Abstract: Abstract The scholarship on heritage has been preoccupied with discussions of conflict and discord. But might heritage not also be deployed for conciliatory functions after national trauma? Kazimierz, the historical Jewish district of Cracow, Poland is a unique urban space whose recent Jewish‐themed development both reflects and extends grassroots Polish–Jewish relationship building in the post‐Holocaust, post‐Communist era. It is one of the few sites in the world today where (non‐Polish) Jews and (non‐Jewish) Poles regularly encounter one another. Based on the everyday interactions and understandings of local participants, rather than top‐down memorial schemes or official proclamations of the achievement or expectation of reconciliation, this paper considers heritage spaces and landscapes as key sites for conciliatory civil society development through meaningful engagement with difficult histories. Keywords: Jewish culturememoryPolandreconciliationheritage tourismHolocaust Acknowledgements Thanks to Susan Ashley, Carol Berger, Matti Bunzl, Avi Goldberg, Slawomir Kapralski, Carol Kidron, Cynthia Milton, Ellen Moodie, Monica Patterson, Doug Rogers, Roger Simon, Lucia Volk, and this journal's anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments on drafts of this article. It is based on 18 months of ethnographic research during 1999–2000, and shorter visits from 1990 to the present. I am especially grateful to the mostly pseudonymous subjects whose voices appear in the text. Notes 1. Zdzislaw told me this in a conversation in 1994. He has since expanded, and other Jewish bookshops have opened, two in Kazimierz, and at least one in Warsaw. 2. The anti‐Semitic campaign of 1968 came as a wake‐up call not only to ‘Poles of Jewish origin’, but also to young members of the opposition, who attacked anti‐Semitism as a discredited tool of the state (Steinlauf 1997 Steinlauf, M.C. 1997. Bondage to the dead: Poland and the memory of the Holocaust, New York: Syracuse University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 109). Censorship also stimulated interest in Jewish history, and ‘[r]e‐inviting the Jew into Poland's collective memory stood … in opposition to the official efforts to make him disappear forever’ (Irwin‐Zarecka 1989 Irwin‐Zarecka, I. 1989. Neutralizing memory: the Jew in contemporary Poland, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. [Google Scholar], p. 127). 3. I use ‘heritage brokers’ following Kurin's ‘culture brokers’, which he uses to describe individuals who bring audiences together and represent, translate, negotiate, or exchange representations or definitions of culture or cultural goods among them. 4. The role of US Civil War battlefields in North–South reconciliation in the post‐war period is discussed in Linenthal (1993 Linenthal, E. 1993. Sacred ground: Americans and their battlefields, Chicago: University of Illinois Press. [Google Scholar]) Sacred Ground and Kammen (1993 Kammen, M. 1993. Mystic chords of memory: the transformation of tradition in American culture, New York: Vintage Books. [Google Scholar]) Mystic Chords of Memory (see esp. pp. 106–125). 5. I take heritage to be the meanings and representations ascribed in the present day to artefacts, landscapes, beliefs, memories and traditions understood as bearing traces of the (cultural or national) past. 6. Per historian Jan Gross, in this period ‘the Holocaust became a nonsubject in Polish historiography’ (2006 Gross, J.T. 2006. Fear: anti‐Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: an essay in historical interpretation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 30). 7. Steffen (2008 Steffen, K. 2008. Disputed memory: Jewish past, Polish remembrance. Osteuropa [online], Available from: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-11-27-steffen-en.html [Accessed 15 September 2009] [Google Scholar]) surveys how Jewish themes polarise Polish society. Gruber (2002 Gruber, R. 2002. Virtually Jewish: reinventing Jewish culture in Europe, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]) calls contemporary engagements with Jewish heritage ‘virtual’, while Waligorska (2008 Waligorska, M. 2008. “Fiddler as fig leaf: the politicisation of klezmer in Poland”. In Osteuropa, Impulses for Europe: Tradition and Modernity in East European Jewry Edited by: Sapper, M., Weichsel, V. and Lipphardt, A. 8–10. 227–238. [Google Scholar]) argues that their most popular form – klezmer music – should be seen largely in instrumental terms, as a ‘rhetorical device’ and ‘political correctness for all occasions’. Significant state‐level initiatives have been undertaken on the Polish side. These include major interpretive changes at Nazi camp memorials, a formal apology in 2001 by the then‐president Kwaśniewski for the pogrom at Jedwabne, and former Warsaw Mayor and late Polish president Lech Kaczynski's donation of land and over 30% of the cost to create a world‐class Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, scheduled to open in 2012. 8. Scholarship by Kugelmass (1995 Kugelmass, J. 1995. Bloody memories: encountering the past in contemporary Poland. Cultural Anthropology, 10(3): 279–301. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], esp. the ideas of ‘stage’ and ‘pageant’) Feldman (2008 Feldman, J. 2008. Above the death pits, beneath the flag: youth voyages to Poland and the performance of Israeli national identity, New York: Berghahn Books. [Google Scholar]), Sheramy (2007 Sheramy, R. 2007. From Auschwitz to Jerusalem: re‐enacting Jewish history on the march of the living. Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 19: 307–326. [Google Scholar]), and Stier (2003 Stier, O.B. 2003. Committed to memory: cultural mediations of the Holocaust, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. [Google Scholar]) characterises such travel broadly in these terms. Jewish individuals or family groups also seek personal heritage in specific towns, and other, comparatively marginal exceptions include Hasidic pilgrims to the tombs of dynastic Galician rabbis, genealogy enthusiasts who comb Polish archives, and fans of Yiddishkayt and klezmer who follow the festival circuit. But these groups are primarily interested in and hold in esteem pre‐war Jewish heritage, understood as a discreet entity situated on a Polish backdrop, rather than a hybrid entity linked to Poles. An enduring example of the nostalgic view of East European Jewish culture as embodied in an idealised, hermetic shtetl is Zborowski and Herzog's (1995 Zborowski, M. and Herzog, E. 1995. Life is with people: the culture of the Shtetl, New York: Shocken Books. [Google Scholar]) Life is with People, especially as discussed in its 1995 introduction by Kirshenblatt‐Gimblett. The fundamentally negative attitude towards Poland as a meaningful locus for Jewish memory is illustrated by the reserve among American Jews regarding the planned Warsaw museum, evidenced by difficulties in raising funds (see Ostow 2008 Ostow, R. 2008. “Remusealizing Jewish history in Warsaw: the privatization and externalization of nation building”. In (Re)visualizing national history: museums and national identities in Europe in the new millennium, Edited by: Ostow, R. 157–180. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 170–171). But change is afoot; it is worth noting Israeli ambassador to Poland David Peleg's categorical statement in a speech I heard him give at the Galicja Jewish Museum in Kazimierz during the Jewish Cultural Festival in June 2008 that ‘Poland is not an anti‐Semitic country’. 9. While the Israeli‐Jewish and diasporic Jewish perspectives on Poland should not be conflated they have common roots and are structurally intertwined in a shared pedagogy of youth pilgrimage and thus can be meaningfully discussed together in this context. Their differences are also not particularly evident from the Polish point of view. 10. The full key of the Polish map lists, in this order, ‘Synagogues and houses of prayer open, Synagogues, Cemeteries, Ghettoes during World War II, Nazi death camps, Nazi concentration camps, Other important sites (Jewish history), Centres of Hasidism’. For legibility, I have provided only a fragment of the Polish map, onto which I collaged the key. While the Israeli map is in English, the rest of the brochure to which it was attached is in Hebrew. 11. Per local scholar Edyta Gawron, ‘With respect to the material sphere, the Jewish Community [of Cracow] gained much. It was, however, unsuccessful in coordination of the activities aimed at rejuvenation and restoration of Jewish religious and cultural life. Thus, the present revival of Jewish culture has taken place in Cracow thanks to non‐Jews with the help of the Jews from Israel and the Diaspora’ (Gawron 2005 Gawron, E. 2005. Spolecznosc zydowska w Krakowie w latach 1945–1995, Jagiellonian University. Thesis (PhD) [Google Scholar], p. 209, cited in Murzyn 2006 Murzyn, M. 2006. Kazimierz: the central European experience of urban regeneration, Krakow, , Poland: International Cultural Centre. [Google Scholar], p. 394). The Ronald Lauder Foundation Youth Club, long situated in the Izaak synagogue, was another significant site, but it publicised its Jewishness in orthodox religious terms – implicitly discouraging non‐Jewish participation – and alienated many young Jews due to personality conflicts among its leadership. In spring 2008 a modern Jewish Community Centre (donated by Charles, Prince of Wales) opened in the centre of Kazimierz. While explicitly a space for Jews (rather than a ‘Jewish space’ in Pinto's sense), given its savvy, young, Polish‐speaking American‐Israeli director, it may nonetheless also contribute to the latter. 12. The restaurant, now called Klezmer Hois, has grown to include a hotel and klezmer cabaret, and an affiliated bookshop and publishing house, Austeria, a cutting‐edge, bilingual (Polish/English) imprint for Jewish‐themed works. 13. Until mid‐1943, all the prisoners at the Plaszów forced labour camp were Jews. In July 1943, a separate section was created for Polish prisoners. Except for ‘political prisoners’, Poles served their sentences and were released. Jews remained in the camp indefinitely, or were sent on to nearby Auschwitz. For inmate population estimates see Offen and Jacobs (2008 Offen, B. and Jacobs, N. 2008. My hometown concentration camp: a survivor's account of life in the Krakow ghetto and Plaszów concentration camp, London: Vallentine Mitchell & Co. Ltd. [Google Scholar]). 14. Borneman (2002 Borneman, J. 2002. Reconciliation after ethnic cleansing: listening, retribution, affiliation. Public Culture, 14(2): 281–304. [Google Scholar], pp. 286, 302) stresses that preconditions for reconciliation must include ‘an appreciation of the intersubjectivity of the present’ with the uncomfortable encounters with difference this entails. 15. I thank Stephanie Rowden for this turn of phrase. 16. Such unanticipated encounters with cultural similarity or sharedness can be as provocative as confronting difference. Visiting Jews are often shocked by how familiar they find Polish food, habits, gestures or phenotypes. 17. Not infrequently when I have ended talks using this vignette, the first ‘question’ from the audience will be from an elderly Jew (or occasionally a Pole) who begins, ‘I was born in Poland…’ and proceeds to tell their own story, which inevitably exceeds (and usually challenges) my own analytical framework. As Zdzislaw seems to, I also welcome such intrusions of the ongoing lived experience of these issues into the meagre spaces I have attempted to create for them. I thank Birgit Meyer for bringing this dynamic to my attention.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 35
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