Memory of the Jewish Past on the Polish Landscape

Jonathan Webber. Rediscovering Traces of Memory: The Jewish Heritage of Polish Galicia. Photographs by Chris Schwarz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Illustrations. vi + 186 pp. $27.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-253-22185-8. Reviewed by Karen Auerbach Published on H-Judaic (March, 2011) Commissioned by Jason Kalman (Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion) Rediscovering Traces of Memory embraces and “People Making Memory Today.” This struc‐ contradictions in memory of the Jewish past in ture is in a sense artificial resulting in much over‐ contemporary Poland. The album reproduces sev‐ lap, as Webber’s introduction acknowledges, but enty-four color images of synagogues, cemeteries, the approach strives for theoretical coherence. Holocaust memorials, Nazi camps, and other The second approach separates the photographs, traces of Jewish presence and absence. Photo‐ accompanied by brief captions, and extensive graphs and accompanying analysis explore mem‐ notes in the last third of the book for almost every ory of Polish Jewish life through its material her‐ image. The division allows the photographs to itage on the Polish landscape. On one level, the stand mostly on their own while permitting in- book, by the social anthropologist Jonathan Web‐ depth analysis. ber and the photographer Chris Schwarz (who Webber and Schwarz searched out little- died in 2007), is intended partly for a general known sites, and Schwarz returned to locations readership, challenging those who see only ne‐ repeatedly to capture a particular mood, evoked glect. On another level, however, Rediscovering by snow, shadows cast on a monument, some‐ Traces of Memory is the work of a scholar explor‐ times a visitor’s expression. The images are from ing narratives of the Jewish past preserved a collection that also forms the basis for the per‐ through its physical remnants while also attempt‐ manent exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum ing to access the history beyond that narrative. in Krakow and for a catalog by Schwarz (Pho‐ Two structural elements characterize the al‐ tographing Traces of Memory: A Contemporary bum. The frst is its division into fve sections: View of the Jewish Past in Polish Galicia/Podąża‐ “Jewish Life in Ruins,” “Jewish Culture as It Once jąc śladami pamięci: Współczesne spojrzenie na Was,” “The Holocaust: Sites of Massacre and De‐ żydowską przeszłość Galicji [2005]). struction,” “How the Past Is Being Remembered,” H-Net Reviews Documenting the Jewish material heritage in Rediscovering Traces of Memory emphasizes Poland has been an increasing focus of scholar‐ preservation over neglect. Several images docu‐ ship and public attention in recent decades. Polish ment connections to Poland among Polish Jews scholars and intellectuals began to take more in‐ and their descendents abroad, as well as Jewish terest in the fate of physical traces of Jewish life communities in contemporary Poland that pre‐ particularly in the early 1980s, when discussion serve memory through their very presence. Reli‐ about Polish-Jewish relations emerged as part of gious life, especially Hasidism and synagogues, is the anti-Communist opposition. An early example a particular focus. Krakow and Auschwitz are rep‐ is Monika Krajewska’s black-and-white album of resented more so than other locations; there is Jewish tombstones in Poland (Czas Kamieni more to depict there than elsewhere, since only [1983] and A Tribe of Stones [1993]).[1] sixty synagogues and prayerhouses survive in Pol‐ Webber’s notes, in particular, distinguish Re‐ ish Galicia, Webber notes. Several photographs discovering Traces of Memory from other albums. portray the lesser-known death camp at Bełżec, His analysis takes the form of a lengthy riff on including a new memorial that was dedicated in Jewish life, the Holocaust, Polish-Jewish relations, 2004. Images of village synagogues and cemeter‐ and memory of the Jewish past. Some explana‐ ies bring to the fore understudied aspects of Jew‐ tions, such as the history of Hasidism, will not be ish life connected with Galicia, which is historical‐ entirely new to specialists. Yet close attention to ly more rural than many other parts of Poland. detail, together with cooperation between photog‐ (Since the album focuses on Polish Galicia, it does rapher and anthropologist, makes the work an not include the parts of Galicia further east, which important contribution to scholarship; interaction were occupied by, and then incorporated into, the between image and analysis often tells a different Soviet Union during and after the Second World story than the photograph alone would. One of War. These eastern areas are part of contempo‐ the most effective images has an impact precisely rary Ukraine.) because of this analysis. The photograph depicts a By depicting both presence and absence, the broken tombstone that was used to pave the en‐ book attempts to untangle tensions between histo‐ trance to a farmer’s home. On its own, the scene ry and memory of Polish Jewry: forgetting and re‐ testifies only to destruction. Webber’s comments membering, preservation and neglect, legacy of tell a more nuanced story, however. The farmer diverse Jewish life and the Holocaust’s shadow, an told Schwarz that his father-in-law had taken the image of Poland as a “paradise for Jews” and the tombstone from the cemetery decades earlier, but stereotype of Poland as a country of antisemites that the farmer “was uncomfortable about what (p. 137). A photograph of a Jewish cemetery in the had been done and wanted to return the stone to village of Stary Dzików portrays these ambiguities the cemetery.” Decades after the father-in-law starkly. No tombstones survived at the burial took the tombstone, Webber comments, “the past ground, which is an empty feld. But according to yields up the dead” (p. 38). But the desecration Webber, absence has symbolically preserved the also led to an irreversible loss of that past, he graveyard: “in the minds of the local villagers the notes; the date and parts of the tombstone are field is still the Jewish cemetery and they let the missing. One might also ask what impact the pho‐ site remain undisturbed” (p. 111). tographer’s presence--an outsider inquiring about This interpretation is consciously optimistic. a shameful act--might have had on the farmer’s Yet the album does not overlook troubling aspects reflections. of Polish-Jewish relations. One image, for exam‐ ple, depicts a tombstone marking the murder of 2 H-Net Reviews Jews during anti-Jewish riots in seventeenth-cen‐ present-day Poland; and anti-Jewish sentiment is tury Krakow. Antisemitic graffiti is evident in sev‐ probably no worse than in other European coun‐ eral photographs, and Webber addresses this de‐ tries” (p. 157). A more pessimistic reading would facement. Here, too, he challenges generaliza‐ challenge this interpretation as overly optimistic, tions, pairing on one page an image of antisemitic and in other contexts as apologetic. Yet Webber graffiti on a cemetery gate with a smaller photo‐ seems to take an intentionally polemical approach graph of anti-Nazi graffiti. Webber’s accompany‐ to draw attention to Poles’ active involvement in ing notes examine antisemitic violence in Poland remembering the Jewish past. before, during, and just after the Holocaust. An‐ At times, Webber’s focus on rapprochement other image shows a Holocaust memorial in a only hints at complexities. One photograph, for Jewish cemetery in the town of Wieliczka that example, depicts a painting by a Polish student in was defaced with the words “Nazi OK.” Webber’s the city of Oświęcim (Auschwitz in German) of a optimism again takes precedence. The caption young Jewish couple standing in front of a church does not mention antisemitism. In the notes, Web‐ adjacent to a synagogue. Webber concludes that ber explains frst that non-Jews are increasingly “sympathetic teaching of the younger generation involved in preserving Jewish memory, a reflec‐ of Poles about both the Holocaust and the Jewish tion of improving Polish-Jewish relations. This ar‐ past of their country” has been a focus of Polish gument threads throughout Rediscovering Traces education since the fall of Communism (p. 116). of Memory, and the book documents such efforts Several Polish scholars have noted a simultaneous well. For Jewish visitors, antisemitic graffiti often trend, however. They have concluded that most overshadows Polish efforts at commemoration; young Poles know relatively little about the Jew‐ Webber sees frst the preservation rather than the ish past and the Holocaust and that most Poles re‐ desecration of memory. ject scholarship by Jan Gross and others docu‐ Webber then delves into the treacherous ter‐ menting anti-Jewish violence by Poles just after rain of stereotypes of the “other” by Jews abroad the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June and non-Jews in Poland. In doing so, Webber and 1941.[2] Schwarz are asserting their voices in ongoing Webber is reflective about the narratives that public and scholarly discussions about Polish-Jew‐ photographs have constructed about the Polish ish relations. Addressing the graffiti, Webber re‐ Jewish past. The most insightful example traces jects the stereotype of “Polish antisemitism.” To be the many uses of an image depicting a courtyard sure, he notes, the graffiti is a “particularly in Krakow’s mostly Jewish Kazimierz section. The painful sight inside a Jewish cemetery in Poland, scene is more evocative of a small-town setting as for many Jews it brings to mind a long history rather than a large urban one. Webber notes that of anti-Jewish disturbances--not to mention the Roman Vishniac’s postwar albums included a pho‐ Holocaust itself--in that country, as well as the an‐ tograph of this courtyard taken in 1937; the scene tisemitic policies of the Polish government in the was also depicted by a nineteenth-century Jewish 1930s and post-Holocaust pogroms...

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