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ABSTRACT
Letters to Henio is an emblematic example of an audience participatory memorial practice developed by the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre in Lublin. This article provides an ethnographic account of this initiative and presents insights from an audience research study conducted with young people in 2016. It discerns the immediate impact this initiative has on young participants’ attitudes towards commemoration of Holocaust victims. This research indicates a departure from polarized narratives of the Holocaust which tend to dominate the Polish memory discourse, and the presence of more ambiguous, messier and fragmented positions towards the Holocaust among younger generations of Poles.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Joanna Zętar, and to the educational team at the Grodzka Gate Centre. Without their kind assistance, interest and support I could not have implemented and achieved this research study. I would also like to thank all those (anonymous) teachers and students who have participated in the surveys, and Monika Colerick for her assistance with interpretation on the day of the event, and for her translation of surveys from/into English language. This study has been possible thanks to the Research Grant awarded by the Swedish Research Council in support of the research project ‘Making the Past Present: Public Perceptions of Performative Holocaust Commemoration since the year 2000’ conducted by the author together with project leader Tanja Schult from Stockholm University. Lastly, I appreciate the constructive remarks on this work provided by the editors of this Special Issue.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Diana I. Popescu is Research Fellow at the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests are in Holocaust Studies, in particular the Holocaust in public history and memory, museum studies and visual culture. She has edited with Tanja Schult the volume entitled: Revisiting Holocaust Representation in the Post-Witness Era (Palgrave, 2015). Their collaborative project ‘Making the Past Present: Performative Holocaust Commemorations since 2000’, received a major research grant from Swedish Research Council. She currently serves on the editorial board of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal.
Primary sources
Online resources available on the Grodzka Gate –NN Theatre Centre’s webpage.
Interview with the Grodzka Gate –NN Theatre Centre’s education team, 20 April 2016, Lublin
78 paper surveys conducted 11–19 April 2016.
Notes
1. Blatman, “Towards a New Jewish and Polish memory,” 59.
2. Błoński, “The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto,” 35. For the purposes of this essay I relate to Błoński’s earlier article, although public discourse on these questions intensified with the publication of Jan T. Gross’s, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne published in Polish in 2000 and in English in 2001.
3. Turowicz quoted by Polonsky, My Brother’s Keeper? Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust, 13. Błoński was attacked in the weekly Stolica, in Przeglad Tygodniowy and in Życie Literackie, the latter having published anti-Semitic texts. Witold Rymanowski for example went as far as to invoke the Polish criminal code to prosecute Błoński for ‘slandering the Polish nation.’
4. In a recent piece Joanna Beata Michlic points to a deepening of historical contestation of ‘dark aspects of Polish history’ endorsed by Poland’s current government which she calls ‘a total war against critical history-writing,’ see Michlic, “At the crossroads: Jedwabne and Polish historiography of the Holocaust,” 296–306.
5. Pietrasiewicz was a member of the anti-communist underground movement, working as an editor and printer for samizdat publications while developing a passion for theater, see Foy, “The Lost Faces of Lublin.”
6. Among the most well-known performative memorial actions is Mystery of Memory series, see Holc, The Politics of Trauma and Memory Activism, 21–37, and Popescu, “Performative Environments of Polish Memory,” 111–30.
7. A quasi comprehensive list of research and education institutions, of memorials, museums and other civic initiatives can be found at http://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/poland/museums-memorials-cultural-institutions/. Accessed August 20, 2017.
8. Quotes retrieved from the Grodzka Gate’s booklet, Lublin. Memory of the Place, 2017, sections titled ‘Memory animators,’ ‘Lamplighters of memory,’ and ‘Saving memory – looking for traces of those who perished,’ n.p.
9. Ibid. Section titled ‘The surroundings of the Gate.’ This quote is taken from the introductory panel of the permanent exhibition. See also the Polish original text on p. 3 of the institutional document titled ‘NN Opowieści zasłyszane’ retrieved from http://biblioteka.teatrnn.pl/dlibra/Content/48579/Zaslyszane_do%20druku_po%20polsku.pdf. Accessed December 9, 2017.
10. Kapralski, “Battlefields of Memory,” 37–38.
11. Simon, The Touch of the Past, 8.
12. Underhill, “Next Year in Drohobych,” 582.
13. The full excerpt is quoted by Skórzyńska, “Commemorating the Past Through Performance,” 182.
14. Ibid.
15. Polish historian Robert Kuwałek has written extensively on the history of Jews in the Lublin region and has been a key adviser for the Grodzka Gate –NN Theatre Centre’s activities of memorialization. See study Lublin. The Jerusalem of Polish Kingdom, retrieved from http://www.biblioteka.teatrnn.pl/dlibra/dlibra/docmetadata?id=8793&from=publication. Accessed August 30, 2017.
16. This scenario was created by Małgorzata Rybicka, further information is available at http://teatrnn.pl/kalendarium/node/1008/listy_do_henia. Accessed August 22, 2017.
17. Adam Kopciowski for example, questioned the ethics of the commemorative initiative using social media: ‘This is an act of pretending to be a person that has died, but we cannot be sure whether he spoke that way, whether he thought that way, whether he acted that way.’ These concerns were reported to Facebook which removed the profile from the site. Quote retrieved from article titled ‘Holocaust victim has 3,000 friends on Facebook,’ February 4, 2010. The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/7157366/Holocaust-victim-has-3000-friends-on-Facebook.html. Accessed August 15, 2017.
18. Stańczyk, “The Absent Jewish Child,” 374.
19. Ambrosewicz-Jacobs and Szuchta, “The Intricacies of Education about the Holocaust in Poland,” 290.
20. Ibid., 291.
21. Ibid., 292.
22. Gross, “Struggling to deal with the difficult past,” 446.
23. Interview with Grodzka Gate’s Education lab team, Lublin, April 20, 2016.
24. Gross, 442.
25. The debates triggered by Jan Gross’s books are already well documented and have not served as point of reference for this article because the intention here is to establish what information young people acquire from formal school education.
26. A member of the education lab informed me that they understand young people are exposed to anti-Semitic views of family members.
27. Term used by a member of the education team.
28. In Polish ‘mały żydowski chłopczyk Henio Żytomirski’ a quote from the booklet designed by the Grodzka Gate for the memory action from 2005.The booklet can be retrieved at http://www.tnn.pl/galeria/ksiazeczka/. Accessed August 29, 2017.
29. Zinczuk, “Workshop for Israeli and Polish Youth.”
30. See announcements from institutional statements, the highest attendance was registered in 2005 with 8 schools from Lublin, and 10 schools from the Lublin region. In the following years, attendance varied, for example in 2011, 6 participating schools; in 2012, 5 local schools; and in 2013, 6 schools. In addition to local attendance the workshop is offered to visiting school groups from abroad.
31. Quoted from booklet Lublin. Memory of the Place, section titled ‘The surroundings of the Gate.’
32. Information retrieved from a staff member in interview, Lublin, April 20, 2016.
33. Tanja Schult follows the Daffodil campaign, see conference presentation ‘Remembering Together: Polin’s Daffodil Campaign (AKCJA ŻONKILE),’ at the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, March 14, 2017.
34. Victor Turner’s discussion on liminality and communitas has relevance because of the semi-private and semi-public space this action. The Grodzka Gate’s public commemorations produce a transient communitas. In Turner’s view ‘Communitas has also an aspect of potentiality; it is often in the subjunctive mood,’ in ‘Liminality and Communitas’, 127.
35. Information provided in the interview with Grodzka Gate’s educational staff, Lublin, April 20, 2016.
36. An important difference to be made here is that the exhibition’s main narrative thrust is founded on the curatorial intentions to represent Jewish history in Poland as a story where Jews are ‘agents of history.’ Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett explains
‘The difference between a relational approach and Polish–Jewish relations, with its focus on antisemitism, is the difference between Jews as agents of history – in relation to others – and Jews as objects on which others project their fantasies and fears’, ‘Inside the Museum: Curating between hope and despair,’ 226.
37. Please note that all subsequent quotes are taken from letters written in the English language available on the Grodzka Gate’s web link http://teatrnn.pl/henio/listy-do-henia/. Accessed August 28, 2017.
38. Simon, The Touch of the Past, 8.
39. Young, The Texture of Memory, 13.
40. I would like to acknowledge and express gratitude to the Grodzka Gate’s education staff members for their kind assistance and to the schools participating in this study.
41. Notably, none of the responses count more than 20% of the total number of respondents. All quotations are from the 78 paper surveys collected in April 11 and 19, 2016.
42. Terminology developed by Parrott, Emotions in Social Psychology.
43. Young, The Texture of Memory, 132–3.
44. Section titled “The Surroundings of the Gate.”
45. See local press article ‘After march ONR “Brama Grodzka-NN Theatre” glued with stickers of nationalists’ [in Polish: ‘Po marszu ONR “Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN” obklejona wlepkami narodowców’] Wyborcza, February 27, 2017, retrieved from http://lublin.wyborcza.pl/lublin/7,48724,21428441,po-marszu-onr-brama-grodzka-teatr-nn-obklejona-wlepkami.html. Accessed December 5, 2017.
46. See article in local press ‘The Law and Justice deputy and relatives defend the arrested for anti-Semitic posters’ (in Polish: Poseł PiS i krewni bronią aresztowanego za antysemickie plakaty), Dziennik Wschodni, February 7, 2017, retrieved from http://www.dziennikwschodni.pl/lublin/posel-pis-i-krewni-bronia-aresztowanego-za-antysemickie-plakaty,n,140209684.html. Accessed December 5, 2017.
47. Foy, “The Lost Faces of Lublin.”
48. Gebert, “Projecting Poland and its Past.”