Abstract
The chapter focuses on the memory of displacement from eastern Polish borderlands (called ‘Kresy’) which were not included in the Polish state after the World War II. Analysis is based on interviews conducted among members of Kresy-related organisations in contemporary Poland. Głowacka-Grajper shows that memory of lost lands and displacement is transmitted mainly within families and local non-governmental organisations and women became the main ‘memory makers’ in this sphere. Most interlocutors recall stories from their mothers and grandmothers as a way of establishing a link with the family’s past. The narratives often focus on the everyday aspects of family life culturally ascribed to women’s sphere, for example, various family stories, neighbour relations, the immediate surroundings and ordinary working days. The reasons for the domination of women’s narratives for the memory of displacement in contemporary Poland and its consequences are analysed in the chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
These people were resettled under agreements with the Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet Republics regarding evacuation from territories of the USSR involving people of both Polish and Jewish nationality who had Polish citizenship before 1939. In the late 1940s, many Jewish people left for the newly established State of Israel, while others left after the political transformations of 1956 and then in 1968, when an anti-Semitic witch-hunt broke out in Poland. In contemporary Poland, the Jewish minority has between 8000 and 12,000 members (estimates vary), which represents approx. 0.02% of the country’s population (see Cała et al. 2000). Nowadays, the memory of the life of Jewish communities in the Kresy (especially in small Jewish towns, called shtetls, most of which were located exactly in the Kresy) exists mostly in the Israeli society. In Poland, there are no non-governmental organisations for Jews from the Kresy, yet there is a dynamic online project titled ‘Wirtualny sztetl’ (The Virtual Shtetl, www.sztetl.org.pl).
- 2.
The adoption of such a method resulted in a special way of resettlement of the newcomers. The majority of people from Ukraine were resettled in southern Poland, especially in Lower Silesia, but also in Upper Silesia and Malopolska. The population of the Vilnius region was deployed to the north—to Eastern Prussia (Masuria), Western Pomerania as well as the Kujawy region (primarily during the second evacuation), and those displaced from Belarus—in the central belt, especially in the current Lubuskie Region, but also in Pomerania.
- 3.
Mature age is a period in human life when people make attempts to recapitulate, streamline and ‘close up’ their biography and, as such, confront the past. This is discussed, for instance, by Kaja Kaźmierska (2008). The processes of forgetting and recollecting memories at mature age are discussed from the psychological and anthropological perspective by, for example, Douwe Draaisma (2010).
- 4.
However, this goes beyond the traumatic experience. Many types of experience cannot be conveyed in a narrative, for example, the smells and flavours which are often recollected in stories about the family home or landscape. The narrative emphasis on the non-transferability of that experience builds a sense of barred access to the past world.
- 5.
Cuisine is perceived as an important element of local identity. In one locality in Upper Silesia, near Opole, where resettlers from the Kresy represent a coherent group, a cookbook was published to emphasise that the traditions of the Kresy were still alive in that community. The cookbook contained recipes from the residents and was titled ‘Our Grandmas’ Cuisine’. In that case, the transmission of the memory of lost territories manifests itself in two ways: by celebrating everyday life (perceived as worth commemorating) and by referring to social ideas of the meanings of various social categories. The oldest women are presented as the carriers of everyday culture from the old territories. At the same time, this sphere of culture is perceived as the most familiar, close and understandable, and it evokes positive connotations around the family. This sphere does not contain political elements, and its national character is overshadowed by elements which are not commonly linked with the national ideology (e.g. cooking for one’s family). However, this sphere represents an element of both national and local culture as everyday practice (cf. Edensor 2002) and a carrier of meanings related to the past home in the situation of resettlement (cf. Bardenstein 2002).
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Głowacka-Grajper, M. (2018). Gender-Structured Transmission of Post-displacement Memory in Contemporary Poland. In: Mitroiu, S. (eds) Women’s Narratives and the Postmemory of Displacement in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96833-9_9
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