Reading (in) the Holocaust. Malgorzata Wójcik-Dudek

in Spory o edukację. Dylematy i kontrowersje we współczesnych pedagogikach, eds. Zbigniew Kwieciński i Lech Witkowski (Warszawa: Instytut Badań Edukacyjnych, 1993), pp. 301–314, on p. 310.

42 Ernst van Alphen, “Afekt, trauma i rozumienie: sztuka ponad granicami wyobraźni,” an interview by Roma Sendyka and Katarzyna Bojarska, Teksty Drugie, No. 4 (2012), pp. 207–218, on p. 210.

43 Jérémie Dres, We Won’t See Auschwitz, trans. Edward Gauvin (London: Self Made Hero, 2012).

44 See Robert Szuchta, “Edukacja o Holokauście AD 2013, czyli czego uczeń polskiej szkoły może się dowiedzieć o Holokauście na lekcjach historii w dziesięć lat po ‘dyskusji jedwabieńskiej’?” in Auschwitz i Holokaust. Edukacja w szkole i miejscu pamięci, ed. Piotr Trojański (Oświęcim: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2014), pp. 23−48.

45 See Sylwia Karolak, Doświadczenie Zagłady w literaturze polskiej 1947−199: Kanon, który nie powstał (Poznań: Nauka i Innowacje, 2014).

46 See Ibid., pp. 33‒34. Karolak also lists the titles of texts read at schools between 1947 and 1990, i.e. when the Holocaust was consigned to the peripheries of Polish language instruction. They are, for example, Dzieciństwo w pasiakach (Childhood behind Barbed Wire) by Bogdan Bartnikowski, Samson and Miasto niepokonane [The Invincible City] by Kazimierz Brandys, Rozmowy z katem (Conversations with an Executioner) by Kazimierz Moczarski, Ślady [Traces] by Ludwik Hering, “Campo di Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz, “Warkoczyk” (“Pigtail”) by Tadeusz Różewicz, “Żydom polskim” (“To Polish Jews”) by Władysław Broniewski and Niemcy [The Germans] by Leon Kruczkowski.

47 See Ibid., p. 38.

48 Agnieszka Rypel, “Toposy kształtujące nacechowaną ideologicznie zbiorową tożsamość narodową i społeczną,” in Agnieszka Rypel, Ideologiczny wymiar dyskursu edukacyjnego na przykładzie podręczników języka polskiego z lat 1918−2010 (Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 2012), pp. 175–244, on p. 209.

49 What is alluded to, but not articulated explicitly, is that her migration was one of the enforced departures of Jews from Poland under a government-orchestrated campaign which reached its peak in 1968. Citizens of Jewish descent were stripped of Polish citizenship and coerced to leave the country without the right to return.

50 For compelling examples of anti-Semitism ingrained in Polish culture, see Bożena Keff, Antysemityzm: Niezamknięta historia (Warszawa: Czarna Owca, 2013).

51 I mean the perennial conflict between the imperative to bear witness and the distrust of style, as expressed for example by Elie Wiesel, whose words have already become a metonymy of the inexpressibility of the Holocaust: “One generation later, it can still be said and must now be affirmed: There is no such thing as a literature of the Holocaust, nor can there be. The very expression is a contradiction in terms. Auschwitz negates any form of literature, as it defies all systems…” Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld, A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 14.

52 Podstawa programowa kształcenia ogólnego dla gimnazjów i szkół ponadgimnazjalnych, których ukończenie umożliwia uzyskanie świadectwa dojrzałości po zdaniu egzaminu maturalnego. Annex No 4 to the Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 23rd December 2008 on the core curriculum of pre-school education and general education in particular types of schools (JoL of 15th January, 2009, No 4, item 17).

53 Between 1999 and 2016, Poland had a tripartite education system, including elementary school (6 years), junior secondary school (3 years) and senior secondary school (3 years). The Law of 14th December 2016 on the reform of education revoked this system, reinstating the prior two-tier system of elementary schooling (8 years) and post-elementary schooling (4 years).

54 In broad lines, the Matura exam is taken at the end of secondary education (in high schools and technical high schools). Students must sit written tests in three obligatory subjects (Polish, mathematics and a foreign language) and in at least one elective subject. The obligatory exams are taken at what is referred to as the basic level, while the elective ones at the advanced level, with the levels differing in terms of knowledge and skills which are expected of students. The Matura exam scores are (usually) the only criterion of admission to university degree programmes, with universities, faculties and programmes autonomously determining their own score thresholds and required subjects. Importantly, in case of Polish, students must take their Matura exam at the basic level, but can choose to take the exam at the advanced level. Reading lists for the two levels differ, as do the respective standards regarding students’ scope of knowledge, competencies and interpretive skills.

55 Published in the popular Polish weekly of the Catholic intelligentsia Tygodnik Powszechny in 1987, the essay by the eminent literary critic has ever since been an effective trigger of public debate on the moral responsibility of Poles for the fate their Jewish neighbours suffered during the Second World War.

56 Among a multitude of didactic ideas, there is also an approach in which the narrative about the Holocaust serves as an excuse for addressing other instances of genocide. See Arkadiusz Morawiec, “Zagłady,” Polonistyka. Czasopismo dla Nauczycieli, No. 11 (2014), pp. 9−12.

57 Unfortunately, most textbooks do not live up to the ambitious provisions of the core curriculum. Apparently, a diversified, if not always coherent, approach can rather be found in textbooks from before the education reform. Some of their ways of handling “Jewish themes” certainly deserve attention. In Przeszłość to dziś [The Past is Now], a textbook by Jacek Kopciński, the Holocaust is represented by Bronisław Linke’s painting Egzekucja w murach getta [An Execution within the Ghetto Walls] and Józef Szajna’s installation Ściana butów [The Wall of Shoes]. The former is accompanied by the assignment: “Explain the symbolism of this work,” while the latter comes with information about the artist’s camp experiences and an interpretation which simply states that “Perishable things remained while life perished.” The authors of the textbook Między tekstami [Among texts] explicitly refer to Theodor Adorno’s famous words by devoting two pages to “Art after Auschwitz.” Their brief survey of works of art proves the thesis about diverse approaches to representing the Holocaust. Students have an opportunity to see Władysław Strzemiński’s Moim przyjaciołom Żydom [To My Jewish Friends], Józef Szajna’s Ściana butów, a drawing by Marian Kołodziej and, finally, on the following page, Art Spiegelman’s comic book Maus and Zbigniew Libera’s LEGO Concentration Camp Set. Such an original compilation of cultural representations produces a specific tension between the narrative of the Holocaust generation (of victims and witnesses) and the narrative of the post-Holocaust generation, which attempts to fashion a new language for telling about the Holocaust, one accommodated to popular culture. The idea of confronting various narratives about the Holocaust was not picked up in other