Politeja (May 2017)
Spotkania z Zagładą w Polsce
Abstract
Encounters with the Holocaust in Poland Repressed memories remain active and their outcomes bring undesirable effects for education about the Holocaust. How can facts and events that have been repressed or dismissed from the individual and collective memory be reintegrated into social consciousness? When will the memory of the Holocaust in Poland become a shared, collective legacy for Poles? How can education about the Holocaust deal sensitively with the Polish national sense of martyrdom? This remains a crucial question for Polish society. Can memorial sites, museums, historians, writers, educational institutions and civic organizations in post‑communist Poland create space where the voice of Jewish victims and second and third generations can be heard and where communities of memory can integrate? Or will Polish society continue to be characterized by rivalry between competing memories? These questions form the foundation of my empirical studies and trigger interest in the evaluation of existing educational programs. A qualitative research, namely a participant observation of the Forum for Dialogue among the Nations program ‘School of Dialogue’ in Warsaw, will attempt to answer the above questions.
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