Holocaust Monuments in Poland: Forms, Meanings, and Messages

• In Event: Between Absence and Presence: Negotiating the Commemoration of Nazi Injustice in East and West Germany as well as Poland

Abstract

The memory of the glorious and significant Jewish past in Poland is in the form of ruined synagogues, displaced or neglected gravestones in cemeteries, warehouses full of relics, ruins of concentration and extermination camps. All the memory of this Jewish past remained in the hands of the Poles and became part of the Polish national landscape.
One of the ways to commemorate the magnificent and rich Jewish past, the way the Jewish communities were destroyed and the way the Jews of these communities were murdered is through monuments. Holocaust monuments in Polen were erected right after World War II and continue to be constructed until the present.
The questions that rises are: What is the character of the commemoration presented in the monuments, Polish, Jewish or universal? Which themes are commemorated, and which artistic expressions were chosen for this purpose?
In my lecture I wish the show the fabric of references to the Holocaust in Polish Holocaust monuments erected through the years, their historiographical context, and the variety of visual expressions.

Author

• Batya Brutin, Beit Berl College (Israel)