The Holocaust Bystander in Polish Culture, 1942-2015

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. We Are All Witnesses. Instead of an Introduction

   • Maryla Hopfinger

   Pages 1-39

3. Constructing the Figure of the Polish Shoah Witness

   • Katarzyna Chmielewska

   Pages 41-78

4. Alternative Narratives of the 1940s Versus the Politics of Memory

   • Katarzyna Chmielewska

   Pages 79-116

5. Hand in Hand. Calling on Witnesses to Polish-Jewish Brotherhood

   • Anna Zawadzka

   Pages 117-161

6. Bearing Witness to Witnessing: Jewish Narratives About Polish “Witnesses” to the Holocaust

   • Anna Zawadzka

   Pages 163-212

7. The Guilt of Indifference

   • Aránzazu Calderón Puerta, Tomasz Żukowski

   Pages 213-244

8. Nostalgic Archeology and Critical Archeology

   • Tomasz Żukowski

   Pages 245-282

9. Documents and Fictions

   • Wojciech Wilczyk

   Pages 283-330

10. Correction to: The Holocaust Bystander in Polish Culture, 1942–2015: The Story of Innocence

    • Maryla Hopfinger, Tomasz Żukowski

    Pages C1-C1

11. Back Matter

    Pages 331-364

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This book concerns building an idealized image of the society in which the Holocaust occurred. It inspects the category of the bystander (in Polish culture closely related to the witness), since the war recognized as the axis of self-presentation and majority politics of memory. The category is of performative character since it defines the roles of event participants, assumes passivity of the non-Jewish environment, and alienates the exterminated, thus making it impossible to speak about the bystanders’ violence at the border between the ghetto and the ‘Aryan’ side. Bystanders were neither passive nor distanced; rather, they participated and played important roles in Nazi plans. Starting with the war, the authors analyze the functions of this category in the Polish discourse of memory through following its changing forms and showing links with social practices organizing the collective memory. Despite being often critiqued, this point of dispute about Polish memory rarely belongs to mainstream culture. It also blocks the memory of Polish violence against Jews. The book is intended for students and researchers interested in memory studies, the history of the Holocaust, the memory of genocide, and the war and postwar cultures of Poland and Eastern Europe. 

• Bystander effect
• Polish culture
• Holocaust studies
• Shoah
• Polish Shoah witness
• Polish-Jewish
• Memory politics

• Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

  Maryla Hopfinger, Tomasz Żukowski

Maryla Hopfinger is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. She works in the areas of the theory of culture and social communication. She has authored numerous books and articles and has also acted as editor to a number of collected volumes. Her most recent publication in English (2010, translated in 2020) is entitled Literature and Media.

Tomasz Żukowski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. He is a literary historian interested in the identity and discourses in the context of the Shoah. Previous works include The Great Whitewash (2018) and Under Pressure.(2021). 

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