I wojna światowa w świetle egodokumentów zawartych w wybranych księgach pamięci

Abstract

This article concerns the personal memories of the Jews from the time of the First World War recorded in the memorial books of the selected localities of Wołyń, Eastern Galicia, and the Kingdom of Poland. Its main focus lies in the memories of daily and family life, as well as the alterations on the family level in relation to military and political changes. This article aims to demonstrate that the war was experienced in a slightly different way in each of the forementioned regions because of the different history of military operations, the political factors, but also the deep social structures. On the level of the methodology, the work focuses on the tensions between the memory and history. The author also attempted to determine to what degree the memories preserved in the memorial books are a recording of the World War I as a generational experience, as well as the memory of it as an early transformative experience. The work also tried to assess the level in which those memories effaced or were deformed under the influence off the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Keywords

• ego-document
• memorial books
• World War I
• memory
• autobiographical pact
• Eastern European Jews