Volume 70, Issue 3

This introduction to the special issue presents the overall theoretical and methodological argument of the collection, namely that decentered, interdisciplinary, and local-level studies of memory processes in Poland can act as a corrective to the dominant state-centered trends that have been observed during the eight years of rule of the Law and Justice party (2015–2023). The introduction also offers a brief literature review, as well as summaries of the individual articles in the collection.

In recent years, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the cultural and political significance of joyful, positive and nostalgic memories and forms of remembrance. Without downplaying the role of trauma and oppression in the mnemonic makeup of contemporary societies, memory scholars have increasingly pointed to the co-existence, or parallel existence, of brighter recollections of the past, and to their role in bringing about hope and social mobilization (Katriel & Reading 2015; Keightley & Pickering 2012; Rigney 2018; Sindbæk Andersen & Ortner 2019). Engaging with these streams of thought, my article will offer a closer look at the interplay between memories of friendship and mutual care, and remembrance as a form of caring (Till 2012), which enables the continuation and/or formation of solidaric bonds, practices, and ideas. Empirically, the article departs from Nowa Huta, a district in Kraków, which was founded in 1949 as the “first socialist town in Poland”, and which eventually, in the 1980 s, turned into one of the main bastions of the oppositional Solidarity movement. After 1989, Nowa Huta became fertile ground for memory work of different kinds: commemorations, exhibitions, nostalgic venues and paraphernalia, along with numerous heated debates on the matter of remembrance. While divisive in the public sphere, memory has simultaneously served as a creative and cohesive force for many of the local communities, of different orientation, which put their mark on contemporary Nowa Huta. Drawing on ethnographic field work, my article will illustrate the role of memory in sustaining care and friendship within a few of these communities. It will also show the wider entanglements of these communal memories; how they relate and sometimes serve as corrections to diverging representations of the past and how they move from their ‘original’ confines to a younger generation of locally involved inhabitants in Nowa Huta. In that way, they function as a kind of springboard, a resource, for continuous place-based caring and solidaric action within and for the neighborhood.

This article explores memoryscapes of the Jewish community in Brzesko and Nowy Wiśnicz, towns in Polish Galicia. These towns present divergent methods of dealing with the past in which Jews – the Others and Neighbors – perished and disappeared. In Nowy Wiśnicz, the remembrance of Jewish residents is limited. Despite boasting a large Jewish cemetery and multiple locals awarded Righteous Among the Nations, the focus remains on Jan Matejko, a renowned Polish painter. In 1945, there were numerous incidents of anti-Semitic violence in Nowy Wiśnicz. This violence was directed not only towards the few survivors who returned, but also towards what little remained of the Jewish quarter. By the end of the 1950 s, all buildings in that quarter had been demolished. In contrast, Brzesko honors its departed Jewish community through the March of the Living, with the local government supporting the erection of plaques, memorials, and exhibitions. The exhibition at the local museum, facilitated by local memory leaders, covered the topic of Jews in Brzesko. While the memory of this topic seems to be “closed” and settled, a closer examination of tourist flyers describing the history of the town’s market square reveals an absence of the word “Jewish”, even though the square was once bustling with Jewish shops prior to the war. The study of the interaction between the researchers and the leaders of local memory will provide insight into the power dynamics within the research team, interlocutors, and the wider community.

This article explores the memory strategies and approaches to German materiality in the lands incorporated by Poland in 1945, the so-called Recovered Territories, specifically in Central Pomerania. The research method involves a comparative narrative study of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and a group of bureaucratic documents from 1958, related to a trade in formerly German cemetery stones in the Koszalin region. This case study reveals the legal and political complexities of dealing with formerly German property and heritage in 1950 s People’s Poland, as well as the attempts by local authorities to control and limit access to these cemetery stones, seen as valuable and scarce resources. The results show an inner dynamic of remembrance and forgetting, unveiled through the tension between center-imposed solutions from the ministries in Warsaw and locally decoded meanings. This study provides a new reading of the multifaceted history of the second half of the 1950 s in the People’s Republic of Poland, partially established in the formerly German lands. The findings are significant as they contribute to our understanding of the complex memory processes in the post-war period, shedding light on the interaction between central and local memory strategies and the handling of formerly German property and heritage.

Using the fate of the Polish city of Wrocław as an example, I present the role of architectural reconstruction/renovation in building the identity of a city with broken structures of long duration. The emergence of Wrocław after the Second World from the ruins of the German city of Breslau was one of the most prominent urban social experiments in European history. However, due to the purely political context of the city’s birth, Wrocław residents still cope with the issue of having no ties to the city’s foreign architectural fabric. In this study, I analyse the elite’s narrative practices, whose aim is to create a sense of identification of people with the city. I discuss the above issue in detail using the example of the renovation of Wrocław Market Square (1995–1997). As viewed by the elite, the renovation of the Market Square gave the city a high position among European cities. However, as I show on the basis of the collected empirical material – thirty in-depth interviews, ordinary city residents regard the Market Square simply as a tourist-attractive space – mostly in its consumer dimension: a pleasing background for dining. The story told by the elites about the Market Square, which was supposed to “start new thinking about the whole city” and “create perspectives”, completely misses the narratives of residents about this part of the city.

This article explores Olga Tokarczuk’s historical novel The Books of Jacob as a feminist narrative that challenges established memory regimes in Poland and East-Central Europe. I argue that Tokarczuk’s ex-centric storytelling approach, emphasizing a “micro-history approach,” offers an alternative perspective on the Jewish past by foregrounding strong female figures and depicting violence against Jewish women. This ex-centric perspective, as Tokarczuk defines it, involves consciously leaving the center to reveal overlooked aspects of history and memory. The article contends that, despite being fictional, Tokarczuk’s narrative contributes to the creation of new historical truths by transcending androcentric constructions of historiography, thereby bringing marginalized experiences, particularly those of women, to the forefront. Examining archival images alongside the literary text, the article challenges stereotypical depictions of Jewish women, presenting them as strong and present characters. A feminist reading of the novel additionally unveils the hidden tragedies of sexual violence faced by Jewish women. Central to this exploration is the character Yente, who transcends time and space, embodying one of Tokarczuk’s innovative narratological tools. In summary, the analysis of The Books of Jacob demonstrates the potential of fiction to act as a vehicle for alternative narratives which also include uncomfortable historical truths.

This article aims to provide a cognitive definition of the concept of patriotism in a (left-)liberal profile in Polish. The methodological basis is the Cognitive Ethnolinguistics , an approach developed and well established among Slavists, and the data corpus comes from the (left-)liberal, high circulation newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza . The main intention is to distinguish subprofiles of this profile, but also sub-subprofiles, which are associatively motivated and show diverse connotations. A detailed investigation and subsequent formulation of facets , superordinate categories of description, and then of the sub-subprofiles is possible using the corpus-driven approach and the cognitive definition as a concept description tool. Therein lies the novelty of this analysis.

The article is devoted to a category of titles of books in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth throughout the Baroque age. Besides more traditional titles containing words related to the sense of sight meaning mirror and image, in the seventeenth century we find titles with the word perspective (in Polish: perspektywa). While the presence of ‘mirror’ (zwierciadło) and ‘image’ (wizerunk/wizerunek) in Old Polish titles has already been studied, less attention has been devoted to ‘perspective’ in this position. Starting from the polemic treatise published by Kasijan Sakovyč in 1642, we searched for other works containing perspektywa in their title in the Baroque period. We presented and described all the works we could find, which are not numerous. On the basis of the classification proposed by Anna Kochan and Michał Kuran, we tried to determine the relation between perspektywa on one side and zwierciadło and wizerunek on the other. We had to consider the progressive semantic enlargement of the meaning of the word perspektywa. In the sixteenth century, it had already become a designation for a new artistic device and in the following century it had become the name for the telescope. It was then a term tightly related to the sense of sight. We argue that its meaning overlapped both with zwierciadło and with wizerunek but with a greater emphasis on the fact that the account given was full and varied. The term perspektywa was polysemic and in titles it could preserve its ambiguity. This triggered the creation of various metaphors. We examined the case-study of Kasijan Sakovyč’s treatise, which we had started with. The polysemy of the word perspektywa contained in its title was exploited at large by the authors of books written as a refutation to it. The use of perspektywa along with zwierciadło and wizerunek is another symptom of the perduring centrality of sight in Baroque culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as elsewhere in Europe.

This study investigates linguistic self-positioning on X (formerly Twitter) among supporters of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany and Konfederacja Wolność i Niepodległość (Konfederacja) in Poland during the 2024 European Parliament election campaign. The research focuses on how users articulate ideological stances and construct collective identities in digital environments, contributing to political polarization. Based on a manually annotated corpus of 4,800 user profiles and 12,874 tweets collected between May and June 2024, the study combines corpus linguistic techniques with qualitative discourse analysis. The analytical framework integrates denotative and connotative categories of self-positioning, using an iterative matrix-based coding approach. The findings reveal that cultural identity markers, populist narratives, and strategic media practices dominate the self-presentation of right-wing voters. While AfD supporters emphasize national identity through protest narratives and collective victimhood, Konfederacja followers highlight loyalty to political leaders and a defensive stance toward national sovereignty. Despite shared right-wing orientations, notable differences in self-positioning strategies between the two groups emerge. Self-positioning on X reflects both individual political beliefs and broader collective identities. Digital practices not only reproduce ideological divisions but also intensify political polarization. The study underscores the role of social media as a stage for the negotiation and amplification of political identities in contemporary Europe.