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Weaponising the Past: Collective Memory and Jews, Poles, and Communists in Twenty-First Century Poland
Author(s): Korycki, Kate
Date: 2023
Topics: Antisemitism, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Memorial, Post-1989, Communism
Abstract: In Poland, contemporary political actors have constructed a narrative of Polish history since 1989 in which Polish and Jewish involvement with communism has created a national concept of “we.” Weaponizing the Past explores the resulting implications of national belonging through a lens of collective memory. Taking a constructivist approach to electoral politics and nation making in Poland’s past, this volume’s dual line of inquiry articulates why and how elites politicize the past, what effect this politicization produces, and contextualizes this politicization to illustrate contemporary production of anti-Semitism.
Polticized memory in Poland: anti-communism and the Holocaust
Author(s): Korycki, Kate
Date: 2019
Topics: Antisemitism, Communism, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory
Abstract: In this article, I trace how political and intellectual elites in contemporary Poland weave the stories of the recent past, paying particular attention to narratives of Polish-Jewish relations and imbrications with communism. I first outline the three main narrations of the past and identify their divergent themes; I then specify their consonant and similar motifs. I demonstrate that despite differences, all major political actors conflate communism with Jewishness and circulate the myth of Żydokomuna. In so doing, they discursively establish the symmetry of suffering between the groups, and they affect the way contemporary Poles remember the Holocaust.