Golgotha in paradise: memory and martyrdom in a former Polish shtetl
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Abstract
This article examines how local complicity in the Holocaust is negotiated, silenced, and revealed through the spatial memoryscape of Rajgród, a small town in northeastern Poland where Poles participated in the murder of their Jewish neighbors in the summer of 1941. Using a microhistorical lens, it analyzes how knowledge, denial, and memory are inscribed in physical spaces and communal practices, rendering space a cultural text. Drawing on personal and municipal records and ethnographic fieldwork, the article shows how Catholicism, nationalism, and ritual symbolism shape collective remembrance and moral hierarchies of suffering in post-socialist Eastern Europe.
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Holocaust: Collaboration Holocaust Commemoration Ethnography Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial Memory
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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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Golgotha in paradise: memory and martyrdom in a former Polish shtetl. 2026: https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1080/17504902.2026.2618954
