Abstract: This article examines how rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust are represented in the Polish elementary school core curriculum and history textbooks, offering a critical assessment of the current approach to Holocaust education in Poland.
The inclusion of the Holocaust as a distinct educational topic in schools in Poland is a relatively recent development, marking a shift from earlier decades when it was marginalized or instrumentalized for political purposes. The article traces the evolution of Holocaust education in Poland and highlights the changes introduced after the 2015 parliamentary elections, when the Law and Justice (PiS) government, within its historical policy, began emphasizing Poland’s ‘heroic past’ and the rescue of Jews. This narrative, the authors argue, risks overshadowing the complexities of Polish–Jewish relations during World War II. Trojański and Szuchta demonstrate that current curricula and textbooks often present a simplified, hero-centered narrative that neglects the broader historical context, including collaboration, blackmail, and violence against Jews. Such omissions contradict recent scholarship and hinder the ability of students to understand the multifaceted nature of the Holocaust. Because elementary school materials shape foundational historical knowledge, this imbalance has lasting implications. Finally, the article briefly notes the early steps taken by the new government to broaden the historical framework, but emphasizes that meaningful change will require time, resources, and careful revision of teaching materials.
Abstract: This article explores the ways in which oral testimonies of Jewish survivors allow a critical reflection on the understanding of gratitude as a social emotion in the context of hiding under German occupation in Poland. Examined alongside oral interviews with non-Jewish rescuers and helpers, these testimonies unveil the social hierarchy between the non-Jewish majority and the Jewish minority. Consequently, the article scrutinizes the topoi of ‘an ungrateful Jew’ within the context of the Polish public sphere which excludes Jewish narratives, experiences, and memories. Based on oral history interviews and in-depth individual interviews with Jewish survivors, rescuers, and helpers, their descendants, as well as residents of two Polish towns in the Lublin area, Biłgoraj and Izbica, the article presents two case studies of rescue and survival. The analysis investigates the narratives, cultural norms involved, and the underlying power dynamics between rescuers or helpers and Jewish individuals.
Abstract: This paper, intended as a contribution to transnational memory studies, analyzes museums devoted to people who helped Jews during the Holocaust that recently opened in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Lithuania, and Poland. The author’s particular interest lies in the “traveling motifs” of the “Righteous” narratives. This category encompasses symbols such as a list of names of the help-providers, a fruit tree/orchard, or a wall with photographs of Holocaust victims, which recur in many of the examined exhibitions and are a clear reference to Yad Vashem and other well-established Holocaust memorials. At first sight, they seem to point to a “cosmopolitanization” of Holocaust remembrance and to the emergence of a common reservoir of historical notions and images. However, on closer inspection one discovers that the use of these symbols varies and that they refer to differing ways of understanding and telling history.
