„Jestem, bo wrócili”. Autobiograficzna pamięć zbiorowa na przykładzie świadectw potomków bieżeńców

Abstract

The article contains reflections on the anthology of autobiographical texts Jestem, bo wrócili. Przywracanie pamięci w setną rocznicę bieżeństwa (“I am, because they came back. Restoring memory on the hundredth anniversary of the bieżeństwo”; Białystok 2017) that were a result of a memoir competition. I read the texts as a tool for shaping the autobiographical collective memory (to use Astrid Erll’s term) as they present the mass exodus of civilians from the Eastern borderlands of Russia in 1915. The postmemory testimonies (to use Marianne Hirsch’s term) of the descendants of the bieżeńcy make up a „unified archive” (Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson) that appears in the form of individual memories. Due to the heterogeneous, multicultural nature of the territories covered by the bieżeństwo (the lass exodus of civilians in 1915), the formation of the memory framework about this experience is very complex. It seems that “transcultural memory” and “traveling memory” (Astrid Erll) provide a suitable research framework. In this case, such metaphors of memory are materialized in the image of the trunk that appears in many texts.

Keywords

• bieżeństwo
• Podlasie
• First World War
• autobiographical memory
• collective memory
• postmemory