How to Create a Bystander? The 1965 Polish Scouts’ Reconnaissance and Vernacular Memory of the Holocaust
2024-10-15
– 2024-10-15
09:30
– 11:00
- ONLINE
- English
With the beginning of another academic year, it is our pleasure to invite you to another year of the Center for Research on Social Memory Seminar series. We begin with a seminar with Janek Gryta on How to Create a Bystander? The 1965 Polish Scouts’ Reconnaissance and Vernacular Memory of the Holocaust. The meeting will be moderated by Joanna Wawrzyniak.
The seminar will take place online, 15 October at 9:30am CET.
Please register in order to participate:https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/.../tJUkd...
Janek Gryta is a Lecturer in Holocaust History at the University of Southampton. He is a cultural and social historian with particular interests in the Holocaust commemorations in Eastern Europe, nation-building, and the history of social consensus under Communism.
Abstract
Poles tend to believe that, when it comes to the Holocaust, they were bystanders only. For decades, scholarship supported this notion. In a similar vein, there is an assumption in research that Polish bystanders did not pass on any knowledge about the Holocaust, certainly not under state Socialism. This article addresses both of those ideas, revealing that detailed knowledge about the Holocaust not only existed but was passed on from the generation of witnesses to the first postwar generation. Moreover, it demonstrates how, in the process of this transmission of knowledge, the position of a bystander was developed.
This paper spotlights the Alert of Victory, a 1965 reconnaissance organised by the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association. During the Alert, young people identified sites of fighting and suffering, and interviewed local witnesses about Nazi crimes.
Focusing on reports from this reconnaissance in south-eastern Poland, this paper comments on the shape of the vernacular, communicative memory of the Holocaust as it existed in the mid-1960s. It establishes that details of mass killings in the spring and summer of 1942 were widely known and communicated, as was some information about the camp system. It suggests that some knowledge about Polish co-participation in the killings, the denunciation of Jewish Poles and the looting of their property was suggested to the scouts. Finally, this paper establishes how the explosive potential of such knowledge was dismantled in the space of testimony. Through maintaining Jews in the position of the national Other, and strategic use of passive voice and omission, a palatable version of the war past was devised and the figure of a passive, blameless bystander was called to into being
Poles tend to believe that, when it comes to the Holocaust, they were bystanders only. For decades, scholarship supported this notion. In a similar vein, there is an assumption in research that Polish bystanders did not pass on any knowledge about the Holocaust, certainly not under state Socialism. This article addresses both of those ideas, revealing that detailed knowledge about the Holocaust not only existed but was passed on from the generation of witnesses to the first postwar generation. Moreover, it demonstrates how, in the process of this transmission of knowledge, the position of a bystander was developed.
This paper spotlights the Alert of Victory, a 1965 reconnaissance organised by the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association. During the Alert, young people identified sites of fighting and suffering, and interviewed local witnesses about Nazi crimes.
Focusing on reports from this reconnaissance in south-eastern Poland, this paper comments on the shape of the vernacular, communicative memory of the Holocaust as it existed in the mid-1960s. It establishes that details of mass killings in the spring and summer of 1942 were widely known and communicated, as was some information about the camp system. It suggests that some knowledge about Polish co-participation in the killings, the denunciation of Jewish Poles and the looting of their property was suggested to the scouts. Finally, this paper establishes how the explosive potential of such knowledge was dismantled in the space of testimony. Through maintaining Jews in the position of the national Other, and strategic use of passive voice and omission, a palatable version of the war past was devised and the figure of a passive, blameless bystander was called to into being
