Veterans, Victims, and Memory
The Politics of the Second World War in Communist Poland
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the Author
- About the Book
- This eBook can be cited
- Table of Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Chapter 1: Communism, Myth and Memory
- Collective Memory, Memory Groups and Myths of War under Communism
- Agents: Veterans, Victims and the Nation State
- Structures: Organizations in the Communist System
- Sources Consulted
- Chapter 2: The Communist Post-war: Organizing Life and Memory
- Challenges of Demobilization
- Communist Legislation and the ex-Combatants and Prisoners, 1945–48: A View From Above
- Memory Groups: A View from Below
- Commemoration: ‘I can still smell that putrid stench’
- Assistive activities and group interests
- ‘The Soil Has Been Tilled’: Towards the Unification of Memory Groups
- Chapter 3: The Myth of Victory over Fascism (1949–55)
- Setting the Stage
- The Unification Congress
- Fighters for peace
- In the ranks of the national front
- Sites of Memory and the Myth of Victory
- Concentration camps
- Fields of battle
- The forest and the urban resistance
- Behind the Scenes: Organization as Illusion
- Unity and exclusion
- ‘We have been unable to plough this fallow field’
- The withdrawal of patronage and awards
- Chapter 4: The Myth of Unity (1956–59)
- Memory Unbound
- Changes
- ‘They gather almost every day and muck-rake in the past’
- Against the monopoly of memory
- ZBoWiD in the provinces: the case of Lublin region
- The Myth of Unity: Formation
- The ‘family of combatants’ and criteria for verification
- ‘Let’s do patriotism’
- Anti-German attitudes
- The Second ZBoWiD Congress
- Chapter 5: The Myth of Innocence (1960–69)
- Clientelism: ‘We Have Been Able to Arrange It’
- The Partisans
- ‘Only ZBoWiD can speak in the name of the Home Army tradition’
- Partisan culture
- Rival Martyrologies
- Wartime martyrdom
- Anti-Semitism
- The innocent Poles and the ungrateful Jews
- Afterword: The Long Shadow of the Communist Politics of Memory
- Polish War Memory in Comparative Context
- Communist Narratives: between Persistence and Change
- Bibliography
- Index
- Series index
2.1 Map of post-war shifts of borders. Wikimedia Commons.
2.2 Poster of the Congress of ZUWZoNiD in Warsaw, 1945. National Library of Poland.
2.4 Appeal to demobilized soldiers to join ZUWZoNiD, 1947. National Library of Poland.
3.3 Decorated backdrop in the hall of the University of Technology during the Unification Congress. The two swords symbolize the victory over the Knights of the Cross in the Battle of Grunwald (1410) and, by extension, over Germany. The caption between the swords runs: ‘We stand united guarding Democracy and Independence of People’s Poland’, Warsaw, September 1949. Photo by Wojciech Konradzki, National Digital Archives/Polish Press Agency. ← 10 | 11 →
4.3 Second Congress of ZBoWiD, a view of the presidium: Józef Cyrankiewicz is addressing the audience; to his right: Janusz Zarzycki. Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw, 1959. Photo by Mariusz Szyperko, National Digital Archives/Polish Press Agency.
3.1 ZBoWiD’s income between 1950 and 1956 (thousands of złoty)
3.2 ZBoWiD’s expenses between 1950 and 1956 (thousands of złoty)
4.1 Content of articles in Za Wolność i Lud, by theme (January 1957 – September 1958)
5.1 Number of organization units and the total membership of ZBoWiD, 1959–69
5.2 Composition of county directorates (1961/62 and 1968)
5.3 Composition of county directorates according to group, Lublin and Warsaw voivodeships (1961/62 and 1965/66) ← 12 | 13 →
In the half century of communist rule in Poland, public memory of the Second World War played a substantial role in the transmission and legitimization of power. At the same time, it was open to reinterpretations, both spontaneous and planned, which were the results of international changes, generational turns, and activities of memory groups. Still, in the vast literature on how the Second World War has been remembered in Europe, research into what happened in Poland, one of the countries most affected by the war, is surprisingly scarce. This book fills this gap by giving an account of the emergence of the core Polish narrative about the war out of two embodiments of memory: the communist state’s revolutionary story on the one hand, and various memory groups’ initiatives on the other. It argues that the official patterns of war memory, which evolved from revolutionary rhetoric towards patriotic narratives of collective heroism and sacrifice, were to a surprising extent the results of negotiation between the state and memory groups.
Important features of those patterns of heroism and sacrifice are still present in Poland. Their long gestation, explored in this book, might help to understand why the country often finds itself in a ‘mnemonic standoff’, to use James Werstch’s term,1 with Western Europe, which tends to favour imagining the war in a civil, post-Holocaust, human rights-oriented way. The specific focus of this book is the organized movement of war veterans and former prisoners of Nazi camps from the 1940s until the end of the 1960s, when the core narrative became well established. The book tells the story of how certain social categories (including social entitlements for veterans and victims) were created or contested over the course of time.
Details
- Pages
- 259
- Publication Year
- 2016
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783653024418
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9783653996807
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783653996814
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631640494
- DOI
- 10.3726/978-3-653-02441-8
- Open Access
- CC-BY-NC-ND
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2015 (December)
- Keywords
- The Politics of Memory Survivors Communism
- Published
- Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2015. 259 pp., 19 b/w ill.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
