelazna Street. It has been visualized. It is marked by certain characteristic features. It is a place equivalent to a lack of place. Moreover, it is a mise en abyme, a story-within-a-story: a place where there is no place (Keret House) situated in another place where there is no place (a settlement joint). Keret House is characterized not only by its lack of space but also by how unsafe it is. “Settlement joints” are not recommended as a place to live, not even temporarily, due to the fact that they come with permanent risk: the risk of being crushed, like when a settlement joint shrinks because of the temperature or tectonic movements. “An unsafe place” is also a category that Joanna Tokarska-Bakir proposes in order to describe the place of Jews within the Christian culture of Europe: In its symbolic narrative, pre-modern anti-Semitism—religious, ethnic, social— assigned to them [to Jews—E. J.] nothing other than an “unsafe place,” which could disappear from the surface of the earth at any moment.78

This particular aspect is exactly what pre-modern anti-Semitism has in common with its so-called modern variant. Finally, this place is “in-between.” “In-between”—Cwiszn—is the title of a Jewish quarterly about literature and art, edited in Warsaw since 2010. In its successive issues, the journal has given an ongoing characterization of such sociocultural positioning of the already non-existent Yiddish civilization in Poland. Pomiędzy (In-Between) is also the title of a book by Agnieszka Jagodzińska on the acculturation of Warsaw Jews in the second half of the nineteenth century.79 This positioning resulted in reaching an invisible barrier in the form of the lack of acceptance on the part of the target culture. Helena Datner, researching the Jewish intelligentsia in Warsaw in the second half of the nineteenth century, captured the matter more sharply by referring to the realities of the ghetto and the nomenclature of the Holocaust. She described a world in which the category “Jew,” used in a stigmatizing way, was not a descriptive category but an axiological category, ascribed to the individual once and for all.

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Datner’s work is entitled Ta i tamta strona (This and that side).80 These terms were used to describe the ghetto and the “Aryan side” in the first half of the 1940s—with no room “in-between.” (Although, of course, if one wished to, one could sit down with one leg on each side of the no man’s land of broken glass and barbed wire crowning the wall.) In her work Syn będzie Lech . . . (My son’s name shall be Lech . . .), Anna Landau-Czajka wrote about the assimilated Jews in the inter-war period in Poland as “the third nation,” rejected by the Polish community.81 “In-between” is not only the condition of the Polish intelligentsia of Jewish origin; it is also the topos of a “Jewish place” in general. The allegorical Jew described by Władysław Szlengel in his poem Cyrk (The Circus) hangs and flounders around (plącze się and pęta się) on the European scene “in-between”: trapped in-between the acts of power games, in-between the legs of real actors and authors of real events.82 Szlengel himself was stuck in-between, in the most literal sense of the phrase. He was living on the very border of the large ghetto. He was dying on that side—with his eye fixed on this side. “In-between”—on the front line, caught in the crossfire—ends the course of the “train of life,” transporting emblematic Jews with a fiddler on the roof (of a cattle wagon) in Radu Mihăileanu’s film. The DVD menu of the film emerges from background clouds of smoke. At the end, we hear the story of a jester/madman (Yiddish: meshuge) from behind the barbed wire of an extermination camp. Le fou in French means both madman and jester. The French title of this comedy—Train de Vie (1988)—means both “train of life” and “way of living.” (In Germany, Mihăileanu’s comedy was promoted as “comical” (sic). On the German cover of the DVD, it says: Intelligent, sensibel und komisch!) All of this takes place in a culture in which belonging and identity are considered moral qualities, forming part of the domain of axiology. To be outside of a group or in-between groups is considered at least morally suspect, if not completely unacceptable. At the same time, in Poland, with respect to individuals categorized as belonging to the group “the Jews,” there is no talk of becoming an accepted part of the community, since even complete polonization does not remove the stigma and put an end to exclusion. The system is based on both a lack of alternatives within the sphere of identity and incapacitation, deprivation of autonomy. This lack of alternative was succinctly captured by an observer of today’s Poland: “here is Either-Or, / Either one is Here—Or one is Here.”83 And if ‟one is Here” is pre-established, then this is not the individual’s choice. Admission into the dominant community can only be granted conditionally and depends on the marginalized individual’s thorough subordination, which is constantly tested. The responsibility of the

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aspirants, however, remains a collective one, no matter what action is taken on the part of an individual. One can get a sense of what all of this means by reading comments in the liberal mainstream press regarding application for Polish citizenship on the part of the American journalist Anne Applebaum. The matter was considered a major event. One of the weekly opinion formers wrote: “There is much to indicate that we will shortly gain a first-class female citizen”84—despite the fact that Polish law does not provide for hierarchical grades of citizenship. The formulation looks like a slip of the pen; a citizenship must have been mistaken for a decoration, for it is the decorations that are awarded within different ranks (gold, silver, bronze, I class, II class, V class). In another weekly opinion-maker, Władysław Bartoszewski—an Auschwitz survivor, a doyen of Polish intelligentsia considered a moral authority within Polish public life, and a former member of the Council for Aid to Jews (Żegota)—also employs the rhetoric of merit, reward, and praise: I think that [Anne Applebaum] most certainly deserves Polish citizenship. She is raising her two sons as Poles. [. . .] For it is the mother who decides on the most sensitive issues, and especially in the case of such a strong-minded and tough person as Ms. Anne Applebaum. [. . .] However, what is of equal importance is the significance of her decision in relation to the stereotype about Poland within the Jewish milieux in America, and not only there. AntiSemitism in Poland exists, and it is very strong, but this is not the essence of Polishness nor is it the essence of the Polish state. In the meantime, according to the stereotype Poland is terrible and there is nothing worth pursuing here for a Jew. Anne Applebaum, by claiming Polish citizenship, shows something completely different, namely that a Jew does have something to pursue here, as it’s her personal choice to become a citizen of this state. Indeed, the fact remains that her sons could be brought up as Jews, and in keeping with Israeli law they could claim Israeli citizenship as sons of a Jewish mother. Instead, she is raising them as Poles.85

From this argument, it follows that Anne Applebaum is a lifelong hostage of her son’s conduct and choices. It also raises doubts as to whether a person whose gender is “mother” (osoba płci matka)86 and who does not raise her children “as Poles” (na Polaków) may hold Polish citizenship. Fathers, we assume, do not participate in the upbringing of children. What about those among Polish citizens (assuming that men nevertheless occasionally appear) who raise their children “as Jews,” “as Roma,” “as Russians,” “as Germans,” “as Lemkos,” and so on? What about those who raise their children “as nothing,” or outside of any ethnic or religious category? Human rights, the right to

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citizenship, political community, the social contract; all of these are dead letters. They are considered abstract and most often perceived as foreign, if not hostile, in the dominant Polish culture. The issue of mothers and their origin remain sensitive and thorny in Polish culture.87 The press material is adorned with a photograph of Anne Applebaum smiling over a plate of dumplings with pork scratchings. The curators of the narrowest house in the world, Sarmen Beglarian and Sylwia Szymaniak, believe that the object “will become an important symbol of contemporary Warsaw.”88 Maybe, then, the installation on Żelazna Street isn’t a historical reenactment after all. Maybe what we have here is not history that repeats itself as farce, but history that does not end? History with hostages and potential victims. Constantly. If so, the narrowest house in the world reflects the social order that is consistently validated in Polish culture—an order that is self-evident and by the same token invisible. Given that it would not occur to anybody to protest, one can announce (threaten?): By the time Keret has had his fill of writing and has worn himself out in the narrowest house in the world, he will have to repay the Poles for their hospitality in Poland. Nothing is for free, not even in the homeland of one’s parents. He will become the chairperson of a jury to be in charge of an international resident programme in the settlement joint. The aim: to attract artists of the world, to advertise Warsaw widely, to bring in artistic fermentation.89

“He will have to repay the Poles for their hospitality in Poland.” “Nothing is for free.” Déjà vu. One’s skin crawls. The narrowest house in the world came into being with the notion of Etgar Keret and “artists of the whole world” who “shall come to Warsaw in order to get to know its history and culture and dedicate to the city their work.”90 The chosen place, it has to be admitted, is perfectly suited to this purpose. At ground level, there are two pawnshops, as well as a shop specializing in baptismal costumes. One can hear klezmer music from the nearby Warsaw ghetto bridge—day and night. ALGORITHM AND PROTOCOL On Żelazna Street in Warsaw, the “Polish eye” designs and orchestrates a “Jewish place,” in the spatial and symbolic sense. The production (or, rather, reproduction) of a well-known stage design activates a ready-made social script, complete with specific choreography and distribution of roles. This can be seen in such works as Wojciech Gerson’s painting Kazimierz Wielki i Żydzi (Casimir the Great and the Jews, 1874); Jan Matejko’s painting Przyjęcie

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Żydów w Polsce w 1096 roku (The Reception of the Jews into Poland, 1889); and Henryk Hochman’s grace-evoking bas-relief Przyjęcie Żydów do Polski w średniowieczu (The Reception of the Jews into Poland in the Middle Ages, 1907), which features a winged angel wearing the crown of the last king of the Piast dynasty, Casimir the Great. The confusion involved in establishing the dates of the mythical arrival—the object of intensive commemoration, if not outright cult practices—is striking. In this hospitality competition, Władysław I Herman (ca. 1043–1102), with his sons Bolesław Krzywousty (1086–1138) and Zbigniew (d. after 1114), surpasses Casimir the Great (1310–1370). The legendary reception of Jews moves back in time; however, what matters is that the scene looks good and fits perfectly with absolutely everything. This is also the case on Żelazna Street. In the inaugurational photographs, we have the host ceremonially cutting the ribbon and receiving the guest, who arrives on his doorstep. The host not only gives shelter to the harassed wanderer but also offers him a gift. On the whole, everybody is vying with one another to display politeness. Starring as King Casimir the Great is the mayor of the city of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz. The effect was additionally reinforced by Etgar Keret’s comment on the nuclear threat to Israel on the part of Iran: “We are scared, so we are looking for a solution that could save us. It is best to be outside the ghetto wall—at least having someone we can trust there.”91 The receiver context, the Polish dominant culture, intercepts this message without difficulty and gives it meaning within its own categories. According to this logic, Israel is a ghetto in which the Jews have locked themselves. On the outside, the “Aryan side” (more specifically the “Aryan” Polish side), is waiting with open arms. Only Ornah Keret’s stance does not subscribe to this reasoning: “Mum is not scared. She would never leave Israel; she did not come here after the Holocaust to leave this place.”92 If we look at this scenario through the lens of Polish majority culture, both the paternalism and the moral-emotional blackmail that form the quintessence of the real and phantasmal scene remain invisible. Even declared critics of anti-Semitism do not see them. Jan Błoński, the initiator of the most important debate on this topic during the 1980s in Poland, wrote that: “We received the Jews into our house, but we ordered them to live in the basement.”93 King Casimir the Great, Poland; we, the Poles. The ahistorical, falsified image eliminates the concrete historical reality and prevents reflection in political, economic, and legal terms. Thus, the whole spectacle proceeds according to a firmly established and well-rehearsed script. The inscription of the installation on Żelazna Street in the logic of hospitality and gift, renews the algorithm of symbolic violence. On one hand, we have “host.” On the other, we have “guest.” The “guest,” however, is faced with a choice. Either he proves himself “the good Jew,” who accepts the

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place allotted to him with gratitude; or he refuses, thereby proving himself “the insolent Jew”: calculating and ungrateful, if not outright vindictive. In both cases, the Polish majority narrative about the so-called Polish-Jewish relations (which were in fact a one-sided phenomenon) throughout history is confirmed. The legendary hospitality of Poles for Jews, functioning as a framework establishing the parameters of the debate, eclipses the relation of domination and submission—and, consequently, the long history of antiSemitic violence. Being a guest requires politeness, tact, good manners, and further etiquette.94 On October 23, 2012, I received an e-mail concerning Keret House from an acquaintance who belongs to the so-called Second Generation: The children of those who survived the Holocaust; the Holocaust Children’s children. (The author asked me not to publish his personal details.) Hey! How do you like the idea of the solemn ritual placing of a Jew in a hidingplace? Supposedly, it will occur every year. They will seek volunteers among sabras [Israelis born in Israel—E. J.], because sabras do not get it. In the diaspora there were no volunteers. This time a model of a hiding-place between the walls—the model “Amsterdam”—is being tested. However, supposedly, conceptual work is underway on a hiding-place within layers of a roof in the remaining ghetto houses on Grzybowska Street. Next year they will place Amos Oz in there. I was flabbergasted. You understand that I cannot say all that aloud. Out of this politeness. And out of fear that I am criticizing just for the sake of criticizing while everyone is having a great time. Regards, Ł.

When asked by someone from Poland if he longed for Poland, Etgar Keret’s father referred to the Polish intelligentsia’s notion of good manners—so exotic in Israel, where Poles are known for their gallantry and respect for social hierarchy, to say the least—and politely replied in Polish-intelligentsiaspeak: “Not particularly.”95 The conversation took place at the beginning of the twenty-first century, during a festive five o’clock at Ornah and Efraim Keret’s house. At that moment, Efraim Keret did not look like a father who had ran away with the circus. He gave the impression as if he had run away from the circus and, employing his repertoire of verbal acrobatics, tried hard not to become involved with it again. The career of the euphemism “not particularly” in the realm of Polish-Jewish relations is an interesting phenomenon. Asked in 2012, “Why did you hide your Jewishness for so many years?” Agata Tuszyńska, a well-known female reporter and biographer, answered: “Because my mother did this for many years. [. . .] Almost unconsciously, I

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adopted her Aryan papers. I also felt, although never aggressively, that it is not particularly good to be a Jew in Poland.”96 It’s better not to even think about what would happen, if it weren’t for the etiquette. The Etgar Keret House has become a tourist attraction in Warsaw. In addition to individual visitors, it also attracts school groups. Some compare it to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. The object, however, is in keeping with the so-called Polish national tradition of offering physical places to writers who are considered to have rendered particularly outstanding services to the so-called national culture. One such writer, Henryk Sienkiewicz, received a manor house in Oblęgorek. Maria Konopnicka received a manor house in Żarnowiec. Stefan Żeromski, received an apartment in the Royal Castle in Warsaw. Etgar Keret received a cranny in the Muranów district of Warsaw. This gift reflects Poles’ representation of themselves, with their proverbial hospitality and generosity front-and-center. As the press put it, the writer “was anointed caretaker, ambassador and tenant of the house.”97 That’s not all; Etgar Keret, already a cult figure in Poland, was promoted to the rank of “a Polish writer in exile.”98 A greater compliment and a more significant ennoblement is hard to imagine in a culture that diligently maintains, to this day, a martyrologicalheroic paradigm. Viewed through the lens of perpetrators’ intentions, the Keret House is therefore part of the wider phenomenon of philo-Semitic violence. The phrase “a Polish writer in exile” with reference to Etgar Keret was first used by Ornah Keret, albeit its Israeli context is lost to the Polish audience. The inscription ‟Polish writer” on Leo Lipski’s tombstone in Yarkon cemetery, Petah Tikvah, lays bare that there is nothing sentimental about the term, nor is it a point of pride for Polish majority culture. The diasporic national qualifier indicates the country and the culture the person was expelled from.99 Another “Polish writer” was Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose existence Polish culture had ignored until he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and then for years his works were translated into Polish from English. In view of this, an interesting material for analysis is posed by Jan Błoński’s highlt embarrassed sentence: “Isaac Singer was, however, sometimes referred to internationally as a Polish writer.”100 Further layers of mystified sense overlap, creating a coherent and logical totality—a totality labeled as The Logic. One can refer to the absence of a place as a place, and the negation of a house as a house. One can even speak of a gift and of return, allowing one to camouflage the actual state of affairs. Only from whom, and for how long? Sooner or later, questions will emerge. For instance: What happened to the apartment of Etgar Keret’s mother? We know that it was situated on Aleje Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Avenue), not far from Nowy Świat Street—“a very good Warsaw address.”101 How much

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was it worth? How did the act of expropriating the apartment from its rightful owners unfold? (Usually, a concierge, accompanied by the Polish police, carried out such actions.) Who lived there afterward? What about the right of ownership? What about restitution or compensation? A similar set of questions concerns the house of the family of Etgar Keret’s father, as well as the apartments and houses belonging to the writer’s other relatives (not to mention the remaining property—movable and immovable). Taking into consideration the largely unrealistic categories typically used to narrate anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Poland, one gets the impression that only converting this history into money (in other words, providing a financial equivalent of Jewish losses, without regard for their incalculable character) would cause the institutions that transmit cultural patterns sanctified by tradition—the family, public education, the Church—to realize that this transmission is no longer possible (at least with regard to the costs, at least in the financial sense, as they know no other language). In the meantime, things are the way they are. One can see for oneself, on Żelazna Street. On one hand, we have the so-called Polish-Polish property: the postwar apartment building. On the other hand, we have the so-called Polish post-Jewish property (mienie pożydowskie): the prewar house; and a cramped and suffocating emptiness in the middle. The location and form of the narrowest house in the world clearly indicate who governs and controls the narrative, who defines the terms and dictates the conditions. And who acts in whose play. SENSE OF HUMOR AND THE POLISH CAUSE Within the dominant culture that produced the category of “Jewish writer with a sense of humor,” sense of humor is a conditional requirement, a sanctioning, and a regulating device. The category shapes the narrative about both the person and the group to which that individual is ascribed. What is the point of this? From the perspective of power relations and the way societal communication is organized, the phenomenon plays out between the stigmatized and the stigmatizers, or the “carriers of stigma” and the “normals.” “Carrier of stigma” and “normals” are categories established by Erving Goffman, who developed a theory about the process of stigmatization according to which a stigma is neither an individual nor a collective attribute but a pathological societal interaction, caused by the manner in which a particular attribute is perceived. Goffman provides an analysis of the relationship between attribute and stereotype. He also distinguishes various strategies of what he calls “stigma management,” which demands from the stigmatized person the cultivation

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of distance from oneself—which de facto means looking at oneself from the perspective of the normals. In effect, in addition to taking care of oneself, this constellation imposes on the stigmatized individuals the duty of caring for the normals: Slights, snubs, and untactful remarks should not be answered in kind. [. . .] When the stigmatized person finds that normals have difficulty in ignoring his failing, he should try to help them and the social situation by conscious efforts to reduce the tension. In these circumstances the stigmatized individual may, for example, attempt to “break the ice,” explicitly referring to his failing in a way that shows he is detached, able to take his condition in stride. In addition to matter-of-factness, levity is also recommended.102103

Apart from sense of humor, cultural constructs such as tact and good manners play important roles in stigma management. They result in restraining oneself: It depends upon normals not being pressed to the point at which they can easily extend acceptance—or, at worst, uneasily extend it. The stigmatized are tactfully expected to be gentlemanly and not to press their luck; they should not test the limits of the acceptance shown to them, nor make it the basis for still further demands. [. . .] The nature of a “good adjustment” is now apparent. It requires that the stigmatized individual cheerfully and unselfconsciously accepts himself as essentially the same as normals, while at the same time he voluntarily withholds himself from those situations in which normals would find it difficult to give lip service to their similar acceptance of him. [. . .] A phantom acceptance is thus allowed to provide the base for a phantom normalcy.104

This code of conduct, which obligates the bearer of the stigma to protect the normals, is only an outward reversal of roles and is, therefore, an illusion disguising the fact that the stigma-bearer is trapped. It is—as are all other guidelines for being accepted—“inspired by the normals.”105 At stake is conservation of the status quo established by the normals; the code implies that they can remain “relatively unthreatened in their identity beliefs.”106 One method of stigma management is minstrelization: when the stigmatized person acts out before normals the very set of stereotypical features ascribed to that person’s kind, thereby “consolidating a life situation into a clownish role”: [T]he cripple must be careful not to act differently from what people expect him to do. [. . .] [T]hey will become suspicious and insecure if the cripple falls short

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of these expectations. It is rather strange, but the cripple has to play the part of the cripple, just as many women have to be what the men expect them to be, just women; and the Negroes often have to act like clowns in front of the “superior” white race, so that the white man shall not be frightened by his black brother.107

“Minstrelization” is a term that Goffman adopts from Anatole Broyard’s article on how prejudice distorts the victim’s personality.108 It is “a conscious effort at fully playing the role [. . .], sometimes termed ‘impersonation.’”109 Władysław Szlengel expressed this in 1939 in the language of poetry, as follows: For your grace, Sirs— For your superiority and pride— We wear masks the whole year and poor, clownish costumes110

To play one’s role does not preclude the disclosure of the historically constructed norm and the societal ritual it generates—under the condition that all of this takes place within the spheres of humor and entertainment, thanks to which it remains both unpunished and non-binding. The order is not disturbed. Goffman calls this “sad pleasure” and points out that “this kind of joking by the stigmatized does not so much demonstrate some kind of chronic distance the individual has from himself as it demonstrates the more important fact that a stigmatized person is first of all like anyone else, trained first of all in others’ views of persons like himself.”111 The conceptualization of the so-called Jewish condition often takes place by means of referring to the figure of the court jester, village madman, circus clown, or cabaret artist. This is the case with the aforementioned poems Cyrk (The Circus) and Maska Purymowa (Purim Mask) by Szlengel, as well as the film Train de vie (Train of Life) by Mihăileanu. Those messages were issued in the sphere of entertainment (cabaret and filmic comedy, respectively). Pierre Birnbaum writes of Jews as jesters of the least popular or completely lost causes.112 In Christian Europe, within the category of stigmatized persons, there appeared “people who were at the very bottom of the societal hierarchy or occupying ambivalent positions, situated between categories. These included jesters, acrobats, minstrels, and vagrants.”113 In the Middle Ages, the Jewish stigma was doubled; Jews were additionally stigmatized by means of a harlequin dress. Both Szlengel and Mihăileanu tried to describe the situation of people playing the role of jesters and acrobats, if not people playing the role of jesters and acrobats playing the role of jesters and acrobats114—artists in residence offered permanently temporary accommodation on a disinfectant mat.

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Sense of humor is a serious matter. The lack thereof, even if only temporary, puts the stigmatized in danger. This becomes apparent in Etgar Keret’s description of the narrowest house in the world: On a picture it looks a bit as if history did not leave a place for a house, but it nevertheless pushed itself in forcefully, saying: there was once a family that lived in this area, they no longer live here, but everybody who passes by, will have to agree to it, will have to look at my slim body, crammed within.115

“Pushing itself in forcefully.” “A body crammed within and crammed into the space.” Not good. However, in the bog of reality, a lifeboat of bombastic universalization floats around: The ultimate guilty party for this tragedy is history—unspecified and impersonal. As Marek Edelman used to say when it came to not making insults in public: “[The Jews] died from the hands of these and others, we will not speak about this in detail.”116 Meticulousness does not make sense because the double nelson to which the Polish culture subjected the “Jewish writer with a sense of humor” works properly. I use the term “double nelson” here in order to indicate the double lack of room for maneuver—both literal (with regard to the body) and figurative (with regard to the mind). Inasmuch as the writer’s body is “crammed within and crammed into the space,” his mind issues communiqués that are in agreement with the dominant sociocultural norm. “The Jewish writer with a sense of humor” works hard to repay the hospitality experienced in Poland: Well, admittedly, this house is really not too spacious, supposedly the narrowest in the world, but always a house. And I am moved, because my family did not have a house in Warsaw for more than 70 years.117 Great. No claustrophobia, perhaps a bit like in a submarine [. . .]. I did not feel like a writer but like a politician or a guy who won Big Brother, a celebrity. TV stations from Japan and Canada, Americans from the New York Times, Germans, French and Poles—all of them simply wanted to see me in this house. A happening: how can one live in something like that. However, this is not only about the narrowest house in the world and a happening of the sort of the Guinness world record. Neither is it about me. What is important is to attract the finest artists of the world to Warsaw, because Poland and Warsaw can have the greatest as their guests. Murakami, Tom Waits, simply everyone.118

The Le Corbusier house was a machine for living in; “the house that crams one in” is akin to a torture machine—understood as a machine for the

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production of a narrative in the field of jurisdiction. Physical torture, though spectacular, was neither the goal nor the purpose of the installation. Its goal and purpose were the production of “truth.” The owner of the means of production determines the content and the form of “truth”—namely, the parameters of the final product. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir explains this mechanism in her text Ganz Andere? Żyd jako czarownica i czarownica jako Żyd . . . (Ganz Andere? Jew as Witch and Witch as Jew . . .), which is based on a comparative analysis of testimonies produced in the so-called witch trials and trials for alleged ritual murder. The author demonstrates the production of truth by using an example taken from the work Endingen Judenspiel (1883). The fragment analyzed by Tokarska-Bakir is taken from a record of interrogation of an adherent of Judaism named Merckly, who in 1462 was accused of having murdered a Christian family: Merckly, while subjected to torture, groped for the right answer to the questions that were put to him. “At first he declared—we are reading—that the Jews need Christian blood for medical purposes because it is exceptionally beneficial. However, this answer did not satisfy us and we replied to him by saying that he is lying . . . to which he replied that it is necessary against leprosy. In view of that we asked: ‘Why is your son a leper?’; we did not accept his answer. To that the Jew Merckly further testified that Jews need Christian blood in view of its fragrance because they smell terribly themselves. This answer, we did not accept either.” Only the answer “Jews need Christian blood for the crisam [the term crisam used here is a specific Christian name for a Christian holy oil—J. T.-B.] during circumcision,” satisfied the inquisitors. All three answers—the first about blood as antidote for leprosy, the second about the substance getting rid of the foetor judaicus and the third about crisam are obvious Christian prejudices; the specific Christian vocabulary used by the Jew engaged in self-accusation, is also a testament to these prejudices.119

Technically, a torture machine is a machine for the (re)production of a given narrative pattern. It is difficult not to think about this sphere of connotation concerning the narrowest house in the world when its “ambassador and tenant” proclaims: “The most important thing is that I finally return to Poland—not as a tourist but home.”120 This sounds like the testimony of a Crown-witness of Polish self-defense in the trial of Poland and Poles before the highest tribunal of The New York Times. “The house that crams one within” squeezed out testimony from a body subjected to pressure in order to deliver King’s evidence confirming Polish innocence: regina probationis. That’s enough on the subject of “a Jewish writer with a sense of humor.”

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EMERGENCY PROCEDURE What about a “Jewish writer without a sense of humor?” (If this is a “Jewish writer” at all! Just between us.) Such Ida Fink, for example. In her short story Schron (The Shelter), we find a description of a visit by two survivors to a family who built a new house with the money the survivors had paid it for hiding them. The “hosts” show the “guests” around the building: We began in the kitchen, then we went into the living room, the bedroom, and another room for the son who had returned from the army. We thought they had shown us everything, but then they said, “And we kept you in mind, too. Here, take a look!” The husband pushed aside a wardrobe and I looked—a white, blank wall. But when he went down and touched the floor, I grabbed Olek’s hand. I didn’t see anything yet, but the gesture was familiar. He lifted a red, waxed board and told us to look closely. “There, now, just in case something happens, you won’t have to roost like chickens, a shelter as pretty as a picture, with all the comforts!” I leaned over and saw stairs leading down into a small, dark room, without any windows or doors. It had two beds, two chairs, and a table.121

Anna Zawadzka wrote about the shelter in Fink’s text that although it serves as a hiding-place it reveals “among other things what was removed from the hagiographic narration about the ‘Righteous’ by succeeding versions of the politics of memory” and that it is an “image of ‘a place for Jews’ in the Polish world—as well as the Polish world which lives in the belief of its own magnanimity.”122 The shelter testifies to sociocultural obviousness. How do the laureates of the shelter respond? They are shocked and shaken. The man says: “[I]t was as if I were kneeling above my own grave. . . . Horrible. . . .” The woman cries. “They were hurrying towards the exit, and their quick nervous steps gave the impression of flight.”123 Complete lack of humor. No distance. A total disaster. The archetypal “Jewish ingratitude.” The cranny on Żelazna Street is not suitable for a “Jewish writer without a sense of humor,” as such a writer may then start talking. He might say, for instance, that he is a Polish writer and a Mazovian Jew, and that a Pole killed his father while other Poles—indeed, the entire village—handed his oneand-a-half-year-old little brother over to be killed. (Yes, I am talking about Henryk Grynberg.) Such a writer might note how, out of a dozen or more family members and acquaintances who were hiding in a hole in the forest by Radoszyna, near Mińsk Mazowiecki, not one survived. Such a writer would never utter the formula: “Anti-Semitism never touched me personally”— even though anti-Semitism did not touch him personally. Isn’t he still alive?!

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“A Jewish writer without a sense of humor” may say, at best, that the production at Żelazna Street “is a complete misunderstanding because its assumptions, complications, and conclusions are non-authentic and defend a lost cause. They do this so skillfully, in fact, that Jews born later [i.e. after ’45] will applaud at the end.” After that, our humorless writer is apt to add: “I am too old for this and too much of a Pole who sees this kind of Polish production through and through.”124 One should, however, offer our writer something in the neighborhood. Baptismal costumes are out of the question. The pawnshops? Equally so. The symbolic reconstruction of the footbridge over Chłodna Street and the klezmer music that surrounds it will only upset such a person, who would start grumbling right away about klezmerization (Henryk Grynberg’s term).125 Maybe one of the apartments in the house at 20 Chłodna Street will do? The elegant apartment at the front of the building, in which, during the occupation, the chairman of the Jewish Council (Judenrat) resided; or the one in which the commandant of the Jewish Order Service (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) lived and died? No. Our writer would certainly not appreciate that. The same goes for the crucifix in front of the entrance, as well as the whole square named after priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, with the patriotic obelisk. The figure of Our Lady of Grace? Not necessarily. The Roman-Catholic Church dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo? “Not particularly.” The figure of the Catholic saint, the slaughterer and Jew-eater John of Capistrano? Don’t even go there. The Square of the Siberians (Skwer Sybiraków)? Again, we are handing out our heart only to see a clenched fist in return. Replacing “a Jewish writer with a sense of humor” with “a Jewish writer without a sense of humor” reveals the configuration of power and the stakes involved in the “enterprise on a global scale,” as Keret House was crowned by the press. The machine that (re)produces the majority narrative is first jammed, then disintegrates. The narcissistic self-staging and self-contemplation of the dominant group is no longer possible. However, one will not permit this to happen that somebody’s lack of sense of humor ruined the sociocultural obviousness by demonstrating that it is not obviousness at all, but instead a historical construction full of violence. What else, then, do we have here? Here it is, in the backyard between Ogrodowa Street and Solidarności Street! A space rocket created out of a fountain—or the other way around. It somewhat resembles Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Pojazd dla bezdomnych (Vehicle for the Homeless), only it is arranged vertically, so in a way which is unambiguously optimistic and promethean. Right behind it, there is a mural that was created by Adam Jastrzębski, who uses the artistic pseudonym Adam X. It was painted in 2005, in a backyard at the corner of John Paul II and Solidarności Streets (entrance from 4

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Ogrodowa Street or 25 Jana Pawła II Street). As the artist said in an interview for Puszka Foundation, The work was directly inspired by this concrete place, a tin rocket found in the backyard. . . . I decided to reconnect this rocket with its aesthetic context, which disappeared over the years. The rocket as a decorative element of the backyard is linked to the People’s Republic of Poland propaganda of the conquest of space, which was of course only a modest offshoot of the Soviets’ policy of cosmic success. [. . .] I created a backyard scenography by reconstructing next to the rocket a fragment of those visions, notions and aspirations, rather naïve and childlike in kind, because only in their childlike backyard fantasies could Poles finally play their part in the conquest of space.126

At the same time, the project refers to the context of the year 2005: the electoral victory of the party Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość), the expansion of the ideas of the Fourth Republic of Poland and the climate of “awakening nationalist emotions, right-wing aspirations of building a new Poland and new Poles.”127 The immediate vicinity of the Courts—formerly Courts at Leszno Street— ruins the effect somewhat, because it recalls the history of the building during the occupation. The edifice, placed at the border of the ghetto and the “Aryan side,” had entrances on both sides and was not guarded by Germans. The “Aryan side” of this building was where the Polish hunt for the Jews took place, as those who tried to escape through there were pursued. (Some of these escape attempts proved successful, though it is impossible to know exactly what percentage of them did so.) But back to the point. The rocket is evidently waiting, ready to cover the Earth-Mars route. The panoramic mural in the background leaves no doubt whatsoever about this. As we read on the Internet, it is a “mural presenting a white-and-red (as the Polish flag) Martian landscape against a black star-studded sky.”128 The Red Planet that has been painted on it appears so close that one feels as if one could just reach out and touch it. The material collected in the issue of the Jewish quarterly of literature and art Cwiszn (Jewish humor and the like) precisely reconstructs the difference between Jewish humor and szmonces. In addition to that, Jicchok Niborski mentions “a very self-ironical humor, so much so that in translations into other languages has acquired an anti-Semitic character.”129 For translation means placing a statement within a different sociocultural a context which in this case is characterized by specific violence proper to the relations of domination and submission. This context seizes the original meaning of the message, as happens for example in the Polish translation of the below globe story. With the “Jewish writer with a sense of humor” in mind, the architect of the narrowest house in the world said: “I liked the idea that such an alien

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lands in this Wola district and is scanned into something as thin as a sheet of paper.”130 “A Jewish writer without a sense of humor” would not consent to be scanned into anything. But it is not such a great leap from an alien to an astronaut. We will therefore proceed as in a famous joke, considered extremely funny in a Poland without Jews. A Jew goes to a bookshop and examines a globe to figure out where to best escape to from . . . let’s say Poland. He looks and looks. Finally, he asks the shop assistant if they have another globe. At this point, one has to laugh because this joke is considered extremely funny. Much funnier than, for example, the sketches from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, in which Mister Hilter [sic] and Mister McGoebbels converse with each other. Well, we will offer him a different globe, then. An application will be submitted to the city or to the state for financing a single ticket for a one-way trip within the framework of the “Polish-Jewish rapprochement.” Didn’t he say himself that he was a Pole and a Jew? May they now approach one another by means of “a Polish-Jewish monologue.”131 We have, then, the set “the Jews” or “the Jew” and the subset “Jewish writer without a sense of humor.” All that remains to be done is to choose an example from the category of interest to us. Everything else is already in place. A picture of a “Jewish writer without a sense of humor” against a Martian landscape can already be seen on the mural. A first name as much Old Testament as universal was designed for him, after the first man on Earth. Passers-by are informed that this is: “Adam X—first Pole on Mars.” In a nutshell, our man in space. Us coming out on top. This will be the event on a truly global scale (on more than one globe, in fact!). We will outdo intercontinental advertising with an unprecedented interplanetary promotion. One of the sponsors of the narrowest house in the world, Piotr Nowicki, the director of the Polish Modern Art Foundation (Fundacja Polskiej Sztuki Nowoczesnej), offered praise for the project in the first-person plural: “Finally, we are speaking the language of the young. And [. . .] Poland will not be perceived solely as that country on whose territory the Holocaust was committed.”132 For not only in the undertaking described above but also in the whole Polish dominant narrative about the Holocaust, the image of Poland and the Poles takes center stage. As the election campaign slogan of the party Law and Justice from the year 2010 reads: “Poland is what’s most important.” CONCLUDING REMARKS “The narrowest house in the world”—the Keret House—is an image campaign paradoxical and counterproductive in kind. It exposes everything it was intended to camouflage. It confirms everything it was supposed to negate. Against the creators’ own intentions, it proves that the problem with Polish collective

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self-image has as its source not an unfair stereotype, but facts. The way the object has been received demonstrates an essential concurrence of feelings on the part of the spectators, who in other respects are separated by the barriers of a self-declared worldview and material status. However, these spectators are participants within the same culture. In other words, the patterns characteristic of the dominant majority culture in Poland—collectivistic-hierarchical in kind—are also reproduced by the group declaring itself open, egalitarian, non-collectivistic, and against violence and exclusion—particularly anti-Semitic violence and exclusion. This allows us to comprehend the category “we” as denoting the participants’ culture. Its patterns are passed on from generation to generation (temporal continuum) and are realized from the bottom to the top of the societal spectrum (class continuum). Only by means of such a reading can we make sense of constantly repeated, ritualized, logically absurd phrases, such as “In 1410, we won the First Battle of Tannenberg” or the one mentioned in the introduction to this chapter: “What will they say about us abroad?” The power of cultural patterns is based, to a great extent, on the fact that they remain at once unidentified and transparent, constituting a sociocultural obviousness. Only through problematizing and reflecting upon them can we deprive them of the status as givens, thereby enabling us to meaningfully confront them. The concern for self-image is bound up with an arsenal of terms such as reputation, pride, honor, and dignity. This much is obvious. Less so is the observation that these categories are attributes of the so-called cultural nobility.133,134 As such, they only have meaning when their use indicates privilege, which the dominant group denies others in a gesture of exclusion. By virtue of their very construction, they then constitute instruments of symbolic violence; they are cogs in the wheel of the machine for producing exclusion. In the view of the exclusionist majority, Jews neither lived nor died with dignity. Insights into the Polish language do not leave any doubts about that whatsoever. The cliché of the insurgents of the Warsaw ghetto uprising fighting for an “honorable death” and the cliché of Jews deported to their death “like lambs to the slaughter” do not apply to non-Jews. The attachment of the label “cattle” to the victims of the Katyń massacre or the Warsaw citizens expelled from the city by the German occupiers after the defeat of the Warsaw uprising in 1944 is impossible to imagine—let alone practice— within Polish majority culture. Equally unimaginable is the notion that the death of the Polish civilian population during the aforementioned uprising and under other circumstances might be considered “dishonorable.” I am deeply convinced that dignity, as a category of cultural nobility, preserved its characteristic features of exclusion until the very end. The “fight for

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an honorable death” undertaken by Jews was not effective in bringing about their actual equality, even if the whole process ended with a death considered correct from the point of view of the exclusionist culture. The following inscription was placed on the grave of Berek Joselewicz, commander of a Jewish military unit in the 1794 Polish Kościuszko uprising and a Napoleonic soldier awarded both the Polish Virtuti Military Cross and the French Legion of Honor: “Not by liquor nor by tricker, but by his blood did he earn fame.”135 The colonel’s epitaph is a triple compulsive negation of what is perceived by the dominant majority as Jewishness. The praising of Joselewicz refers to the anti-Semitic image of Jews driving Christians to alcoholism, cheating them through money-lending, and avoiding military service because of disloyalty and cowardice. As a result, it confirms and puts to the forefront these very notions of Jewishness—establishing Jewishness as a compromising phenomenon and an obscene J-word. In 1830, Joselewicz’s soldiers, tested in battle, were not received into the ranks of the November insurgents. In 1943, Maria Kann—an activist of Żegota, a Righteous among the Nations—looked at the Warsaw ghetto in flames and wrote: “The cases when Jews spilled blood for the country that received them, were exceptions. Bereks Joselewiczs were few and far between.”136 During the Holocaust, the paradigm is completed and achieves homeostasis. Within the Polish narrative, the Warsaw ghetto uprising fighters have the status of an oxymoron. Alike to Berek Joselewicz, they are perceived as an exception confirming the rule. For the Jews who were (still) alive, their “fight for an honorable death” remained without inclusivist results. Thus, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) did not respond to the request for maps of the sewage system and hiding places on the “Aryan side” on the part of Mordechai Anielewicz and the supreme command of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB). The AK also displayed no interest in establishing a Jewish unit within its ranks in the period between the Warsaw ghetto uprising (1943) and the later Warsaw uprising (1944)—a goal for which Icchak Cukierman, the last commander of the ŻOB, persistently strove. The ŻOB fighters who established themselves as the partisans were regularly murdered by the Polish underground fighting for independence. In the end, during the Warsaw uprising (1944), the male and female soldiers of the ŻOB— threatened with death on the part of the Polish AK soldiers—joined ranks with the Communists in the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, AL). Despite occasional exceptions for some individuals, the aforementioned mechanism of exclusion manifested itself with regard to Jews who were not members of the ŻOB as well as with regard to other resistance formations. On the one hand, we have Jews who gave testimony of the so-called combative

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bravery in a way so as not to raise doubts among the Polish jurors; on the other, we have Poles representing Polishness in the most legitimate sense (something that cannot be said about the Communist underground). The honor-dignity paradigm is not subordinated to the principle of “where there is a will, there is a way.” For the overriding principle to this paradigm is anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism organizes the field, as defined by Bourdieu, in which the analyzed categories (dignity, etc.) function; it is to this principle that the latter are subordinated. On the gate to the kingdom of dignity and honor, the following formula, reconstructed by Dariusz Libionka on the basis of source analysis, is visible: “Bereks Joselewiczs, goodbye and good luck.”137 For those who are less sharp-witted, one could add underneath: “A good Anielewicz is a dead Anielewicz.” The dynamic of the Polish fixation on the community’s image resembles expending energy while in neutral gear. If the community sees a satisfying image of itself in the mirror of the foreign beholder, it regards this as both a success and an indicator that there is no reason for concern. If reality deviates from the idealized image, too bad for reality. No harm brought about, no suffering inflicted by the community is capable of disturbing its smug complacency—as long as such harm and such suffering remain undisclosed to the external authority figure. This raises the question of the necessary conditions for breaking the vicious circle and interrupting the reproduction of the oppressive patterns of Polish culture. It is a question of bringing about a paradigmatic, emancipatory change. One factor standing in the way is the concern for the individual and collective self-image. This concern upholds the status of sociocultural obviousness, as one of the culture’s main preoccupations. The status quo will remain unthreatened as long as keeping up appearances is valued above making a stand against the mechanisms of exclusion and violence, and also—in the context of the above analyzed anti-Semitic heritage of Polish majority culture—against murder. Translated from the Polish by Katrin Stoll (with Michael C. Fitzpatrick) NOTES 1. Anka Grupińska, Włodzimierz Filipek, “Co było znaczące w getcie? Nic! Nic! Nie mówcie bzdur!” [What was meaningful in the ghetto? Nothing! Nothing! Stop talking nonsense!], in Anka Grupińska, Ciągle po kole. Rozmowy z żołnierzami getta warszawskiego [Still around the circle. Conversations with Warsaw ghetto soldiers], foreword Paweł Szapiro, (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Książkowe “Twój Styl,” 2000), 30. 2. Piotr Forecki, Od “Shoah” do “Strachu.” Spory o polsko-żydowską przeszłość i pamięć w debatach publicznych [From “Shoah” to “Fear.” Controversies

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over the Polish-Jewish past and memory in public debates] (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 2010). 3. Andrzej Walicki, “Dzieje antykomunistycznej obsesji” [History of the antiCommunist obsession], in Od projektu komunistycznego do neoliberalnej utopii [From the Communist project to the neoliberal utopia] (Kraków: Universitas & Polska Akademia Nauk, 2013), 203. 4. Alina Cała, Żyd-wróg odwieczny. Antysemityzm w Polsce i jego źródła [The Jew—a perennial enemy. Antisemitism in Poland and its sources] (Warszawa: Nisza, 2012), 316. 5. Jan Tomasz Gross, “Poduszka Pani Marx” [Mrs. Marx’ pillow], in Wokół “Sąsiadów.” Polemiki i wyjaśnienia [About “Neighbors.” Polemics and explanations] (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2003), 20–21. 6. Janusz Tazbir, Protokoły mędrców Syjonu. Autentyk czy falsyfikat? [Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The genuine article or a fake?] (Warszawa: Iskry, 2004). 7. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Klucze do domu Kereta” [Keys to Keret’s House], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, October 15, 2012, 1. 8. Statement by Jakub Szczęsny, cited in: Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem w minidomu” [Keret with Sultan in mini-house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, October 20–21, 2012, 4. 9. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Klucze do domu Kereta” [Keys to Keret’s House], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 1. 10. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Warszawa. Dom, który ściska” [Warsaw. A house that squeezes], Gazeta Wyborcza, October 19, 2012, 27. 11. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Architekt z pisarzem o najwęższym domu świata” [Architect and writer on the narrowest house in the world], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, October 20–21, 2012, 1. 12. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Warszawa. Dom, który ściska” [Warsaw. A house that squeezes], Gazeta Wyborcza, 27. 13. Etgar Keret (text), Rutu Modan (illustrations) Dad runs away with the circus (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2004). 14. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem w minidomu” [Keret with Sultan in mini-house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 4. 15. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Klucze do domu Kereta“ [Keys to Keret House], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 1. 16. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Warszawa. Dom, który ściska” [Warsaw. A house that squeezes], Gazeta Wyborcza, 27. 17. Ibid. 18. Jakub Szczęsny, The Logic, http:​/​/cen​​trala​​.net.​​pl​/fi​​les​/i​​mage/​​2400X​​400​/K​​ER​ -Ke​​ret​-H​​ouse-​​The​-L​​ogic-​​Jakub​​-​Szcz​​esny_​​1687.​​jpg. Accessed December 10, 2013. 19. Adina Blady-Szwajger, I remember nothing more. The Warsaw children’s hospital and the Jewish resistance, trans. Tasja Darowska and Danusia Stok (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 47. 20. Translator’s note. A translation from the Polish, closer to the original, reads as follows: “He was the kind of gendarme who entertained himself by shooting at children, as if at sparrows. When these children returned from begging through the

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hole in the wall to the ghetto, creeping in one after another, Frankenstein would wait until a few got though—four to five ‘pieces,’ one behind another in one line—and then he would shoot, and with this one shot he finished off all of them.” 21. Krzysztof Wodiczko, Pojazd dla bezdomnych, www​.fundacjaprofile​.pl​/tree​ .php​?id​=238. Accessed August 21, 2014. 22. Robert S. Wistrich, “Once Again: Anti-Semitism Without Jews,” Commentary no. 2 (1992): 49. 23. Elżbieta Janicka, “Instead of Negationism. The Symbolic Topography of the Former Warsaw Ghetto’s vis-à-vis Holocaust Narratives,” Holocaust. Studies and Materials 4 (2017): 212–61, doi: 10.32927/zzsim.717, https​:/​/za​​glada​​zydow​​.pl​/i​​ndex.​​ php​/z​​z​/art​​icle/​​downl​​oad​/7​​​17​/67​​6​/129​​9. 24. Erving Goffman, Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York; London; Toronto: Simon & Schuster Inc, 1986), 53. 25. Agnieszka Kowalska, “Odwiedź Kereta“ [Go visit Keret], Gazeta Wyborcza, Co jest grane, October 19–25, 2012, 28. 26. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, Anna Czuba, “Kogo bierze zabawa w ‘naj’” [Who is taken by the “most” game], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, October 16, 2012, 2. 27. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Klucze do domu Kereta” [Keys to Keret’s house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 1. 28. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Warszawa. Dom, który ściska” [Warsaw. A house that squeezes], Gazeta Wyborcza, 27. 29. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Klucze do domu Kereta” [Keys to Keret’s house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 1. 30. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem w mini domu” [Keret with Sultan in mini-house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 4. 31. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Klucze do domu Kereta” [Keys to Keret’s house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 1. 32. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Ermitaż nieopodal trzepaka” [A hermitage next to the carpet hanger], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, September 8–9, 2012, 2. 33. Friedrich Katzmann, Rozwiązanie kwestii żydowskiej w dystrykcie Galicja. Lösung der Judenfrage im Distrikt Galizien [Solution of the Jewish question in Galicia district], ed. Andrzej Żbikowski, trans. Jolanta Pawłowska (Warszawa: IPN, 2001), 50. 34. Ibid., 27–53—pagination according to the facsimile of the document. 35. Emanuel Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War, ed. Joseph Kermish and Shmuel Krakowski (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992), 136. 36. Barbara Engelking, Jest taki piękny słoneczny dzień. Losy Żydów szukających ratunku na wsi polskiej 1942-1945 [Such a Beautiful Sunny Day: Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish Countryside, 1942-1945] (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, 2011), 25. 37. Ibid., 132. 38. Ibid. 39. Tadeusz Markiel, Alina Skibińska, “Jakie to ma znaczenie, czy zrobili to z chciwości?.” Zagłada domu Trynczerów [“What does it matter if they did it out

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of greed?” Destruction of Trynczers’ house] (Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, 2011), 88. 40. Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews. Betrayal and murder in German-occupied Poland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 172. 41. Dzieje Żydów w Polsce 1944-1968. Teksty źródłowe [History of Jews in Poland 1944-1968. Sources], ed. Alina Cała and Helena Datner-Śpiewak (Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1997), 166. 42. Barbara Engelking, Jest taki piękny słoneczny dzień, 132. 43. Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski, “‘Ci nie są z ojczyzny naszej’” [”Those are not from our Homeland”], Gazeta Wyborcza, October 29–30, 2011, 20–21. 44. Aleksander Smolar, “Tabu i niewinność” [Taboo and innocence], in Tabu i niewinność [Taboo and innocence], ed. Mikołaj Lipiński and Helena Łuczywo (Kraków: Universitas, 2010), 223. 45. Marcin Zaremba, “Biedni Polacy na żniwach” [Poor Poles at the harvest], Gazeta Wyborcza, January 15–16, 2011, 22. 46. Marta Cobel-Tokarska, Bezludna wyspa, nora, grób. Wojenne kryjówki Żydów w okupowanej Polsce [A desert island, a den, a grave. Wartime hideouts of Jews in occupied Poland] (Warszawa: IPN, 2012). 47. Elżbieta Janicka, “Mord rytualny z aryjskiego paragrafu. O książce Jana Tomasza Grossa ‘Strach. Antysemityzm w Polsce po wojnie. Historia moralnej zapaści’” [Ritual murder under the Aryan paragraph. On Jan Gross’ book “Fear: Antisemitism in Poland after Auschwitz”], in Kultura i Społeczeństwo no. 52(2) (2008): 229–52. 48. Marta Cobel-Tokarska, Bezludna wyspa, nora, grób [A desert island, a den, a grave], 123–24. 49. Words by Jadwiga Mach from Basznia Dolna—http:​/​/www​​.zydz​​i​.lub​​aczow​​ .pl​/i​​ndex.​​php​?k​​at​=ws​​pomn​i​​enia&​​id​=3. 50. Marta Cobel-Tokarska, Bezludna wyspa, nora, grób [A desert island, a den, a grave], 149. 51. Ibid., 151. 52. Ibid., 151–52. 53. Ibid., 152. 54. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem w mini domu“ [Keret with Sultan in mini-house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 4. 55. “Czy Keret uciekł do Warszawy?” Z Etgarem Keretem rozmawia Paweł Smoleński [Did Keret escape to Warsaw? Paweł Smoleński talks to Etgar Keret], Gazeta Wyborcza, October 31–November 1, 2012, 16. 56. Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish. The birth of the prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, New York, 1979). 57. Erving Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959). 58. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Klucze do domu Kereta” [Keys to Keret’s house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 1. 59. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Warszawa. Dom, który ściska” [Warsaw. A house that squeezes], Gazeta Wyborcza, 27.

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60. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem w mini domu” [Keret with Sultan in minihouse], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 4. 61. Paweł Smoleński, “Buty Taty” [Dad’s shoes], Gazeta Wyborcza, July 21–22, 2012, 25. 62. Ibid., 24. 63. “Trzy kobiety.” Z Etgarem Keretem rozmawia Paweł Smoleński [Three women. Paweł Smoleński talks to Etgar Keret], Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, July 24, 2010, 46. 64. Calek Perechodnik, Spowiedź. Dzieje rodziny żydowskiej podczas okupacji hitlerowskiej w Polsce [Confession. A History of a Jewish family during Nazi occupation in Poland], ed. David Engel (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ośrodek Karta, 2004), 125. Inexistent in: Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer? 65. Jan Grabowski, “Ratowanie Żydów za pieniądze—przemysł pomocy” [Rescuing Jews for money—the help industry], Zagłada Żydów no. 4 (2008): 106. 66. Jan Grabowski, Rescue for Money. Paid Helpers in Poland, 1939-1945 (Search and Research, Lectures and Papers, 13) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2008). 67. Jan Grabowski, “Ratowanie Żydów za pieniądze—przemysł pomocy” [Rescuing Jews for money—the help industry], Zagłada Żydów, 103. 68. Paweł Smoleński, “Buty Taty” [Dad’s shoes], Gazeta Wyborcza, 24. 69. “Trzy kobiety.” Z Etgarem Keretem rozmawia Paweł Smoleński [Three women. Paweł Smoleński talks to Etgar Keret], Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, 42. 70. Ibid. 71. Etgar Keret, “Keret. Polski pisarz na wygnaniu” [Keret. A Polish writer in exile], trans. Agnieszka Maciejowska, Gazeta Wyborcza, October 19, 2012, 27. 72. Paweł Smoleński, “Buty Taty” [Dad’s shoes], Gazeta Wyborcza, 25. 73. “Trzy kobiety” [Three women], Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, 44. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Hugh Davies and Jonathan Petre, “‘It is as it was’—Pope’s verdict on Christ film,” The Telegraph, December 19, 2003, http:​/​/www​​.tele​​graph​​.co​.u​​k​/new​​s​/wor​​ldnew​​s​/ eur​​ope​/i​​taly/​​14498​​77​/It​​-is​-a​​s​-it-​​was​-P​​opesv​​erdic​​​t​-on-​​Chris​​t​-fil​​m​.htm​​l. 77. Goffman, Stigma, 112. 78. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Żydzi u Kolberga” [Jews in Kolberg’s Works], in Rzeczy mgliste. Eseje i studia [Foggy matters. Essays and studies] (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2004), 66. 79. Agnieszka Jagodzińska, Pomiędzy. Akulturacja Żydów Warszawy w drugiej połowie XIX wieku [In-between. Acculturation of Warsaw Jews in the second half of the nineteenth century] (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2008). 80. Helena Datner, Ta i tamta strona. Żydowska inteligencja Warszawy drugiej połowy XIX wiek [This and that side. The Jewish intelligentsia of Warsaw in the second half of the ninetieth century] (Warszawa: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2007). 81. Anna Landau-Czajka, Syn będzie Lech . . . Asymilacja Żydów w Polsce międzywojennej [My son’s name shall be Lech . . . Assimilation of the Jews in interwar Poland] (Warszawa: Neriton & IH PAN, 2006).

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82. Władysław Szlengel, “Cyrk” [The circus], in Co czytałem umarłym. Wiersze getta warszawskiego [What I read to the dead. Warsaw ghetto poems], ed. Irena Maciejewska (Warszawa: PIW, 1977), 100–102. 83. Bożena Keff, “Way Down in the Mississippi Delta,” in On Mother and Fatherland, trans. Benjamin Paloff and Alissa Valles (Asheville: Mad Hat Press, 2017), 7. 84. mf, “Applebaum stara się o polskie obywatelstwo” [Applebaum applies for Polish citizenship], Przekrój no. 50 (2012): 14. 85. “Po lepszej stronie polskości.” Rozmowa Cezarego Michalskiego z Władysławem Bartoszewskim [On the better side of Polishness. Cezary Michalski talks to Władysław Bartoszewski], Wprost, December 16, 2012, 18–19. 86. Dorota Masłowska, Wojna polsko-ruska pod flagą biało-czerwoną [PolishRussian war under the white-red flag], illustrated by Maciej Sieńczyk (Warszawa: Lampa i Iskra Boża, 2005), 175. 87. Irena Grudzińska-Gross, “Podejrzane pochodzenie jako kategoria kultury polskiej” [Suspect origin as a category of Polish culture], in Honor, horror i klasycy. Eseje [Honor, horror and the classics. Essays], afterword Krzysztof Czyżewski (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2012), 163–85. 88. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Klucze do domu Kereta” [Keys to Keret’s house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 1. 89. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Warszawa. Dom, który ściska” [Warsaw. A house that squeezes], Gazeta Wyborcza, 27. 90. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem w minidomu” [Keret with Sultan in minihouse], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 4. 91. “Czy Keret uciekł do Warszawy?” Z Etgarem Keretem rozmawia Paweł Smoleński [Did Keret escape to Warsaw? Paweł Smoleński talks to Etgar Keret], Gazeta Wyborcza, 17. 92. Ibid. 93. Jan Błoński, “Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto” [Poor Poles look at the ghetto], [in:] Przeciw antysemityzmowi 1936-2009 [Against antisemitism 1936-2009], ed. Adam Michnik (Kraków: Universitas, 2010), 1087. 94. Tomasz Żukowski, “Savoir-vivre. Ironiczne strategie w ’Spowiedzi’ Calka Perechodnika” [Savoir-vivre. Ironic strategies in Calek Perechodnik’s “Confession”], Teksty Drugie no. 6 (2010): 38–55. 95. Katarzyna Groniec talks to Ornah and Efraim Keret in the film W poszukiwaniu utraconych lat [In search of the lost years] (2002), directed by Jan Sosiński, based on the screenplay by Piotr Pytlakowski and Michał Sobelman. 96. “Krótkotrwałe spełnienia.” Z Agatą Tuszyńską rozmawia Magdalena Grzebałkowska [Ephemeral fulfillments. Magdalena Grzebałkowska talks to Agata Tuszyńska], Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, December 15, 2012, 13. 97. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem w minidomu” [Keret with Sultan in minihouse], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 4. 98. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Warszawa. Dom, który ściska” [Warsaw. A house that squeezes], Gazeta Wyborcza, 27.

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99. Finding Lipski’s grave would not have been possible without the invaluable help from Tadeusz Woleński, a true master of interlinguistic navigation and intercultural translation. 100. Jan Błoński, “Autoportret żydowski, czyli o żydowskiej szkole w literaturze polskiej” [Jewish self-portrayal, or on the Jewish school in Polish literature], in Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto [Poor Poles look at the ghetto] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2008), 80. 101. “Trzy kobiety.” Z Etgarem Keretem rozmawia Paweł Smoleński [Three women. Paweł Smoleński talks to Etgar Keret], Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, 42. 102. Erving Goffman, Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York; London; Toronto: Simon & Schuster Inc, 1986), 116. 103. Goffman refers to John H. Burma’s article “Humor as a Technique in Race Conflict,” American Sociological Review no. 11 (1946): 710–15. 104. Goffman, Stigma, 121–22. Emphasis by the author. 105. Ibid., 119. 106. Ibid., 121. 107. Finn Carling, And Yet We Are Human (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), 54–55. 108. Anatole Broyard, “Portrait of the Inauthentic Negro. How Prejudice Distorts the Victim’s Personality,” Commentary no. 10 (1950): 59–60. 109. Goffman, Stigma, 110, Footnote 12. 110. “Z waszej, Panowie[,] łaski—/ dla waszej wyższości i dumy—/ nosimy rok cały maski / i nędzne, błazeńskie kostiumy . . .” (Władysław Szlengel, “Maska Purymowa” [Purim mask], in Władysław Szlengel—poeta nieznany. Wybór tekstów [Władysław Szlengel—poet unknown. Selected texts], ed. Magdalena Stańczuk (Warszawa: Bellona, 2013), 105–106). I thank Anna Zawadzka for drawing my attention to this poem. 111. Goffman, Stigma, 134. 112. Paul Zawadzki, “Polska” [Poland], in Historia antysemityzmu 1945–1993 [History of anti-Semitism 1945-1993], ed. Léon Poliakov, trans. Agnieszka RasińskaBóbr and Oskar Hedemann (Kraków: Universitas, 2010), 223. 113. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Et(n)ologia piętna. Wstęp do wydania polskiego” [Eth(n)ology of the stigma. Introduction to the Polish edition], in Erving Goffman, Piętno. Rozważania o zranionej tożsamości [Stigma. Notes on the management of spoiled identity], trans. Aleksandra Dzierżyńska and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir (Gdańsk: Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne, 2007), 16. 114. Henryk Grynberg, “Żyd, który udawał Polaka, który udawał Żyda . . .” [A Jew who simulated a Pole who simulated a Jew . . .], in Monolog polsko-żydowski [Polish-Jewish monologue] (Wołowiec: Czarne, 2012), 75–82. 115. Etgar Keret, “Keret. Polski pisarz na wygnaniu” [Keret. A Polish writer in exile], Gazeta Wyborcza, 27. 116. “Ludzkość, która zostaje . . . ‘Campo di Fiori’ po pięćdziesięciu latach.” Rozmowa Jana Błońskiego, Marka Edelmana, Czesława Miłosza i Jerzego Turowicza, która odbyła się w 50. rocznicę powstania w getcie warszawskim [Humanity that remains behind . . . “Campo di Fiori” fifty years later. A conversation between Jan Błoński,

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Marek Edelman, Czesław Miłosz and Jerzy Turowicz that took place on the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising], in Dialog poetów [Dialog of the poets], ed. Karolina Szymaniak and Anna Szyba (Warszawa: Fundacja Shalom, 2011), 39. 117. Etgar Keret, “Keret. Polski pisarz na wygnaniu” [Keret. A Polish writer in exile], Gazeta Wyborcza, 27. 118. “Czy Keret uciekł do Warszawy?” [Did Keret escape to Warsaw?], Gazeta Wyborcza, 16. 119. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Ganz Andere? Żyd jako czarownica i czarownica jako Żyd w polskich i obcych źródłach etnograficznych, czyli jak czytać protokoły przesłuchań” [Ganz Andere? The Jew as Witch and Witch as the Jew in Polish and foreign ethnographic sources or how to read investigation protocols], [in:] Inny, inna, inne. O inności w kulturze [Other (male), other (female), other (neutral). On otherness in culture], ed. Maria Janion, Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez, and Kazimiera Szczuka (Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, 2004), 131. 120. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem w minidomu” [Keret with Sultan in mini-house], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 4. 121. Ida Fink, “The Shelter,” in A Scrap of Time, trans. Madeline Levine & Francine Prose (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 133–34. 122. Anna Zawadzka, Dwa schrony [Two shelters], September 29, 2011, http:// lewica​.pl​/blog​/zawadzka​/25266. 123. Fink, “The Shelter,” 134. 124. Henryk Grynberg, “’Nasza klasa’ w Waszyngtonie” [“Our class” in Washington], Dwutygodnik no. 93 (2012): http:​/​/www​​.dwut​​ygodn​​ik​.co​​m​/art​​ykul/​​ 4058-​​nasza​​-klas​​a​-w​-w​​aszyn​​​gtoni​​e​.htm​​l. 125. Statement by Henryk Grynberg made during the discussion about Elżbieta Janicka’s book Festung Warschau at the Mojżesz Schorr Center (Centrum im. Mojżesza Schorra) during the XV Jewish Book Days (Dni Książki Żydowskiej), May 13, 2012 (recording available in the editor’s archive of the bimonthly Midrasz). 126. Julia Bachman, “Pierwszy Polak na Marsie. Warszawska Sztuka Publiczna” [First Pole on Mars. Warsaw Public Art], Puszka, 2010, accessed January, 2013, http:​ /​/pus​​zka​.w​​aw​.pl​​/pier​​wszy_​​polak​​_na​_m​​arsie​​-proj​​ekt​​-p​​l​-69.​​html. 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid. 129. “Autentyczny humor żydowski.” Z Jicchokiem Niborskim rozmawia Natalia Krynicka [Authentic Jewish humor. Natalia Krynicka talks to Jicchok Niborski], Cwiszn No. 1–2 (2013), 28. 130. Agnieszka Kowalska, “Odwiedź Kereta“ [Go visit Keret], Gazeta Wyborcza, Co jest grane, October 19, 2012, 28. 131. Monolog polsko-żydowski [Polish-Jewish Monologue] is the title of one of Henryk Grynberg’s books. 132. Dariusz Bartoszewicz, “Keret z Sułtanem” [Keret with Sułtan], Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta Stołeczna, 4. 133. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “‘Incognito ergo sum’. O wytwarzaniu obojętności” [“Incognito ergo sum.” Producing indifference], Studia Litteraria et Historica no. 2 (2013): 394–411.

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134. Pierre Bourdieu, A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, in Distinction. A social critique of the judgement of taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 11–96. 135. Maria Janion, “Bohater, spisek, śmierć” [Hero, conspiracy, death], in Honor, Bóg, Ojczyzna [Honor, God, Fatherland], ed. Maria Janion, Monika Rudaś-Grodzka, Agnieszka Zawadowska (Warszawa: Fundacja Odnawiania Znaczeń & Dom Spotkań z Historią, 2009), 73. 136. Maria Kann, Na oczach świata [Before the world’s eyes] (1943), in Tryptyk polsko-żydowski [Polish-Jewish triptych], ed. Władysław Bartoszewski (Warszawa: Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa, 2003), 75. 137. Dariusz Libionka, “Berkom Joselewiczom już dziękujemy. Refleksje na marginesie esejów Marii Janion” [Bereks Joselewiczs, goodbye and good luck. Reflections on the margins of Maria Janion’s essays], in Honor, Bóg, Ojczyzna [Honor, God, Fatherland], ed. Maria Janion, Monika Rudaś-Grodzka, Agnieszka Zawadowska (Warszawa: Fundacja Odnawiania Znaczeń & Dom Spotkań z Historią, 2009), 67–85.

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“Zrozumiałem, co Betlejewski chciał powiedzieć” [I realized what Betlejewski wanted to say]. Gazeta Wyborcza, July 12, 2010. Zubrzycki, Geneviève. The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in PostCommunist Poland. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 2009. Zubrzycki, Geneviève. “Nationalism, ‘Philosemitism,’ and Symbolic BoundaryMaking in Contemporary Poland.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 1 (January 2016): 66–98. DOI: https​:/​/do​​i​.org​​/10​.1​​017​/S​​00104​​17515​​​00057​​2. Żebrowski, Rafał. “Rewiry żydowskie” [Jewish territories]. In Polski Słownik Judaistyczny [Polish Judaic Dictionary], https://www.jhi.pl/psj/rewiry_zydowskie n.d., Accessed October 12, 2019. Żukowski, Tomasz. “Autowizerunek po katastrofie. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka i Jerzy Andrzejewski: dwa polskie świadectwa Zagłady z lat 40” [Self-image after a Catastrophe. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Jerzy Andrzejewski: Two Polish Testimonies of the Holocaust from the 1940s]. Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne 45, no. 25 (2015): 165–86. DOI: https://doi​.org​/10​.14746​/pspsl​.2015​.25​.7. Żukowski, Tomasz. “Mówić, nie mówiąc za wiele. O dyskusji w sprawie Jedwabnego” [Talking without saying too much. About discussion on the Jedwabne matter]. Bez Dogmatu 47 (zima 2001): 25–27. Żukowski, Tomasz. “Panu Bogu świeczkę i diabłu ogarek” [Having one face to God and another to the devil]. Midrasz 50, no. 6 (June 2001): 40–42. Żukowski, Tomasz. “Savoir-vivre: Ironic Strategies in Calek Perechodnik’s Confession.” Teksty Drugie, Special Issue, English Edition, no. 2 (2013): 166–81. http:​/​/tek​​stydr​​ugie.​​pl​/fi​​le​/fm​​/Issu​​es​/Te​​ksty_​​Drugi​​e​_201​​3​_s​.e​​.vol.​​2​_Hol​​ocaus​​t​_in_​​ Liter​​ary​_a​​n​d​_Cu​​ltura​​l​_Stu​​dies.​​pdf.

MOVIES QUOTED Dworzec Gdański [Gdański Railway Station], directed by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, screenplay Teresa Torańska, director of photography Rafał Parandowski, Andrzej Adamczyk, music Janusz Stokłosa, Studio Largo, Instytut Adam Mickiewicza, TVN, documentary, Poland 2007. A Film Unfinished, directed by Yael Hersonski, screenplay Yael Hersonski, director of photography Itai Ne’eman, music Yishai Adar, Oscilloscope Pictures, documentary, Germany, Israel 2010. Kolumbowie [Columbuses], episode 3: A jeśli będzie wiosna . . . [If the spring comes . . .], directed by Janusz Morgenstern, screenplay Roman Bratny, director of photography Tadeusz Wieżan, music Jerzy Matuszkiewicz, Zepsół Filmowy Iluzjon, series, Poland 1970. Konsul, directed by Mirosław Bork, screenplay Mirosław Bork, director of photography Julian Szczerkowski, music Zbigniew Karnecki, Zespół Filmowy Kadr, feature film, Poland 1989. Konsul i inni [Consul and others], directed by Krzysztof Gradowski, documentary, Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych, Poland 1970.

260

Bibliography

Marcowe migdały [March Caresses], directed by Radosław Piwowarski, screenplay Radosław Piwowarski, director of photography Zdzisław Najda, music Stanisław Syrewicz, Zespół Filmowy Dom, feature film, Poland 1989. The Passion of the Christ, directed by Mel Gibson, screenplay Mel Gibson, Benedict Fitzgerald, director of photography Caleb Deschanel, music John Debney, Newmarket Films, feature film, USA 2004. The Pianist, directed by Roman Polański, screenplay Ronald Harwood, director of photography Paweł Edelman, music Wojciech Kilar, R.P. Productions, Heritage Films, feature film, Poland, United Kingdom, France, 2002. Po-lin. Okruchy pamięci [Polin. Scraps of Memory], directed by Jolanta Dylewska, screenplay Jolanta Dylewska, director of photography Józef Romasz, Jolanta Dylewska, music Michał Lorenc, documentary, Bomedia, Poland, Germany 2008. Samson, directed by Andrzej Wajda, screenplay Kazimierz Brandys, Andrzej Wajda, director of photography Jerzy Wójcik, music Tadeusz Baird, Zespół Filmowy Droga, Zespół Filmowy Kadr, feature film, Poland 1961. Sprawiedliwi [The Righteous], directed by Janusz Kidawa, screenplay Janusz Kidawa, Ryszard Gontarz, director of photography Ryszard Golc, Telwizja Polska, Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych, documentary, Poland 1968. Shoah, directed by Claude Lanzmann, directors of photography Dominique Chapuis, Jimmy Glasberg, William Lubtchansky, documentary, France 1985. Train de vie [Train of life], directed by Radu Mihăileanu, screenplay Radu Mihăileanu, director of photography Giorgos Arvanitis, music Goran Bregović, Raphaël Films, Noé Productions, feature film, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel, Romania 1998. W poszukiwaniu utraconych lat (In Search of the Lost Years), directed by Jan Sosiński, screenplay Piotr Pytlakowski and Michał Sobelman, director of photography Piotr Wacowski, Fundacja Ryszarda Krauze, documentary, Poland 2002. Wielki tydzień [Holy Week], directed by Andrzej Wajda, screenplay Andrzej Wajda, director of photography Wit Dąbal, Heritage Films, feature film, Poland 1995.

Index

Adamczyk-Garbowska, Monika, 51n17, 52n40, 88n57, 121n58 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, 19, 51n20, 52n37 Andrzejewski, Jerzy, 84, 90n95 Anielewicz, Mordechai, 231–32 Applebaum, Anne, 216–17, 237n84 Arnold, Agnieszka, 191n134, 192nn135–36 Ashton, Ernst Basch, 51n20 Augustyn, Aneta, 89n84 Bachman, Julia, 239n126 Baksik, Łukasz, 53n50 Barthes, Roland, 179, 180, 192n140 Bartoszewicz, Dariusz, 191n128, 191n131, 233nn7–12, 233nn14–17, 234nn26–32, 235nn54, 58–59, 236n60, 237nn88–90, 237nn97–98, 239n120, 239n132 Bartoszewski, Władysław, 59, 80, 87n11, 89nn86–87, 90n92, 216, 237n85, 240n136 Baudrillard, Jean, 172, 182, 191n125, 191n127, 192n146 Baumgart, Anna, 126 Beglarian, Sarmen, 217 Bell, Anthea, 192n141 Bentham, Jeremy, 210

Bergman, Eleonora, 53n47, 138, 148–50, 153–54, 174, 177, 187n61, 187n63, 188n69 Betlejewski, Rafał, 2, 92–96, 99–104, 106–18, 118n1, 118n4, 119n9, 119n12, 119n17, 120n34, 121n63, 121nn65–71, 121n73, 122n79, 122nn85–87 Beylin, Marek, 188n81 Białkowski, Łukasz, 86n5 Białoszewski, Miron, 143, 186n51 Biedka, Łukasz, 27, 52n43 Bielas, Katarzyna, 14, 50n12 Birnbaum, Pierre, 223 Blady-Szwajger, Adina, 233n19 Błoński, Jan, 1, 14, 59–60, 87n15, 163, 167, 172, 190n111, 218, 220, 237n93, 238n100, 238n116 Blösche, Josef (Frankenstein), 200, 212, 234n20 Blumsztajn, Seweryn, 58, 81, 86n6, 90n91 Bolesław Krzywousty, King of Poland, 218 Bork, Mirosław, 79–80 Borowski, Tadeusz, 75–80, 84, 89nn62– 77, 89nn79–83 Bourdieu, Pierre, 132, 166, 190n116, 232, 240n134 261

262

Index

Brach-Czaina, Jolanta, 188nn71–72 Brandys, Kazimierz, 84 Brański, H.: Polish man from Słonim, 40 Brody, Adrien, 160 Broyard, Anatole, 223, 238n108 Bujak, Jan, 47 Bułhak, Jan, 33, 53n48 Burma, John H., 238n103 Buryła, Sławomir, 68, 87nn32–33 Cała, Alina, 53n51, 206, 233n4, 235n41 Calderón Puerta, Aránzazu, 109, 120n43 Carling, Finn, 238n107 Casimir the Great, King of Poland, 48, 195, 217–18 Castells, Manuel, 133, 184n18 Chaplin, Charlie, 155 Charczuk, Wiesław, 54n66 Charles Borromeo, saint, 171, 174, 227 Chaskielewicz, Lejb, 47 Chmielewska, Katarzyna, 53n44 Chopin, Frédéric, 159, 166, 172 Chróścicki, Władysław, 54n65 Cichy, Michał, 1, 52n39 Cieślik, Mariusz, 95, 119n9 Cieślińska-Lobkowicz, Nawojka, 169, 191n122 Cobel-Tokarska, Marta, 207, 235n46, 235n48, 235n50 Cukierman, Icchak, 231 Czachorowski, Swen, 143 Czapliński, Przemysław, 163, 172, 190n113, 191n126 Czartoryska, Urszula, 186n38 Czerniaków, Adam (Adam Czerniakow), 62, 127, 138–42, 166, 172, 174, 185nn35–37 Czerniawski, Adam, 87n31 Czuba, Anna, 234n26 Czyżewski, Krzysztof, 237n87 Dąbkowski, Grzegorz, 121n58 Darowska, Tasja, 233n19

Datner-Śpiewak, Helena, 88n34, 119n18, 145, 206, 214–15, 235n41, 236n80 Davies, Hugh, 236n76 Dębogórska, Agnieszka, 51n14, 51n24 Domańska, Ewa, 190n113, 191n125 Domiziak, Aleksander, 107 Douglas, Mary, 53n55 Dybalska, Wanda, 89n84 Dylewska, Jolanta, 2, 11–24, 26–38, 41–46, 48, 50n12, 51n14, 51n30 Dzierżyńska, Aleksandra, 238n113 Edelman, Marek, 195, 224, 239n116 Edelman, Paweł, 157 Elimelech, rabbi of Lizhensk (Leżajsk), 28–30 Engel, David, 52n32, 120n45, 236n64 Engelking, Barbara, 47, 54n61, 149, 184n6, 184n8, 184n11, 186n44, 186nn47–48, 190n119, 206, 234nn36–38, 235n42 Ester Chaja, Jewish woman, 30 Filipek, Włodzimierz, 232n1 Fink, Ida, 109, 120n43, 226, 239n121, 239n123 Fitzpatrick, Mariana, 87m12 Forecki, Piotr, 136, 185nn25–26, 185n30, 185n33, 232n2 Foucault, Michel, 210, 235n56 Fox, Frank, 52n33, 120nn47–48 Frank, Anne, 220 Freud, Sigmund, 181 Fronczewski, Piotr, 15, 17, 20, 22–23, 28, 31, 45 Frydrych, Wiktoria Julia, 126 Fuksman, Moishe, 29 Fundowicz, Michał, 86n5 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 146 Gajda-Zadworna, Jolanta, 188n82 Gebert, Konstanty, 137, 185n32 Gepner, Abraham, 155

Index

Gibson, Mel, 213 Giebułtowski, Jerzy, 51n29 Gil, Franciszek, 97–100, 102, 111–13, 119nn19–23, 119nn26–27, 121nn60– 61 Glaser, Faria, 191n125, 191n127, 192n146 Glemp, Józef: cardinal and primate of Poland, 12, 50n5 Głowiński, Michał, 100–101, 107, 120n29, 120n31, 120n39 Goffman, Erving, 210, 221, 223, 234n24, 235n57, 236n77, 238nn102– 6, 238n109, 238n111, 238n113 Gołębiewski, Jakub, 184n13 Gombiński, Stanisław (vel Jan Mawult), 128–29, 184n5, 184n7 Gomułka, Władysław, 39, 104 Goźliński, Paweł, 47, 54n60, 54n62 Grabowska-Woźniak, Edyta, 190n104 Grabowski, Jan, 53n45, 90n89, 190nn117–19, 206, 211, 235n40, 236nn65–67 Grabski, August, 54nn58–59 Gradowski, Krzysztof, 80–81 Gregorowicz, Justyna, 191n121 Grodzieńska, Stefania, 191nn134–38 Gronkiewicz-Waltz, Hanna, 218 Gross, Jan Tomasz, 1, 7, 8nn1–2, 9n10, 12, 14, 52n38, 59–60, 80, 88n43, 96, 107, 111–12, 116, 118, 120n41, 121nn50–52, 147, 187nn59–60, 195–96, 233n5, 235n47 Grotowski, Jerzy, 15 Grudzińska-Gross, Irena, 237n87 Grupińska, Anka, 232n1 Grynberg, Henryk, 179, 226–27, 238n114, 239nn124–25, 239n131 Grzebałkowska, Magdalena, 237n96 Gutnajer, Abe, 168–69 Harris, Emma, 128, 184n6 Hartman, Jan, 58, 86n5 Harwood, Ronald, 162 Hejke, Krzysztof, 33, 53n49

263

Hemar, Marian, 82 Hepner: Jewish family from Kałuszyn, 46, 49 Hering, Ludwik, 84, 170–71, 191n124 Hersonski, Yael, 140 Hilberg, Raul, 6, 8n6, 24–25, 51nn28– 29, 83, 90n92, 140, 147, 171, 179, 182–83, 185nn35–36, 186n37 Hitler, Adolf, 98, 164 Hochman, Henryk, 218 Holland, Agnieszka, 67 Hollender, Barbara, 50n10, 52n42, 189n90, 190n108 Horstmann, Anja, 138–39, 185n34 Howard, Tony, 87n31 Huberman, Bronisław, 155 Huener, Jonathan, 185n23 Hugo, Victor, 73, 88n55 Hurwic, Józef, 53n52 Jagielski, Jan, 148–49, 154, 187nn62–63 Jagodzińska, Agnieszka, 214, 236n79 Jałowiecki, Bohdan, 184n20 Janczewska, Marta, 184n7 Janicka, Elżbieta, 25, 50n3, 50n8, 52n38, 53n47, 54n64, 121n74, 186n39, 186n50, 187n55, 187n66, 188n69, 234n23, 235n43, 235n47, 239n125 Janion, Maria, 52n36, 186nn52–53, 239n119, 240n135, 240n137 Jánošík, Juraj (Janosik), 115 Jarecka, Dorota, 95, 119nn7–8 Jasienica, Paweł, 79, 89n83 Jastrzębski, Adam, 138, 143–46, 148, 227 Jedlińska, Eleonora, 53n47 John of Capistrano, saint, 227 John Paul II, pope, 135, 213 Joselewicz, Berek, 231–32, 240n137 Jurandot, Jerzy, 171, 178–79, 191nn134–38 Kac, Włodzimierz, 58 Kaltenberg-Kwiatkowska, Ewa, 184n17

264

Index

Kałużyński, Zygmunt, 157, 188n78 Kamienny, Adam, 47 Kamionka, Zvi, 45–49, 54n64 Kann, Maria, 231, 240n136 Kapłan, Chaim Aron, 62, 128 Karski, Jan, 26, 52n39, 172 Kashpirovsky, Anatoly, 15 Kasia, Katarzyna, 119n10 Katzmann, Friedrich, 204–5, 207, 234nn33–34 Kawalerowicz, Jerzy, 12 Kęczkowska, Beata, 189n88, 190n105 Keff, Bożena, 237n83 Keret, Dana, 211–12 Keret, Efraim, 211, 219, 237n95 Keret, Etgar, 197, 199, 202–3, 209–13, 217–21, 224, 233n8, 233nn13–14, 234n25, 234n30, 235nn54–55, 236n60, 236n63, 236nn69–71, 237nn90–92, 238n97, 238n101, 239n115, 239nn117–18, 239n120, 239n130, 239n132 Keret, Ornah, 212, 218–20, 237n95 Kermish, Joseph (Kermisz, Józef), 185n35, 186n37, 234n35 Kieślowski, Krzysztof, 12 Kilar, Wojciech, 157 Kirman, Josef, 129–30, 184n9 Klapheck, Elisa, 145 Kletowski, Piotr, 51n21 Kofman, Wlodek, 105 Komorowska, Maja, 15 Konopko, Franciszek, 107–8, 112 Konopnicka, Maria, 220 Kopciowski, Adam, 51n17 Korczak, Janusz, 127 Kościuszko, Tadeusz, 231 Kosiewski, Piotr, 187n65, 188n70, 188n73, 191n133 Kosmowski: Polish family from Słonim, 38–39 Kossak-Szczucka, Zofia, 78, 83, 89n78, 90n95 Kowalska, Agieszka, 118n3, 119n28, 120n38, 120n42, 120n44, 120n49,

121n56, 121n62, 189n87, 234n25, 239n130 Kowalska, Anna, 119n11 Kozik, Michał, 27 Koźmińska-Frejlak, Ewa, 87n18 Krakowski, Shmuel, 234n35 Krall, Hanna, 20 Krawczyńska, Dorota, 87n33 Kroczyńska, Małgorzata, 189n98 Krynicka, Natalia, 239n129 Krzemiński, Ireneusz, 8n7, 9nn8–9 Kurant, Agnieszka, 126 Kuśmirowski, Robert, 181, 191n132, 192n143 Kwiecień, Agnieszka, 190n109 Landau-Czajka, Anna, 215, 236n81 Lanzmann, Claude, 1, 59, 195 Laudyn, Stefan, 156 Lavers, Annette, 192n140 Lec, Tomasz, 3, 126, 138, 148–50, 153– 54, 174–75, 177, 187n65, 188n70, 188n73, 191n133 Łęcewicki: Jewish family from Słonim, 43 Le Corbusier, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, 209, 224 Leder, Andrzej, 99, 119n25 Leociak, Jacek, 87n14, 87n33, 128, 142, 149, 184nn3–4, 184n6, 184n8, 184n11, 186nn44–49 Lepalczyk, Irena, 190n115 Leszczyńska, Joanna, 188n79 Levine, Madeline, 121n59, 239n121 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 125 Lewin, Zofia, 87n11, 89n86 Lewin, Zygmunt, 127, 140 Libionka, Dariusz, 52n41, 232, 240n137 Lipiński, Mikołaj, 235n44 Lipski, Leo (Leo Lipschütz), 220, 238n99 Lis, Krzysztof, 189n89, 190n106 Lorenc, Michał, 12, 33 Lubelska, Krystyna, 189n92, 190n110 Łuczywo, Helena, 235n44

Index

Maciejewska, Irena, 186n41, 237n82 Maciejewska, Małgorzata, 102, 120n33 Maciejewski, Marian, 80, 89n84, 90n88 Maciejowska, Agnieszka, 236n71 Magik: Jewish man from Szczuczyn, 107 Majewski, Jerzy S., 191n130 Majmurek, Jakub, 142, 186n49 Makower, Henryk, 128 Malinowska, Anna, 86nn7–8 Maliszewska, Małgorzata, 8n4 Małochleb, Paulina, 101, 120n32 Mann, Thomas, 155 Markiel, Tadeusz, 53n56, 119n13, 206, 234n39 Masłowska, Dorota, 237n86 Matejko, Jan, 217 Mawult, Jan. See Gombiński, Stanisław Mazur, Adam, 53n47 Merckly, 225 Meszel: Jewish family from Słonim, 38, 40, 43 Metcalfe, John, 204 Michalak, Jacek, 53n47 Michalowicz, Jerzy, 54n61 Michalski, Cezary, 237n85 Michel, Patrick, 184n12 Michnik, Adam, 50n5, 119n19, 237n93 Mickiewicz, Adam, 43, 96–97, 99, 119n15, 120n40, 159, 188n68 Mihăileanu, Radu, 215, 223 Miłosz, Czesław, 167, 238n116 Mink, Georges, 184n12 Moczar, Mieczysław, 80, 104 Moczarski, Kazimierz, 59, 87n12 Modan, Rutu, 233n13 Modzelewski, Ryszard, 176 Molisak, Alina, 87n32 Morgenstern, Janusz, 87n13 Moszczyński, Henryk, 173 Mr. Piotr (Chłodna Street resident), 204 Mr. Tau: Jewish teacher from Kolbuszowa, 44–45 Ms. Mira (Chłodna Street resident), 173 Murakami, Haruki, 224

265

Murawska-Péju, Ludmiła, 191n124 Musiałówna, Anna, 86n1 Mysiakowska, Jolanta, 184n13 Nałkowska, Zofia, 84 Namysło, Aleksandra, 90n96 Narutowicz, Gabriel, 34 Nekanda-Trepka, Ewa, 148 Niborski, Jicchok, 228, 239n129 Nice, Richard, 190n116, 240n134 Nijakowski, Lech M., 133, 184n19 Niziołek, Grzegorz, 163, 187n57, 188nn67–68, 190n112 Nora, Pierre, 149 Nowakowska, Maria, 24, 51n31 Ogórek, Krzysztof, 116 Ogórek, Michał, 81, 90n90 Ostałowska, Lidia, 187n66 Ostrowska, Joanna, 51n30 Oz, Amos, 219 Pacewicz, Piotr, 113, 117, 118nn1–2, 121n57, 121n64, 121nn75–78, 122nn80–83 Pająk, Henryk, 121n55 Paloff, Benjamin, 237n83 Pasternak, Krzysztof, 174 Patalas, Agata, 145 Pawłowska, Jolanta, 234n33 Peleg, David, 53n47 Perechodnik, Calel, 25, 52nn32–34, 96, 109, 120nn45–48, 140, 211, 236n64, 237n94 Petre, Jonathan, 236n76 Piekarska, Anna K., 184n13 Piesiewicz, Krzysztof, 156 Pietkiewicz, Barbara, 86nn1–2 Pietrasik, Zdzisław, 157, 188n77, 190n114 Piłsudski, Józef, 34, 106 Pinkert, Mordechaj, 155 Piotrowska, Natalia, 189n99, 189nn102–3 Piotrowski, Piotr K., 190n107

266

Index

Piwowarski, Radosław, 106 Plato, 146 Plebanek, Barbara, 87n31 Poczykowski, Radosław, 121n72 Polański, Roman, 149, 154, 156–64, 167– 69, 171–72, 180–81, 188n83, 189n89, 189nn99–100, 189n102, 190n106 Poliakov, Léon, 11, 50n1, 238n112 Polonsky, Antony, 87n15, 88n57 Poniatowska, Urszula, 204 Popiełuszko, Jerzy (Popieluszko), 126, 131–34, 184nn12–14, 227 Prall Radin, Dorothea, 119n15 Prose, Francine, 239n121 Przemsza-Zieliński, Jan, 88n36 Pustoła, Konrad, 141, 186n43 Pustoła-Kozłowska, Ewa, 148–49, 187n61 Pytlakowski, Piotr, 237n95 Raczek, Tomasz, 157, 188nn78–79 Raszeja, Franciszek, 168 Ring, Mieczysław (Mosze), 127 Ringelblum, Emanuel, 62, 140, 149, 164, 234n35 Rok, Adam, 137, 185n31 Romasz, Józef, 15 Rottenberg, Anda, 186n38 Różański, Mateusz, 120n34 Rozenbaum, sisters (Jewish immigrants after the anti-Semitic campaign in 1968), 104 Różewicz, Tadeusz, 66, 87n31, 100, 120n29 Rudaś-Grodzka, Monika, 240n135, 240n137 Rudnicki, Adolf, 184n10 Rudolph, Helmut, 138–39 Rymkiewicz, Jarosław Marek, 59–66, 82, 86n10, 87nn16–17, 87nn19–20, 87nn22–30, 119n14 Rywin, Lew, 160, 188n75 Sandauer, Artur, 4, 8n3 Saratowicz, Beata, 204

Schudrich, Michael, rabbi, 159, 189n85 Schultze-Naumburg, Paul, 33 Scicińska, Jolanta, 191nn134–36 Segal, Hanna, 181 Sekula, Allan, 51n19 Sheridan, Alan, 184n18, 235n56 Sienkiewicz, Henryk, 120n32, 220 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 220 Skibińska, Alina, 53n56, 206, 234n39 Śliwa, Czesław (vel Jacek ben Silbrstein), 79–81 Śliwiak, Tadeusz, 106 Słobodzianek, Tadeusz, 96, 101–2 Śmiałowski, Piotr, 19, 51n23 Smolar, Aleksander, 235n44 Smoleński, Paweł, 235n55, 236nn61– 63, 236nn68–70, 236nn72–75, 237nn91–92, 238n101 Snochowska-Gonzalez, Klaudia, 239n119 Sobelman, Michał, 237n95 Sobolewski, Tadeusz, 19, 50n11, 51n22, 157, 188n80 Sosiński, Jan, 237n95 Spiegelman, Art, 199 Spielberg, Steven, 64, 66–67, 157, 160 Śpiewak, Paweł, 148 Stambler, Szalom Ber, rabbi, 110 Stańczuk, Magdalena, 238n110 Staroń, Stanisław (Stanislaw Staron), 140, 185n35, 186n37 Starski, Allan, 157 Stefanek, Stanisław, bishop of Łomża, 189n84 Stok, Danusia, 233n19 Stroop, Jürgen, 61, 87n21 Strzembosz, Tomasz, 121nn53–54 Świda-Ziemba, Hanna, 147, 187n58 Świtek, Gabriela, 186n39 Szabłowska-Zaremba, Monika, 87n32 Szaniawski, Klemens, 184n14 Szaniawski, Paweł, 188n83, 189n100 Szapiro, Paweł, 52n33, 120n46, 191n134, 192nn135–36, 232n1 Szapocznikow, Alina, 186n38

Index

Szatrawska, Ishabel, 116 Szczepański, Jan, 190n115 Szczepański, Jarosław Józef, 58 Szczęsny, Jakub, 3, 199, 202, 209–10, 233n8, 233n18 Szczuka, Kazimiera, 239n119 Szejkierc, Wł.: Polish merchant from Słonim, 40 Szemesz, Rachela, 31 Szeryński, Józef, 142 Szlengel, Władysław, 97, 141, 155–56, 179, 186nn41–42, 188n74, 191n120, 215, 223, 237n82, 238n110 Szmerling, Mieczysław, 61 Szpilman, Władysław, 155, 159–61, 163– 71, 180, 189n91, 190n105, 192n141 Szurek, Jean-Charles, 172 Szyba, Anna, 239n116 Szydłowski, Adam, 57–58, 86n8 Szymaniak, Karolina, 239n116 Szymaniak, Sylwia, 217 Szymanik, Grzegorz, 118n2, 121n76, 122n80, 122nn82–83 Szymanowski, Antoni, 83, 90n93 Taylor, Nina, 87n16, 119n14 Taylor-Kucia, Jessica, 121n58 Tazbir, Janusz, 53n54, 184n21, 233n6 Tchorek, Karol, 125 Tokarska-Bakir, Joanna, 8n4, 26, 52n35, 52n40, 207, 214, 225, 236n78, 238n113, 239n119, 239n133 Torańska, Teresa, 104–5 Tronowicz, Henryk, 189n91 Trzciński, Andrzej, 51n17 Turnau, Jan, 158, 185n29, 189n84 Turowicz, Jerzy, 239n116 Tuszyńska, Agata, 219, 237n96 Twardoń: mayor of Kolbuszowa during Nazi ocupation, 31 Tych, Feliks, 20, 51n27, 52n40, 121n58 Urbańska, Katarzyna, 176, 181, 191n132, 192n143 Urzykowski, Tomasz, 187n54, 187n64

267

Valles, Alissa, 237n83 Vedder, Barbara, 89n62 Waits, Tom, 224 Wajda, Andrzej, 15, 81, 84, 157, 188n68 Waldorff, Jerzy, 163–64, 171, 180 Walicki, Andrzej, 233n3 Wasersztajn, Szmul, 111–12 Weinberg, Ewa, 184n16 Wells, Herbert George, 155 Werner, Andrzej, 89n64, 89n77 Weszpiński, Paweł E., 149 Weyland, Marcel, 120n40, 186n42, 188n74, 191n120 White, Hayden, 20, 51nn25–26 Wierciński, Edmund, 122n84 Wiesel, Elie, 136–37 Wieviorka, Annette, 172 Wiktor, Mariola, 189n93 Wilczyk, Wojciech, 33, 53n47, 90n94, 102–3, 120n36, 186n39, 187n66 Wilczyńska, Stefania, 127 Willenberg, Samuel, 51n31 Winnicki, Robert, 189n86 Wist, Willy, 138–39 Wistrich, Robert, 201, 234n22 Witecki, Marek, 148, 187n61 Władysław I Herman, King of Poland, 218 Wnuk-Nazarowa, Joanna, 137 Wodiczko, Krzysztof, 201, 227, 234n21 Wójcicki: Polish man from Kurów, 42 Wojtczak, Marek, 120n35 Wollstonecraft-Shelley, Mary, 200 Woroszylski, Wiktor, 89n79 Wróblewski, Janusz, 50n2, 50n9 Wygodzki, Stanisław, 68, 70–75, 80, 84–86, 87nn32–35, 88nn38–42, 88nn44–54, 88nn56–61, 108 Zambrowski, Antoni, 185n27 Zaorski, Janusz, 156 Zaremba, Marcin, 207, 235n45 Żaryn, Jan, 184n13

268

Index

Zawadowska, Agnieszka, 240n135, 240n137 Zawadzka, Anna, 50n7, 54n59, 88n34, 103, 120n36, 226, 238n110, 239n122 Zawadzki, Paul, 11, 50n1, 238n112 Zawistowski, Andrzej, 58 Zbigniew, prince: Władysław I Herman’s son, 218 Żbikowski, Andrzej, 51n31, 52n41, 87n21, 121n58, 234n33

Żeromski, Stefan, 220 Zerubavel, Eviatar, 119n24 Zmarz-Koczanowicz, Maria, 104–6, 108 Zubrzycki, Geneviève, 5, 8n5, 185n24 Żukowski, Tomasz, 50n4, 50n6, 52n34, 53n44, 90nn94–95, 119n16, 235n43, 237n94 Zushya, reb: rabbi Elimelech of Lezhansk’s brother, 28, 30 Zwolska, Jadwiga, 184n10

About the Authors

ELŻBIETA JANICKA (1970) Literary historian, visual artist. Interested in sociocultural legitimacy of exclusion and violence (axiological universes, cultural patterns, social imaginaries). Her areas of study include paradigms of Holocaust description, Holocaust history of the environment, present symbolic topography of historically Jewish urban sites, and mainstream Polish anti-Semitism and its persistence. Author of the books: Sztuka czy Naród? Monografia pisarska Andrzeja Trzebińskiego [Art or the Nation? On Andrzej Trzebiński’s literary output] (2006); Festung Warschau [Forteress Warsaw] (2011). Her solo exhibitions encompasse:  Ja, fotografia [I, Photography] (1998); Miejsce nieparzyste [The Odd Place] (2006); Inne Miasto [Other City] (2013, co-authored with Wojciech Wilczyk). MA at the Université Paris VII Denis Diderot; PhD at Warsaw University. Currently working at the Nationality Studies Department at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw, Poland). TOMASZ ŻUKOWSKI (1969) Literary historian. Interested in the identity issues at the point of convergence of minorities and the dominant group, and the related discursive mechanisms in the context of the Shoah and discourses concerning Communism. Author of the books: Pod presją. Co mówią o Zagładzie ci, którym odbieramy głos [Under the pressure. What do those we silence say about the Holocaust?] (2021); Wielki retusz. Jak zapomnieliśmy, że Polacy zabijali 269

270

About the Authors

Żydów [The Great Whitewash. How we Forgot that the Poles were Killing Jews] (2018); Obrazy Chrystusa w twórczości Aleksandra Wata i Tadeusza Różewicza [Images of Christ in the Works of Aleksander Wat and Tadeusz Różewicz] (2014). Currently professor at the Contemporary Literature and Social Communication Department and the Centre for Cultural and Literary Research on Communism at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw, Poland).