Abstrakt: | This text reviews Karolina Koprowska’s Postronni? Zagłada w relacjach chłopskich świadków
[Bystanders? The Shoah in Peasant Accounts]. By means of Hilberg’s triad of perpetrator–victim–
witness, the review analyses the shifts in perception of bystanders, inaugurated by Claude
Lanzmann’s Shoah and two texts: Jan Błoński’s “Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto” [“Poor Poles Look
at Ghetto”] and Jan Tomasz Gross’s The Neighbors. Moreover, this analysis emphasises the fact of growing academic interest in the “peripheries of the Shoah,” taking place in the early 21st century,
and investigates recent publications in Polish Holocaust studies that postulate the re-definition of
the witness as a cultural category. According to the review, Koprowska’s book can be devoted into
two parts: theoretical one and analytic one. The former gathers different conceptualisations of
a bystander, introduces the reader to the situation of Polish countryside in the times of the Shoah,
and describes the strategies of bystanders, who are referenced as locals inherently belonging to
the topography of a peasant landscape. The latter – and more important – part is dedicated to
the category of silence, but also to that which leaves something unsaid. Koprowska distinguishes
three types of such a trope: the repressed story (exemplified by Paweł Łoziński’s Miejsce urodzenia
[Birthplace]), the strategy of “looking but not seeing” (exemplified by the applications to
“Describe my countryside” competition), and descriptions abundant in metaphors and generic
links to fairy tale (Tadeusz Nowak’s oeuvre). The conclusions of the review are supplemented by
the reference to Mordechaj Canin’s Przez ruiny i zgliszcza. Podróż po stu zgładzonych gminach
żydowskich w Polsce [Through Ruins and Remnants. A Journey through One Hundred Jewish Communities
in Poland after the Holocaust], which explores the positions of Polish peasants regarding
the Shoah. Recenzja Książki: Karolina Koprowska: Postronni? Zagłada w relacjach chłopskich świadków. Kraków, Universitas, 2018, ss. 216. |