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This paper focuses on the memoryscapes of Cieszyn Silesia, Orawa and Spisz in a context of the border conflicts of the twentieth century. The regions located on the current Czech-Polish and Slovak-Polish border have lived through paralleled histories of the border demarcation after WWI, which was unprecedented there. In both cases the national minorities were left behind the border, outside of their home states. Their stories and memories are, however, not being researched together. This paper contrasts the patterns of memory production related to the border shifts in the landscape in both regions. Emphasis is placed on the memory sites, their narratives and memory activism related to the conflicting past. The results show that the main axes of both memory debates are contrasting. While the conflict over Cieszyn Silesia was most shaped by the short war in 1919, the lesser-known dispute over Orawa and Spisz was marked by numerous smaller incidents, assimilation efforts and a layer of post WWII violence. This has important consequences for the memory production. The other important differentiating factor is the scope of memory activism inside of the national minority group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed research analyzes the external and internal factors that determine the specificity of Solidarity as a community of civil society and driving force of social and cultural changes in Poland. The external factors of these processes are connected with the critical interpretation of social cynicism and 'Marxist collectivism' by autonomic group in Polish society. These processes of social corrosion are considered as a social alienation and consequences of social fragmentation in Soviet period. The paper focuses on the danger of collision between national and colonial versions of memory as well as the social challenge of guarantee the possibility of an integral development of man and community. The internal factors actualizes the interpretation of Solidarity as a community of social changes, the positive activities of Catholic church, religious and secular leaders, of their theoretical ideas in the context of evolution of Solidarity from traditional community to modern one based on democratic values, social and economic motivations. The analysis is centered on the theoretical problem of civil trust, and the meaning of cultural, religious, and moral factors in the activities of Solidarity movement. We regard the problematic of Solidarity at the same time from republican and liberal positions. Synthesizing the different approaches to the historical memory, and to the experience of formation and evolution of community, the paper also explores the role and significance of Solidarity in the process of post-soviet values transformation. The article deals with the value prerequisites of moral-normative community in the country of the former socialist camp, the revival of national identity, as well as the elimination of historical contradictions provoked by the communist regime. The study confirms that social changes became possible due to the successful combination of communitarian and liberal foundations of civil society, the elimination of external influences, and achieving autonomy from the Russian and Soviet historical heritage. In the period of Soviet occupation in Poland, throughout two decades a fundamentally important intellectual discourse was formed, which, in spite of the unfavorable political context, became a consolidating and integrating socio-political force that successfully resisted the totalitarian and unifying tendencies of communist regime. Intellectuals, along with the Catholic church, have become a driving force for social change, playing a key role in shaping the social strategy of national development that has changed the social landscape of 'communist' Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The memory of World War II in Poland is sometimes plagued by an us/them mentality or a competition of suffering. This paper will attempt to answer several questions: how are non-Jews contributing to Holocaust memorialization in Poland today? How can recognizing this contribution serve to heal rifts and change deep-seated stereotypes? We will present a case study, based on participant observation, of Bridge To Poland, which emphasizes memory work conducted by non-Jewish Poles. Bridge To Poland’s latest project in conjunction with the Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre Centre, The Neshoma Project: Conversations with Poles Rescuing Jewish Memory, highlights those whom Tec calls “Rescuers of Memory”. Exposing people to their work, Tec believes, results in breaking down negative stereotypes about non-Jewish Poles and building bridges between people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museums are a constantly developing segment of cultural tourism. Poland is in line with current trends in museums, expanding its offer and adapting it to the requirements of the world of contemporary image culture and multisensory experiences, which is increasingly dominated by technology. The authors of the paper undertook to recognise the specificity of military museums, by conducting a survey of approximately a third of all such institutions in Poland. Due to the subject-matter of their exhibitions, military museums create a broad field of research both in terms of aesthetics and museum practice, as well as the issues of shaping and maintaining collective memory and the identity of the nation. They form a special mirror in which the country's ideas and aspirations are reflected more often than any real characteristics. In reference to contemporary trends in museums, the article aims to place Polish military museums between locality and universality, education and entertainment, stability and dynamism, knowledge and experience. The results obtained allowed the authors to distinguish three groups of military museums in Poland, as well as indicate conditions conducive to the further development of such attractions in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Sensitive topics in qualitative fieldwork typically include health problems, sexual practices, addictions, illegal activity and death (Campbell 2002; Lee 1993; Liamputtong 2006). Yet, the situation of memories of intergroup violence committed by ingroup members on outgroups - where a community is confronted with the fact that their fellow members have harmed members of other groups - should also be considered as a sensitive topic. An especially sensitive situation occurs when research is conducted in a small community with relatively strong social control maintained through networks of relationships between its members. The aim of this paper is to explore the sensitivity of respondents in their remembering and forgetting of the harm done by members of their own group to the "Others" in local communities, to diagnose the difficulties in conducting fieldwork on this topic, and to present various methods of overcoming them. This article is based on experience from a project dedicated to the social memory of violence committed by Poles against members of other ethnic groups within local communities during World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Death is one of those universal parameters of life, yet very little attention is given to it in neither the work of planning practitioners nor that of landscape research. During the 19th and 20th century's many Western societies turned to cremation as a more sanitary, less costly and space saving way of human disposal. This paper highlights the cemeteries and crematoria as two types of facilities associated with cremation practices in Poland and in selected European countries. On the basis of analyses of contemporary funerary landscapes for cremation practices from Europe (31 objects from 9 countries) a catalogue (,pattern book') of design solutions was developed. Countries were selected on the basis of similarity to Poland in the aspect of the dominant religion (Austria, France, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia), convergent provisions of cemetery and funeral law (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Slovenia, Sweden), and index of average population served by 1 crematorium (Belgium). Moreover, assessment of Polish contemporary places for cremation (39 objects) was developed. To strengthen the multifaceted meaning of funerary landscape and to link it more with the landscape, design considerations and potential outcomes for improved cemetery design accommodating cremation practices and burial was developed. The funerary landscape is defined as a specific type of landscape that focuses on the phenomenological relation between death, disposal of the body in the environment and the social memory of the group participating in the remembrance of the burial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Komunikaty Mazursko-Warminskie is the property of Komunikaty Mazursko-Warminskie and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The research studies on collective memory in Poland have long tradition and clear cultural perspective. The aim of the text is to show this research tradition, which is deeply associated with Durkheimian School legacy, very strong in Poland, both in prewar as well as in postwar period, especially in the work of Stefan Czarnowski, the only Polish member of this School. In this perspective the social memory is closely connected with culture and time. These two categories: culture and social time as important factors in collective memory studies conducted in Poland are object of the present paper. The paper is composed of three parts. In the first one author explains why relations between social memory, culture and social time are important for evaluation of the Polish research tradition. The second part concerns its cultural perspective and is dedicated to the works of Stefan Czarnowski, who started many years ago the cultural stream in Polish memory studies. The third part presents the idea of social time and relations between sociology of time and memory studies in Polish sociology. This specificity of the Polish research studies on collective memory is unknown today, especially for foreign researchers. This tradition is worthy to be recollected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I present an analysis of Adam Michnik's notion of "Amnesty without Amnesia." His was a wise political judgment presented at a critical moment in the struggle to constitute a democratic polity in Poland. Mine is an appreciation of his political position, along with a sociological analysis that highlights the empirical difficulties of its realization in practical action. I will show how at critical moments of social change creative political action works to erase memories of the relevant past, which act as a repressive force, while "re-remembering" (to use Toni Morrison's formulation). Three cases will be compared, Michnik's, after the fall of the communist regime in east central Europe, and cases drawn from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the American presidential campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important developments in the incipient Berlin Republic's memory regime has been the return of the memory of German suffering from the end and aftermath of World War II. Elite discourses about the bombing of German cities, the mass rape of German women by members of the Red Army, and, above all, the expulsion of Germans from then-Eastern Germany and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe have gained massive visibility in the last decade. Although many voices have lauded these developments as liberating, many others within Germany and especially in Poland—from where the vast majority of Germans were expelled—have reacted with fear. Yet, do these elite voices resonate with mass publics? Have these arguments had demonstrable effects on public opinion? This paper delves into these questions by looking at survey results from both countries. It finds that there has been a disjuncture between the criticisms of elites and average citizens, but that the barrage of elite criticisms leveled at German expellees and their initiatives now may be affecting mass attitudes in all cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the democratic transition, Poland-United States relations have been framed by the Polish authorities as a strategic threat-management tool in the securitization process of Poland's geopolitical position, particularly concerning the Russian Federation. We analyse the process of securitization regarding Poland-US relations through latent topic modelling of Polish parliamentary speeches in the years 1991-2017. We demonstrate that the discourse on Polish-US relations is heavily dominated by security topics, narrowly understood as military security. Furthermore, even when economic issues are discussed, they are frequently linked to military operations. Based on Floyd's (2011, 2019) model of the moral rightness of securitization, we argue that the close relationship between securitizing moves (debates on Poland-US relations) and security practices (security events) suggests the basic sincerity of the securitizing actor, while the historical context reflected in the Polish collective memory strongly influences the audience's frame of reference and strengthens the power of the securitizing actor. However, although the case fulfils Floyd's (2019) criteria of morally right securitization, we have shown a historical disparity between the scope of securitizing moves with security practices and the existing level of threat. This demonstrates that the securitizing agent has been abusing securitization by exceeding the 'least harmful option', particularly due to the large asymmetry of power of the participants in the relationship, the securitization process stretched over a long period and the threat severity varying over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to draw attention to the importance of the body in the shaping of personal, family and national memories, and in the process of giving meaning to history and making it understandable, even in its contradictions. Through an ethnographic research carried out in Poland, the paper focus mainly on the construction of family resemblances as an embodied experience of the past, and an entry point for studies on collective and personal memories. Three points will be discussed. First, the relationship between body and memory occurs in the tension between history and heredity, the latter covering both social and biological transmissions. A second nexus between corporeality and memory in family narratives is constructed on a "gendered" and "ethnicized" image of the individual and the social body. Third, memory has been considered as a technique of the body involving senses and practical skills. The concept of embodiment then contributes to a more dynamic, performative and inter-subjective understanding of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on "Erinnern und erinnert werden. Das Türkengedächtnis und seine Funktion in Zentral-und Osteuropa," a conference that focused on the collective memory of and about the Turkish people in European history that took place in Krakow, Poland. Papers presented at the conference discussed topics such the memories of the Siege of Vienna, Austria by the Ottoman Empire, visual representations of Turks in art, and how Turks were portrayed in Hungarian literature.

Copyright of Phainomena is the property of Phenomenological Society of Ljubljana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper describes the struggle to shape and dominate the collective memory of the June 25, 1976 protest in the Polish city of Radom. First, I explain how the Polish Communist state attempted to shape the memory of the event as a criminal riot by stigmatizing the protesting workers' as hooligans. Second, I describe the campaign by the Workers Defense Committee, KOR, to create a counter-narrative of the event. Finally, I describe the continuing efforts by local leaders in Radom to remember and commemorate the protest. The combined effect of these various projects has resulted in pushing the actual participants, the protesting workers, to the symbolic margin of the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to outline the process of the extinction of Ukrainian culture in south-eastern Poland as a result of Polish resettlement actions and the activities of the Ukrainian underground movement (i.e., the Ukrainian Insurgent Army) in the post-war period (1944-1947). Concurrently, the study offers an analysis of the image of the "Ukrainian Banderite", created by propaganda in Polish and Czechoslovak literature, journalism, and cinematography in the period from the mid-1940s to the end of the 1980s. The authors state that both in Poland and in Czechoslovakia the analysed topic has been subject to certain cyclical waves of interest, or current political demand or usefulness, but always according to an established and politically accepted template. The black-and-white reception of the issue, propaganda fictions, the concealment of facts, and the disproportionate highlighting of others, which were applied in the literary and film production of the real-socialist period, only distorted the historical objectivity of the issue and created a complicated stereotype in the collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Adeptus is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on (re)constructing the local memorial landscape in a post- Soviet military base in Poland and the process of forging the local identity of its new inhabitants in the years 1993-2015. These processes, which occurred after the withdrawal of Russian Federation forces from the base and the establishment of a civilian town, find their reflection in the urban space of Borne Sulinowo and are written into a broader context of state policies and national debates about the past. The aim of the article is to present how the initiative in these processes has gradually shifted from the national level to the local, causing fragmentation and pluralisation of the collective memory. In this context certain significance can be attributed to the need to comply with EU standards, and to the progress of commercialisation of the past related to the development of tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conflicts associated with the memory of the Holocaust in Poland reflect educational gaps in the Polish education system (lack of bad memory). Comparison with other similar studies in Europe and beyond allows one to reveal affinities and divergences in patterns of behaviour in various states in relation to the historical past, social identity and collective memory. This text looks at the consciousness of young Poles, in terms of attitudes toward Jews, the Holocaust and memory of the Holocaust. The data presented are the preliminary results of the author’s longitudinal study “Attitudes of Young Poles toward the Jews and the Holocaust”. Quantitative and qualitative studies include field studies and participant observation of educational projects in Tykocin, Treblinka, Warsaw, Lublin, Bodzentyn and Kielce. The number and scope of initiatives in Poland attempting to bring back the memory of Jewish neighbours indicate that civic institutions and individuals are intensifying their efforts to teach their fellow citizens about the Holocaust, however their impact should be assessed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes textbooks and curricula for primary schools in Poland published between 1944 and 1989 to show how the communist regime attempted to influence Polish history education via political change and educational reform. The article focuses on five aspects of this influence: Marxist methodology of history, portrayals of political parties, promotion of a 'scientific' worldview, justification of new boundaries and alliances of the People's Poland, and a new pantheon of national heroes. In conclusion, the article investigates the effectiveness of history education in shaping Polish collective memory under the communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses speeches and debates in the Sejm, the national parliament of Poland, regarding the country's Communist past and collective memory, as highlighted by controversies about lustration legislation concerning the removal of officials implicated in Communist violations of the rule of law. It argues that many of the rhetorical strategies of coming to terms with the past were taken from the attempts by other countries to deal with past experiences of dictatorship, including Germany, the Czech Republic, and Portugal. It suggests that speakers selected international examples based on their political ideologies and attitudes toward retribution, restitution, and reconciliation.

The legacy of the Solidarity movement of the 1980s, which was a leading force in the region's 1989 revolutions, culminating most symbolically with the fall of the Berlin Wall, has yet to be institutionalized in Polish social memory. A spate of official commemorations marking the movement's 25th anniversary in 2005 provided a palette on which Poles projected (or refused to project) their memories. The movement's legacy continues to play out in current and contentious electoral politics, since the leaders of the top contending parties are former Solidarity activists. Despite and partly because of this active presence of Solidarity movement players, Polish civil society appears to be in a liminal state of active hesitation over the task of concretizing this movement's past in commemorative forms. This article proposes six cultural and political explanations for this hesitation. It also recommends that social scientists disaggregate the concept of memory work into various manifestations on a continuum from hesitation to deliberation and agitation to institutionalization. As the article illustrates, hesitation can constitute action. At stake in this exercise is a larger discourse over the direction of the post-1989 socio-political changes vis-à-vis the aims of the 1989 revolutions and the meaning of democracy and transitional justice in a posttotalitarian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how the March events that occurred in Poland in 1968 are gaining greater recognition in the country's collective memory. The events, which involved student protests, the dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda by the Polish United Workers' Party and, ultimately, the forced emigration some 15,000 Jewish Poles form the country, were commemorated in 2008 and represent an effort by the country to come to terms with its history. The article explores the events of 1968 and discusses there unique position in Polish history.

In a series of sociological studies conducted in Poland since the 1970s researchers have concluded that family is the most widely accepted social frame of reference and the nation occupies second place. The contemporary Polish family continues to straddle the boundary between private and public spheres in a manner that permits it to take on certain public functions of other institutions. Given its historical role, the family possesses a legacy of norms that have placed the family in the space belonging to national society, which since 1989 has operated within the structures of a sovereign state. The stock of memories in certain families "pushes" members of those families into life in local communities even as other families limit, block, or withdraw their members from participation in the worlds beyond the family. Using the results of field research this article analyzes the family in terms of how its members remember the family's past: first, by taking into account the two ways of interpreting family memory, that is, object-oriented (focused on material memorabilia from the past) and subject-oriented (focused on the orientations and attitude of the family's members toward its past); second, by concentrating on those elements of memory that pertain to the family's broader social environment, that is, local and regional community as well as national setting. We then conclude this review of local variations of family memory in Poland actively rooted in a local setting with a brief discussion of the phenomenon of collective memory deficit. Individuals characterized by such a deficit long for the era of the communist system, demand welfare guarantees from national and local authorities, objectify themselves, and ultimately exclude themselves from local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Polish collective memory of World War II integrates the Soviet occupation of the eastern areas, and the Nazi occupation in the west. Analysis of mass media communication shows that both pre-1989, and after that date different interpretations of events from that era were presented. Surveys carried out from 1965 to 2004 demonstrate that for the majority of Poles World War II gives them reason to be proud, and few see any cause for shame. The war experience of family members is also a common topic between family and friends. Recalling or passing down war experiences in a private, family setting stems from the fact that in Europe World War II affected everybody, civilians included. The presence of "personal perspectives" in the memory of World War II is a sign of the development of the "postnational" attitude toward the past. Another expression of this attitude is the drive to preserve the memory of concrete individuals, victims of the war, as well as to accept the remembrance of those who fought on the other side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teresa Żarnower (1897, Warsaw, Poland–1949, New York, United States), a Polish Constructivist artist of Jewish descent who was forced to emigrate abroad during World War II, became a dominant figure working for the Polish government in exile. She produced a series of photomontages for a book titled The Defense of Warsaw, which was published in 1942 by a "Polish Labor Group" in New York. Żarnower used her technical expertise in photomontage to create new configurations of war photographs documenting Nazi Germany's attack on Poland in 1939. She chose this shocking and politically loaded content to gain credibility and global attention for her work. Drawing on Benjamin Buchloh's essay From Faktura to Factography, the aim of this study is to analyze the factographic paradigm in the usage of war photography and in the context of the esthetics of constructivist photomontage. The focus will lie on its mnemonic and archival functions, further highlighting the montage's function as a key form of social memory model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]