Abstract
The disappearance of the numerous Jewish communities that used to live on the territory of pre-Second World War Poland has an important impact on the contemporary identity of Polish society. The immediate consequence of the Shoah was the destruction of Jewish life in Poland but it was not the only outcome of the genocide. In the postwar decades the reminiscence of what had happened to the Polish Jews did not find a proper place in the collective memory. This was due to the official historical policy of the Communist government and the fact that a genocide that happened ‘at home’ evokes fear rather than the will to remember, as I will illustrate in this chapter. It also explains why the Jewish tragedy of the Second World War has never been clearly articulated and fully understood in Poland. As a result, evoking the Shoah and especially the role of Poles in the genocide still raises a lot of controversy.
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© 2013 Katarzyna Szurmiak
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Szurmiak, K. (2013). Mass Amnesia:. In: Ingelaere, B., Parmentier, S., Jacques Haers, S.J., Segaert, B. (eds) Genocide, Risk and Resilience. Rethinking Political Violence Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137332431_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137332431_14
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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