Abstract
This chapter explains how the unwanted knowledge of Polish wartime violence against their Jewish neighbours in Jedwabne emerged through the documentaries of Agnieszka Arnold and the scholarship of Jan Gross. It outlines the post-millennial Polish reframing of Holocaust history (including the denigration of the ‘innocent witness’ figure) and subsequent artistic engagements with this history. Rather than staging Holocaust violence, Polish aftermath cinema dramatises processes of ‘coming-to-know’ it. The language of stains and blind spots mobilised in filmic investigations and public discussion resonates with the structure of anamorphosis, as exemplified in Lacanian readings of Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors. A strategy of close reading, the chapter argues, can best attend to the paradoxes and multiplicities of post-Jedwabne films in their explorations of historical knowledge, materiality and ethics.
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Notes
- 1.
Terms used to describe non-Jewish Poles and Jewish Poles are laden with different assumptions and histories, and have been the subject of much debate (see, e.g., Polonsky and Michlic 2004, 41–42; Krajewski 2005, 17–18). Some commentators refer to the ‘Polish’ and ‘Jewish’ people of Poland as though they were two distinct groups, which elides the fact that Jewish people in Poland were also Polish citizens, a national minority of approximately 10% before the war, and a group that was consistently ‘othered’ by non-Jewish Poles. Keeping this in mind, I will use a number of different terms to describe Jewish Poles and non-Jewish Poles in this book.
- 2.
Although this is not stipulated in the film, recorded testimonies suggest that this incident took place in the weeks leading up to the Jedwabne massacre, in late June 1941 (Gross 2003, 17).
- 3.
Wasersztajn’s testimony is one of a number of accounts from people who were, or who claim to have been, present in Jedwabne that day. As is clear from Cain, there are conflicting understandings of how the violence unfolded.
- 4.
In using the term ‘unwanted knowledge’ I am drawing on Żukowski’s description of the awareness of Polish wartime violence against Jewish people; this knowledge, he argues, had been present in certain cultural and historical works from as early as the 1940s, but was consistently ignored, disbelieved, and ‘whitewashed’ (2018a, 7–12). I will return to his argument in Chap. 2. I am also making reference to the term ‘unwanted debate’ used by Magdalena Nowicka-Franczak (2017) to describe the discussions provoked by Gross’s work on Jedwabne and Polish anti-Semitism in Neighbours and his further works Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz (2006) and Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust (the latter with Irena Grudzińska-Gross 2012).
- 5.
The words ‘after Jedwabne’ might be reminiscent of the phrase ‘after Auschwitz’, a loaded term with a complex position within theoretical and historical debates about the Holocaust , and one that has often been criticized for conflating the experience of the Holocaust with the operation of one concentration camp (see, e.g., Seymour 2000, 137–138; Snyder 2010, vii–xiv). In using the word ‘Jedwabne’ as a shorthand we should continue to be mindful of other incidents of violence that occurred in other places and times in different ways, and also of the variations in Polish–Jewish relationships during the Holocaust.
- 6.
For an account of the landscape of film production in the Polish film industry during this time, see Haltof (2019, particularly 371–419). Other films interrogating Polish wartime violence against Jewish people were of course made before this time, and have been made since. See, for example , Haltof (2012), Łysak (2016), Mąka-Malatyńska (2012), Pakier (2013) and Preizner (2008, 2012). These works of scholarship trace themes, characterisations, genre elements, and production and reception issues in a wide variety of films representing Holocaust experiences. My focus in this book, on Polish perpetration in rural and small-town spaces, is narrower. The kind of close reading that this book undertakes necessarily limits the number of films that can be discussed here.
- 7.
There are, however, a number of images of the aftermath of the post-war pogrom in Kielce in 1946, during which 42 Jewish people were killed and 40 wounded.
- 8.
These four images were taken covertly by a member of the Sonderkommando; they show naked women being herded towards the gas chamber and piles of bodies being burned. The photographs were displayed in Paris as part of the Mémoire des camps exhibition in 2001, and decried by Claude Lanzmann , amongst others, as fetishistic and voyeuristic. See Walden (2019, 25). Notably, while Didi-Huberman objects to the way in which the unimaginable is evoked ‘as dogma’, he does not reject the ‘unimaginable as experience’ (2008, 63). Knowing and imagining have their limits and ‘images never give all there is to see’ (2008, 124).
- 9.
- 10.
The participation of Germans in the Jedwabne atrocity and the role of anti-Communist sentiment in triggering the massacre are two issues that scholars continue to disagree upon. Chodakiewicz (2012), for example, argues that the Germans organised and led the killings (see, e.g., pp. 237–238), while in Neighbours Gross suggests that the involvement of Germans was minimal, and contests the theory that the attack against Jewish Poles in Jedwabne was related primarily to anti-Communist revenge (2003).
- 11.
In Archive Fever, Derrida argues that the ‘truth’ that is produced through the archive is a political construction, and, conversely, ‘there is no political power without control of the archive , if not of memory’ (1995, 11).
- 12.
A few town residents, including the owner of the barn Bronisław Śleszyński, claimed that the building had been forcefully requisitioned by Germans (see Chodakiewicz 193–194, n. 31). Wasersztajn, on the other hand, indicates that Śleszyński gave the barn willingly, when prompted by his Polish neighbours (Gross 2003, 18–19).
- 13.
For Joshua Hirsch, film’s confrontation with the Holocaust is inextricably linked to witnessing (2004, 6). See also Haggith and Newman (2005), especially the section titled ‘Film as Witness’. For an expanded discussion of screen media and/as witnessing, see Torchin (2012). I will return to the question of witnessing in Chap. 2.
- 14.
Anette Insdorf (2003, 300) has called such films ‘documentaries of return’ , though there are also numerous fiction films that work with this trope.
- 15.
- 16.
I refer to Zylinska’s translation from the Polish version of Neighbours (2005, 108).
- 17.
I borrow the term ‘after such knowledge’ from Eva Hoffman’s 2005 book of the same name, who in turn borrows it from a line in T.S. Eliot’s ‘Gerontion’, marked as it is by ‘anti-Semitic overtones’ (2005, xv). Hoffman was present at the Jedwabne memorial service in 2001: ‘what is the appropriate emotion’, she asked herself then, ‘for those of us who came after?’ (2005, 222).
- 18.
Zubrzycki (2013, 98–99) considers Jedwabne as the second shock to the martyrological narrative of Poland’s wartime suffering. The first followed the fall of state socialism in 1989 and the subsequent confrontation with facts about Jewish victimhood heretofore not discussed, including the realisation that Auschwitz , long a symbol of Polish suffering under German occupation , was primarily a site of Jewish death.
- 19.
In 2002, the Institute of National Remembrance released the findings from its investigation and partial exhumation of the site , confirming that Jewish people were burned in the barn in Jedwabne , that the massacres were carried out by at least forty Polish men, and that there were at least 350 victims . The precise number of victims could not be ascertained as the exhumations were halted following objections from Jewish religious groups . Gross (2003) had initially suggested that there were around 1600 victims. The investigation also confirmed that similar events had occurred in a number of other towns and villages in the region. See Machcewicz and Persak (2002). For extensive analyses of the various developments surrounding the Jedwabne debates , see, e.g., Polonsky and Michlic (2004), Michlic (2012), Forecki (2013a), and Nowicka-Franczak (2017).
- 20.
The ‘New Polish School of Holocaust Scholarship’ was the title of a conference organised around this new research that took place in Paris in February 2019. The establishment of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences has been crucial in bringing together this new scholarship (Janicka and Żukowski 2016, 8).
- 21.
One can trace a similar shift outside of the Polish context. See, for example, the work on rural Holocaust topographies by Tim Cole (2016), and the focus on decentred sites of mass killing conducted by Nazi German SS death squads (Einsatzgruppen) across Eastern Europe in the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ (Desbois 2008). See Vice (2019) on cinematic engagements with the latter.
- 22.
Snyder notes that the pogroms did not just occur in Poland, but in ‘an arc that extended southward from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea’ (2010, 195). These were generally areas that had been occupied by Soviet forces , and where they had organised deportations and killings. Snyder argues that the waves of violence against Jewish people carried out by local populations at the end of June and beginning of July 1941 (which in many regions roughly coincided with the withdrawal of Soviet troops after the German invasion of the USSR) were undertaken in revenge for perceived Jewish collaboration with the Soviets (2010, 194–196). As aforementioned, the actual extent of this collaboration is a matter of dispute amongst historians. In her analysis of archival material relating to murders of Jewish people by Poles in the Sandomierz area, Tokarska -Bakir has concluded that ‘revenge’ for Soviet collaboration was an excuse that the murderers used to justify violence and looting (2019, 176). Gross has also disputed the revenge hypothesis (2003).
- 23.
See, for example, the analysis by Skibińska (2011) of several dozen court trials in the Kielce area during the late 1940s and 1950s, which were rather half-heartedly pursued and in which most of the Polish perpetrators of violence against Jewish people were lightly punished, if at all . See also Tokarska-Bakir (2019).
- 24.
This way of thinking about the Polish witness was bolstered after the publication of Raul Hilberg’s Holocaust history dividing people into perpetrators , victims, and a third group of local residents in proximity to the violence, sometimes translated as ‘bystanders’ (1992). In Poland, however, this third category was translated as ‘witness’ (świadek), which gave honorific, legal and even religious overtones to this position (Tokarska-Bakir 2014). The figure of the ‘innocent witness’ had been challenged at various points before 2000. For example, extensive debates were sparked by Lanzmann’s depiction of anti-Semitic Polish villagers in Shoah (1985); scholars have suggested, however, that rather than lead to greater self-reflection, the film was seen as a (Jewish) attack on Poland’s ‘good name’ (Hopfinger 2018, 42). It didn’t help matters that only the excerpts that concerned Polish villagers were televised (in 1985), and the full version of the film could only be seen in a few cinemas . For discussion of the reception of Shoah in Poland see Forecki (2013a) and Kwieciński (2012).
- 25.
See, for example, Steinlauf, who develops this category extensively (1997). By critiquing the figure of the traumatised Polish witness to the Holocaust , Janicka does not deny that Poles were traumatised by their wartime experiences, but rather argues that there is little evidence that they were traumatised by their witnessing of Jewish suffering and death specifically. Given the prevalence of anti-Semitism and the material benefits accruing to Poles after Jewish deaths , Janicka finds the categorisation of the traumatised Polish Holocaust witness to be ‘narcissistic’ and evasive (2018, 2). See also Dziuban , who sees the ‘indiscriminate transfer’ of concepts of Holocaust trauma and postmemory from their foundations in Jewish survivor testimonies to the Polish (non-Jewish) context as dehistoricising and depoliticising (2019a, 26–27).
- 26.
The ‘at-worst-indifferent-bystander’ figure appears at numerous points in Polish culture and debate, for example, in Jan Błoński’s article ‘The poor Poles look at the ghetto’ (1987). For discussion of this article, as well as other milestones in the debates about Polish witnessing , see Hopfinger (2018), Żukowski (2018b) and Forecki (2013a).
- 27.
- 28.
Grabowski cites a report from July 1943 sent to London by the foreign affairs section of the Polish political underground: ‘throughout the country, the state of things is such that the return of Jews, even in much reduced numbers, to their settlements and workshops is to be absolutely ruled out. Non-Jews have filled Jews’ places in towns and townships and this is a fundamental change of a final nature. A massive return of Jews would be perceived by the population more in the light of an invasion to be thwarted—even physically—than of restitution’ (2019, 195).
- 29.
There has not been one accepted term to replace ‘bystander’ in Polish discourse, though several scholars have suggested possibilities; Janicka , for example, suggests the term ‘active, initiated observer’, in which looking is a fundamental aspect of agency (2014/2015, 148). I will continue to use the term ‘bystander’ in this book for the sake of ease, though I limit my use of the term ‘witness’.
- 30.
Anti-Semitic abuse was, for example, directed by protestors towards participants of the 2019 Paris conference dedicated to the work of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research. See Brent (2019) and Wagner (2019). The legal ramifications of the Jedwabne and post-Jedwabne debates have been notable. In 2006, additions were made to the penal code stating that ‘anyone publicly accusing the Polish Nation of participating in, organizing, or being responsible for Nazi or communist crimes’ is subject to up to three years imprisonment. This was nicknamed Gross’s Law, as it was widely understood to be tailored to target Gross for certain claims about Polish anti-Semitism and wartime violence in Fear (see Zubrzycki 2017, 257). In 2018, further amendments, sometimes referred to as Poland’s ‘Holocaust law’, attempted to criminalise accusations of Polish complicity in the Holocaust and the besmirching of the ‘good name’ of Poland; this has since been downgraded to a civil offense. For discussion of the libel case against Gross and the debates on Fear see Forecki (2013a, 215–248).
- 31.
See Czapliński’s discussion of the changing associations of ‘shame’ in the Polish context (2017a).
- 32.
While this book is primarily concerned with post-millennial cultural work, the fall of state socialism and lifting of censorship in 1989 is also a pivotal moment in Polish cultural engagements with Jewish history and identity. See, for example, Lorenc (2015).
- 33.
See Janicka (2016) for a critique of the museum’s exhibition and narrative strategies, which she argues play down structural anti-Semitism and Polish-led violence.
- 34.
- 35.
This process is sometimes charted in documentaries, such as A Town Called Brzostek (Simon Target, 2014, Australia/Poland).
- 36.
See, for example, Jolanta Dylewska’s 2008 film Po-lin: Slivers of Memory.
- 37.
These films consisted of Mary Koszmary/Nightmares (2007), Mur i Wiez˙a/Wall and Tower (2009), and Zamach/Assassination, also known as We Will Be Strong in Our Weakness (2011). The installation was entitled …And Europe Will be Stunned (Bartana 2007–2011). For an analysis of Bartana’s work, see Ruchel-Stockmans (2015), Mroz (2013), Lehrer and Waligórska (2013).
- 38.
- 39.
Waligórska (2013, 156) explains that the trope of the ‘magical Jew’ emerged from ‘the Christian tradition that pictured the Jew, as participant in the mystery of Christ’s death , on the borderline between this world and the world of the supernatural. Thus, the rural tradition in Poland often instrumentalised the figure of the Jew as a symbolic catalyst that could facilitate the vegetative cycle of the earth and secure vital powers, fertility and good fortune’. In her anthropological study of Polish rural space Alina Cała (1995) found that ideas about the near-supernatural powers and rituals of Jewish people persisted well into the 1980s. Arguably, there are echoes of this today in the common practice of using Jewish figurines as good-luck charms (Lehrer 2014). For further writing on this trope and its resonances throughout Polish culture see Tokarska-Bakir (2004).
- 40.
Gross (2003, 219–220) cites a couple of sources for this. Wiktor Nieławicki, survivor of the Jedwabne pogrom , claimed that one of his colleagues from an anti-Nazi guerrilla detachment saw a German documentary newsreel in Warsaw in 1941 showing Poles murdering the Jewish residents of Jedwabne . A deposition of a Jedwabne resident also stated that ‘Germans stood to the side and took pictures’. Note the reversal of the usual positions of Poles and Germans here: the Germans are the ‘bystanders’ to Polish perpetration.
- 41.
See Jinks (2016) for a comparative perspective on genocide representation.
- 42.
- 43.
It is possible that this will change in the next year or so. Polish film director Wojciech Smarzowski was awarded funding from the Polish Film Institute in late 2019 (after initially being rejected) to make a film that, while largely set in contemporary times, will refer to Jedwabne . At the time of writing, it is not clear whether and to what extent the Jedwabne pogrom will be visibilised or re-enacted . The film has already begun to attract attention and controversy (Anonymous 2019).
- 44.
There are many reasons that might lie behind the choice not to re-enact these killings: political, ideological, financial, personal, and so on. I am less concerned here with the reasons for the elision than with the effects of it.
- 45.
This work was created between 2001 and 2003, and displayed in 2008 at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. For Bojarska, the projections and reflections multiplied the witnesses to an event that had been ‘unseen’ (2009, see also Mroz 2013). The artwork reinforces rather than problematizes the idealised position of the witness.
- 46.
- 47.
See Dobrosielski (2017) who traces the icon of the burning barn across Polish visual culture.
- 48.
The film was housed on Betlejewski’s website ‘I Miss You, Jew!’, which also documents his photography and graffiti projects, in which he and his volunteers paint the slogan ‘I Miss You, Jew!’ on walls and buildings . See Lehrer and Waligórska (2013), Mroz (2013), Zubrzycki (2013), Janicka and Żukowski (2016).
- 49.
Post-millennial films that continue to draw on narratives of Polish rescue include Historia Kowalskich (Arkadiusz Gołębiewski and Maciej Pawlicki, Poland, 2009), Joanna (Feliks Falk, Poland, 2010), In Darkness/W Ciemności (Agnieszka Holland, Poland/Germany/Canada, 2011), and The Righteous/Sprawiedliwy (Michał Szczerbic, Poland, 2015). While some of these films, such as In Darkness , trouble the idealised vision of Polish helpers, others, such as Historia Kowalskich, can be identified as part of the backlash against Gross and new Polish Holocaust histories. See Forecki (2012).
- 50.
For example, Ida won the award for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards (2013) and won similar awards at a number of international film festivals, including Toronto and London (both in 2013).
- 51.
For example, Ida won awards for the Best Film, Best Cinematography and other categories at the National Polish Film Awards in Gdynia (2013).
- 52.
In a well-publicised campaign, the right-wing Polish Anti-Defamation League petitioned the government to insert an intertitle before the film to remind (international) viewers of the aid given by the Polish Righteous to Jewish people.
- 53.
Blacker and Etkind suggest that this way of understanding cultural works is common in post-Socialist states that had for decades censored historical topics. Films, texts and artworks often promote their own claim to historical accuracy: ‘presenting fiction, they aim for truth, and in fact convince the public that they get closer to historical reality through reimagining it’ (2013, 7). For an example of how this occurs, see the discussion around Andrzej Wajda’s film Katyń (Poland, 2007) in Etkind et al. (2012).
- 54.
I am inspired here by Dziuban’s discussion of the ‘politics of framing and reframing’ in relation to WWII and Holocaust memorials . Juxtaposing different spatial practices at memorial sites, she argues, allows us to look ‘awry’ at them, and change the frame of our understanding (2012, 83).
- 55.
Zubrzycki (2006, 148) explains that, in some conservative and nationalist ways of thinking, Jewish people are the obvious enemy; anyone on their side are traitors to ‘real’ Polishness and thus, through a complex chain of associations, are considered to be ‘Jews’. Hence, she writes, ‘we witness the strange phenomenon of anti-Semitism in a country virtually without Jews’ (2006, 211).
- 56.
This book thus builds on my previous work, Temporality and Film Analysis (Mroz 2012), which practised a mode of close analysis that was attentive to how meaning, affect and emotion develop through time. Temporality and Film Analysis drew on Henri Bergson’s writing on duration in order to think about the multiplicity of temporal rhythms unfolded through cinema.
- 57.
I am drawing here on Wylie’s term ‘absence at the heart of the point-of-view’ (2009, 278).
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Mroz, M. (2020). Polish Aftermath Cinema: Unwanted Knowledge, Unwanted Images. In: Framing the Holocaust in Polish Aftermath Cinema. Palgrave Film Studies and Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46166-7_1
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