This book concerns building an idealized image of the society in which the Holocaust occurred. It inspects the category of the bystander (in Polish culture closely related to the witness), since the war recognized as the axis of self-presentation and majority politics of memory. The category is of performative character since it defines the roles of event participants, assumes passivity of the non-Jewish environment, and alienates the exterminated, thus making it impossible to speak about the bystanders' violence at the border between the ghetto and the 'Aryan' side. Bystanders were neither passive nor distanced; rather, they participated and played important roles in Nazi plans. Starting with the war, the authors analyze the functions of this category in the Polish discourse of memory through following its changing forms and showing links with social practices organizing the collective memory. Despite being often critiqued, this point of dispute about Polish memory rarely belongs to mainstream culture. It also blocks the memory of Polish violence against Jews. The book is intended for students and researchers interested in memory studies, the history of the Holocaust, the memory of genocide, and the war and postwar cultures of Poland and Eastern Europe.

Philo-Semitic Violence: Poland's Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives addresses the growing popularity of philo-Semitic violence in Poland between the 2000 revelation of Polish participation in the Holocaust and the 2015 authoritarian turn. Janicka and Zukowski examine phenomena termed a "new opening in Polish-Jewish relations," which stems from sociocultural change and the posthumous inclusion of those subjected to anti-Semitic violence. The authors investigate the terms and conditions of this inclusion whose object is an imagined collective Jewish figure. Different creators and media, same friendly intentions, same warm reception beyond class and political cleavages, regardless of gender and age. The made-to-measure Jewish figure confirms and legitimizes the majority narrative - especially about Polish stances and behaviors during the Holocaust. Enabled by this, philo-Semitic feelings indulge the dominant group in Baudrillard's retrospective hallucinations. The consequence: aggression toward anyone who dares to interrupt the narcissistic self-staging. This book exposes the Polish ethnoreligious identity regime that privileges the concern for the collective image over reality. The authors' inquiry shows how patterns of exclusion and violence are reproduced when anti-Semitism - with its Christian sources and community-building function - is not openly problematized, reassessed, and rejected in light of its consequences and the basic principle of equal rights.

This book concerns building an idealized image of the society in which the Holocaust occurred. It inspects the category of the bystander (in Polish culture closely related to the witness), since the war recognized as the axis of self-presentation and majority politics of memory. The category is of performative character since it defines the roles of event participants, assumes passivity of the non-Jewish environment, and alienates the exterminated, thus making it impossible to speak about the bystanders' violence at the border between the ghetto and the 'Aryan' side. Bystanders were neither passive nor distanced; rather, they participated and played important roles in Nazi plans. Starting with the war, the authors analyze the functions of this category in the Polish discourse of memory through following its changing forms and showing links with social practices organizing the collective memory. Despite being often critiqued, this point of dispute about Polish memory rarely belongs to mainstream culture. It also blocks the memory of Polish violence against Jews. The book is intended for students and researchers interested in memory studies, the history of the Holocaust, the memory of genocide, and the war and postwar cultures of Poland and Eastern Europe.