In the summer and fall of 1998, ultranationalist Polish Catholics
erected hundreds of crosses outside Auschwitz, setting off a fierce
debate that pitted Catholics and Jews against one another. While
this controversy had ramifications that extended well beyond
Poland's borders, Genevieve Zubrzycki sees it as a particularly
crucial moment in the development of post-Communist Poland's
statehood and its changing relationship to Catholicism. In The
Crosses of Auschwitz, Zubrzycki skillfully demonstrates how this
episode crystallized latent social conflicts regarding the
significance of Catholicism in defining "Polishness" and the role
of anti-Semitism in the construction of a new Polish identity.
Since the fall of Communism, the binding that has held Polish
identity and Catholicism together has begun to erode, creating
unease among ultranationalists. Within their construction of Polish
identity also exists pride in the Polish people's long history of
suffering. For the ultranationalists, then, the crosses at
Auschwitz were not only symbols of their ethno-Catholic vision, but
also an attempt to lay claim to what they perceived was a Jewish
monopoly over martyrdom. This gripping account of the emotional and
aesthetic aspects of the scene of the crosses at Auschwitz offers
profound insights into what Polishness is today and what it may
become.
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