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Historical anniversaries generate breakthroughs, mark systemic and political turns, and remind us of the events and characters from the past. The subject of the article are the anniversary resolutions of the Sejm and the Senate of the Republic of Poland, which I define as a tool for shaping the politics of memory and collective memory that are one of the forms of commemorating the past and serving the political authorities as means for its interpretation. I assume that the choice of anniversaries and historical figures that deserve to be commemorated is dictated by the ideological and political orientation of political parties and groups. In the above context, it is worth asking the question – referring to the title of the article – should the anniversary resolutions of the Sejm and the Senate of the Republic of Poland, their form, content, as well as way of proceeding and adopting them be considered as important and momentous narratives, or rather as alternative and marginal ones? The considerations will be illustrated with examples of resolutions adopted on the occasion of the 70th and 80th anniversaries of the outbreak of the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miedzianka – a lower Silesian village, earlier: mining town and a leisure-tourist resort, ger. Kupferberg. It is said that it is a ghost-town, which has (almost) disappeared. Some traces, however, remained – a church, photography or human memories – both from before World War II, of German citizens and after the world war of Polish inhabitants. All of them are connected by the traumatic experience that combines post-war resettlement and the destruction of the town. The memory of Miedzianka was not destroyed, though, being passed to next generations. One of the voices of this post-memory can be found in the report by Filip Springer, Miedzianka: Story of Disappearing in 2011. This book quickly became recognised ensuing an increasing interest in the town, its history and fate, making new post-memory narrations to appear, which I describe as „post-memory practice”. One of them is Miasto, którego nie było (A City, Which Didn’t Exist). What and how do these books tell us about Miedzianka? In what sense do these alternative but interpenetrating narrations influence the perception of this place, as well as the memory of it? These questions are the basis of the reflections leading to a display of relations between man and his oblivion/memory and the place. The literature, however, or widely art, having the power to preserve memory and therefore to save, allows the showcasing of the transformation of the town: its history, disappearance, and finally transubstantiation into a place of memory, which is created mainly by the second and third generations – heritage depositories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this article is to show how the Ukrainian community in North America, thanks to cultivating the memory of a marginal event from the point of view of American history, managed to appear in the social life of the USA and Canada. Here I use the concept of ‘community of memory’ to emphasize those Ukrainian communities in the USA and Canada that are of utmost importance in the commemoration of Holodomor. They also managed to retain this event’s memory in many other competing memories, dabbling in the memory of their identity as American Ukrainian. Therefore, in the following sections of the article, I will attempt to answer why it was the diaspora that undertook a tremendous effort to commemorate Holodomor’s victims and the course of that process for years. Finally, I employ critical analysis of media discourses. Moreover, I will consider the Holodomor generation’s role in cultivating that memory and emergence of the ‘communities of memory’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translation competence is not only a good command of the languages but also the knowledge about the reality, culture, and history of both communities of communication. The observations conducted during the process of developing translation competence on philological studies allow us to make a hypothesis. The knowledge about the reality, affairs, and trauma associated with the decline of the socialist period and political transformation in Poland should be stored in the young generation’s memory not only thanks to history teaching at school, but also their parents’ and grandparents’ memories. However, the knowledge is not sufficient for adequate translation from Polish to Russian. The article presents the results of questionnaire surveys conducted among primary schools pupils in the Rzeszów region and Russian Philology students at the University of Rzeszów. The young generation’s memory of the decline of Polish People’s Republic and the texts translated by students of the translation speciality are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary German literature, particularly in the family novels that are key to the post-memory discourse of the past, there is a marked interest in the dysfunctions and deformations of memory associated with ageing processes. Demographic changes lead researchers to consider the determinants and the existing dominant themes and categories of interdisciplinary memory studies. Ulrike Draesner’s 2014 novel, Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt, the subject of this paper, probes the meanders of memory and forgetting, examining their configurations in intergenerational relations. I am interested here in the threads that have been marginalized in the popular discourse on the flight and resettlement of millions of Germans from the eastern provinces of the Reich, which emerge along with the progressive dementia of one of the novel’s main characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The material being presented in this paper is a study case – the analysis of an interview which the author conducted with a granddaughter of the Lemkos displaced to Lower Silesia in 1947 as part of Operation Vistula. The narration of the interlocutor overfilled with emotions reveals the traumatic context of her incessant search for an answer to the question: Who am I? Since she did not agree to make the entirety of her talk public, transferring in this way the obligation to protect her name onto the author, the interview became a unique personal experience for the latter at the same time. Therefore, only those fragments of the above-mentioned interview are referred to in the text, which can be juxtaposed against opinions and sentiments of other Lemkos of the third generation. The aim is to make precise the contemporary picture of the Lemkos’ family-based post-memory that is burdened with the sense of harm and humiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two main models of memory in Ukraine: nationalist and post-Soviet. After 1991, Ukrainian historiography concerning the Holokaust was influenced by Soviet and emigration historiography. It was reactive to the allegations that the Ukrainians are anti-Semitic. In the nationalist model of memory, there is no space for the memory of the Holokaust in Ukraine, it is rather a strategy of displacing trauma and guilt or emphasizing the contribution of Ukrainians to saving Jews. The post-Soviet model also goes without a narrative about the Holokaust, but rather because of the lack of tradition in the USSR of describing war as a multi-ethnic experience. In this sense, both models are similar – both are mono-ethnic narratives. The minority discourse (ethnic model) about the Holokaust in Ukraine has not yet advanced to the rank of a nationwide narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of the article is to check whether traditional medicine practice could be a possible code of post-memory. Supporting traditional medicine in modern Mongolia by the government and the World Health Organization seems to be an interesting example of such a combination. After spending a long time under the communist rule, Mongolian society returns to their traditional concept of health and illness. Traditional Mongolian knowledge defines the state of being healthy as a harmony of three elements: khii, šar and badgan. Treating a disease which is perceived as a state of imbalance between these elements is strongly intertwined with Buddhist tradition practised by healers who are called emchi. Restoring such concepts among Mongolian society after the dominance of biomedical model of health during communism could possibly be a sphere of post-memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having the rich art of commemorating events of the Second World War as a key reference, this article will try to show how contemporary architectural interventions in public space make attempts to respond to the social need of dealing with traumatic events and formulating a new attitude towards threatened places. The point of reference for our reflections will be the events affecting contemporary city in the 21th century associated with terrorist attacks. In order to determine types of architectural narratives about traumatic events developed in urban space, some memorial places in Europe and the USA will be analysed (e.g. Atocha station in Madrid, 9/11 Memorial in New York, Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial). Referring to examples of memorials and monuments, we will look at contemporary tendencies in designing commemorative architecture and how architecture reflects and supports the social and individual process of trauma recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity of the anti-communist underground was for many years a marginalised element both in historical education and public discourse. However, we have noticed a significant turn in this matter recently. This process is manifested by specific 'acts of remembrance,' such as honorary funerals of the exhumed cursed soldiers' bodies. What is crucial is that in the background we can observe an extremely important action of constructing memory about the activists of the Polish underground, in which several separate narratives can be distinguished. Mass media play a key role in this process. They create interpretative schemes using among others the 'post-memory' testimonies and influence on constructing social memory and post-memory itself. The aim of this article is to recreate interpretative schemes concerning the life and activity of the cursed soldiers in the following Polish weeklies: Gość Niedzielny, Polityka, Newsweek Polska and wSieci. My selection was determined by their current sales results. The method used in the study is framing analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to show the dependence between language, collective memory (also post-memory) and sense of identity. This issue is analysed using the example of an ethnic minority living in the village of Ostojićevo (Banat, Serbia) called 'Toutowie.' Their ancestors came in the 19th century from Wisła (Silesian Cieszyn, Poland); they left their homes because of great hunger and were looking for jobs in Banat. Narratives about the past contain traumatic experiences of the past generations transmitted in the Silesian dialect and constituting communicative memory. At the same time, a new Polish national identity is being constructed, supported by institutions and authorities; it carries a new image of the world and creates a new cultural memory. This new identity - shaped on the basis of national categories - leads to changes of its self-identification and gives the opportunity to raise its social position in the multi-ethnic Banat community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains analyses of several contemporary literary texts concerning the category of post-memory written in the background of the Kashubian culture. It mainly interprets prose works (Drewz, Bunda, Drzeżdżon) as well as the novel on which the film Kamerdyner was based. The analyses led to determining the phenomena defined by Sigmund Freud related to psychoanalysis and referring to the works by A. and J. Assmann, M. Hirsch and D. LaCapra. Thus Kashubian literature, written in Polish and Kashubian, shows post-memory mechanisms in the form of crowding out, transferring, repeating and overcoming the trauma of World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social trauma is a result of a collusion between the individual experience of trauma and the culture-mediated process of communal creation, negotiation and structuring of meaning. It emerges from the process of communalisation of individual trauma: when individual trauma becomes an experience shared originally by a 'carrier group' and later on spreads throughout whole societies. As a communal experience trauma alienates from their carriers by means of cultural media and their products. In the form of cultural artifacts, such as movies or books, it transforms into a Durkheimian social fact. The inability to negate it ultimately forces the society to engage in negotiations of meaning, resulting in either a refutation or an inclusion of the carrier group's trauma into the wider social identity. The act of emergence of social trauma can be defined as a complex, multilayered process of continuous expansion of the intersubjective field. The history of American engagement in the Vietnam war and the society's reaction to it serves as an informative example of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses post-memory narratives concerning the loss of the eastern provinces of the Reich as well as the flight and expulsion of their German inhabitants as found in the novels of German writers born in the 1950s and 1960s: Hans-Ulrich Treichel's 'Der Verlorene' (1998) and 'Anatolin' (2008), Reinhard Jirgl's 'Die Unvollendeten' (2003) and Ulrike Draesner's 'Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt' (2014). These stories showing far-reaching consequences of the 'expulsion from the East' examine complex mechanisms through which traumatic knowledge about the past is handed down from generation to generation. Consequently, the paper focuses on how the German authors make use of motifs characterizing post-memory or post-traumatic discourse about mourning and loss, and the way the key figures of that discourse structure their texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is dedicated to the problem of trauma and death shown in contemporary transnational (made by directors living in Germany, but of non-German origin) German feature, documentary and experimental film. It raises the question of how the medium of film within its various narration and depiction modes (re) creates memory and post-memory, and at the same time it can be seen as a way to reclaim history in its personal or cultural dimension. The following films have been discussed: Totentraum (1995) and In fremder Erde (2001) by Ayhan Salar, Passing Drama (1999) by Angela Melitopoulos and The Cut (2014) by Fatih Akin. For this purpose, the author has implemented inter alia Aleida and Jan Assmann's theory of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this research is the book 'El pecado nefando del obispo de Salamina' (The deplorable sin of the bishop of Salamina) written in 2002 by the Spanish historian Francisco Núñez Roldán. In the context of post-memory I am interested in the origins of this book, which are connected with the Spanish Inquisition and the attempts to regard its author as a secondary witness. It is also important that the activities of the Holy Office (1478-1834) are not only the subject of continuing historical research but are also a rich source of inspiration for artists and scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sacha Batthyany found out that in 1945 his aunt hosted a ball during which 180 Jews were shot by her guests. Their mass grave has not been found until today. She also helped many Nazis escape from Hungary. Sacha's family kept these stories secret for years. For Sacha, the discovery of his family's past becomes the beginning of a new life, recognizing the tormenting feeling of guilt as inherited from his ancestors. Can we define the sense of guilt as traumatic? We can certainly try to do it. Yet, trauma assumes different shapes and reveals its huge interpretative potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 21th century, one of the representatives of the writers' young generation, Pavel Sanayev, has written a novel related to the period of communism and at the same time, to his own family's past. Many of his ancestors (grandfather, mother, stepfather) were involved with the film industry. As Sanayev has not considerably changed their surnames his book can be considered as an autobiography. The apartment where the eight-year old protagonist lived can be treated as a metaphor of a Soviet concentration camp. Sasha Savelyev was brought up by his cruel, crazy grandmother who did not allow him to leave home, play with other children or even go to school. She did that because she saw Sasha as a weak boy suffering from different serious diseases. Numerous injections, pills, drops, visits to doctors, nurses' visits, sadness, disappointment… seem to be his torture and punishment. Limited space, regulations and orders can be seen to symbolise communist Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traumatic experience of war and the Holocaust not only left its mark on the psyche of the people affected by it, it also left a deep imprint on the consciousness of the next generation. The aim of this article is to present the phenomenon of generational transmission of post-war trauma in relation to the concept of trajectory, developed in sociology. The concept of trajectory allows for better examination and understanding of the biographical processes of suffering that arises and grows in the situation of social disorder and the breakdown of moral norms. Tragic experiences from the parents' past are a significant conditioning of the way children perceive their stories and themselves. Post-memory, as the second generation's memory created by family narratives, is a form of remembering what has happened, which determines the process of constructing the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of paper is to discover traces of the deceased and recreate bonds between a human and an object (objects). In the narrative two autobiographies were analysed: Lydia Flem's 'How I emptied my parents' house' ('Comment j'ai vidé la maison de mes parents') and Marcin Wicha's 'Items I didn't throw away' ('Rzeczy, których nie wyrzuciłem'). Both authors mourn their mothers. According to the specific Jewish 'idiom' they run a post-memorial thread related to their mothers' origins and historical implications (post-memory is understood, after Marianne Hirsch, as a specific kind of transfer of some traumatic experience). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although originally the term 'post-memory' referred to the experiences and memories of the survivors that influenced the biographies of their children, in the following years its meaning was extended and the concept started to be used to describe the processes of transmitting the memory of any traumatic experience within any group, not necessarily bound by blood. In the case of Lublin, where one third of the pre-war community consisted of Jews, most of whom were murdered during World War II, the position of non-Jewish vicarious witnesses seems to be particularly important. This article discusses some aspects of the Holocaust post-memory discourse referring to the cultural activities of the 'Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre' Centre. Research questions will concern the artistic language and means of expression of these projects as well as the aesthetic codes that are being used by vicarious witnesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early books by Mikołaj Grynberg containing conversations with survivors and their children allowed the writer to discover perspectives unknown to him before. With time these stories, combined with his own experiences, have become the basis for writing 'Rejwach'. In the article, while introducing the author's search for form, the author will show how the contemporary writing about the Holocaust has evolved. Grynberg, on the basis of testimonies he has heard, creates stories which many people affected by the Holocaust can identify with - people from the first, second and even third generation of survivors. Although fictitious, they have a universal value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains considerations over the formation of family‑based remembrance of the past (post‑memory) among the young generation of Kresowiacy (Poles displaced from the Former Eastern Lands belonging to Poland before WW2) living now in Opole in Silesia - a unique region of Poland. Results of empirical research indicate that the family‑related post‑memory (inherited memory), in the young generation of the displaced is not a linear string, whose endpoint is the presence. It is random and fragmentary, with different time contexts, in which there has followed a clear mix‑up of orders covering different dimensions of historical and family events. It is rather that personalistic and historical events most frequently occur as the background of the narration. Young people are most often occasional listeners rather than active researchers of the family past, in particular those traumas that until today have raised anxiety, liberated strong emotions and reminded of the “lost Arcadia”. The everyday life does not favour this type of reflection, and experienced social situations enforce participation in the Silesian regional culture. Such a shape of post‑memory is a result of a series of social processes connected with assimilative and adaptive activities aimed at forming a group of the so‑called “new autochthons”, which were undertaken by the socialist authorities. One can perceive also a hidden and unintended function of these returns to the past, which manifests itself as a wish to maintain group identity in the future through recreating and evoking traumas of the past, that is constructing the “expelled memory”. Nevertheless, the young generation of the displaced in Opole region only to a little extent are becoming its participants and receivers. The heritage of the Former Eastern Lands of Poland, remembrance of the traumas of the past make rather partially forgotten or being forgotten group luggage of the past than an element of group pride. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The memory has a special meaning both in the Jewish as well as the Christian tradition. It differs from other religious and cultural traditions. Its heart comes from the commandments Zakhor, Remember which means the permanent actualisation of the events which founded and essentially shaped the identity of Jews and Christians. The notion of zikkaron (memorial) reveals the duty to be in relation with the past in function of the present and the future in order not to be separated from God. Thus these two traditions allow to their believers to discover and not to lose the very sense of the human life with its most challenging aspects as suffering, weakness and death. Probably the most influential event in the history within this path of reflection was the Shoah, erroneously named Holocaust, the catastrophe which happened to the Jewish people in result of the Nazi ideology. If we don't include this horrifying genocide into the Jewish, Christian and human history as a subject of a deep biblical and profound thinking, we cannot avoid two traps: to be fixed and lost in the past or to lose our memory and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text is an attempt to determine the relationship between post‑memory (or - in other words - “vicarious memory”) and art. Particular attention is given to visual arts. The works of artists of the younger generation, such as Libera, Bałka, Żmijewski, and to some extent Betlejewski, who explored the memory of the Shoah, were discussed. Their works can be considered a form of manifestation of post‑memory. Assuming that the analysis of artistic phenomena is not possible without reference to the social context in which art is created and its social responsibility, the works of these artists were confronted with the material traces of memory (including Jedwabne, Kolno, Jeleniewo) that shape the social background of artistic creativity, its reception and debate about it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]