Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica T. 46 (2017) nr 8
http://hdl.handle.net/11089/24536
2024-03-29T02:21:31ZWomen’s hair in Lager narratives
http://hdl.handle.net/11089/24822
Women’s hair in Lager narratives
Czarnecka, Barbara
The article offers an analysis of women’s Lager narratives in which the procedure of removing hair from female prisoners of concentration camps was reflected. It indicates the procedure’s cultural, social, and psychological meanings presenting it as an element of the extensive camp strategy of violence, a ritual of downgrading, and a form of violating a woman’s identity and intimacy. By presenting various circumstances in which women were shaved in the camps, it also indicates the situation-based complexity of the camp experience, its various stages, and contexts. The text refers to various sources, and considers the experiences of women of various nationalities, e.g. Germans, Poles, and Jews.
2017-01-01T00:00:00Z“Birdless Sky”. On one of the topoi in Lager literature (and its fringes)
http://hdl.handle.net/11089/24823
“Birdless Sky”. On one of the topoi in Lager literature (and its fringes)
Krupiński, Piotr
The aim of the article is to indicate a recurring motif in the writings devoted to Nazi concentration camps. In many of the accounts of male and female internees the camp was described as a place “where birds did not sing”. As a territory over which there spun an empty silent sky. “A Birdless Sky”. The author of the study, utilising various sources, attempted to study the phenomenon from different perspectives. The results of scientific ornithological studies conducted by Günther Niethammer, a scientist and an SS guard at KL Auschwitz proved a rather unexpected point of reference for the voices of the internees. The presented article refers to the increasingly lively contemporary research into the topics of Lager and Holocaust literatures. Ecocriticism and environmentalism have been some of the more significant inspirations of the proposed discussion. By introducing a post-anthropocentric perspective, the author was able to expand the historical field to include non-human beings (animals, plants, landscapes).
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZReport and lament – Zalman Gradowski’s notes from Auschwitz
http://hdl.handle.net/11089/24824
Report and lament – Zalman Gradowski’s notes from Auschwitz
Adamczyk, Kazimierz
The notes by Zalman Gradowski, one of the leaders of the rebellion of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau, are one of the most important Holocaust documents created by its victims right from its epicentre as the crime progressed. Their fragments were published in Poland and Israel. Gradowski was a religious Jews from Grodno. At the camp, he prayed every day, and wrote down details of each transport. His family: mother, wife, and children, were murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. The author of the article analysed the literary value of this exceptional document, which consists of diary notes of a narrative nature, and evocative lyrical passages being a discussion with God deeply rooted in Judaic traditions. Thus, one reads an account of the nature of a report and lament. That exceptional – given its place of origin and literary value – record of the crime, and the suffering of the victims of the Holocaust urges one to ask once more about the inexpressibility of Shoah.
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZJaworzno. Invisibility
http://hdl.handle.net/11089/24821
Jaworzno. Invisibility
Morawiec, Arkadiusz
The article discussed the literary representations of the communist labour camp in Jaworzno (1945–1956), particularly the short story by Seweryna Szmaglewska entitled Amnestia zastukała dobram (1956), a novel by Kazimierz Koźniewski entitled Bunt w więzieniu (1968), and a short story by Sławomir Mrożek entitled Jaworzno (1985). The discussion also applied to the problem of ideological entanglement of Polish literature and Polish writers (particularly during the Stalinist period), and the reasons for their (and the society’s) “overlooking” the obvious manifestations of communist terror. Its alleged “invisibility” was analogous to the “invisibility” of the crimes committed by the Nazis, allegedly not noticed by the citizens of the Third Reich. Among Polish writers, that analogy between Nazism and communism was indicated by Mrożek, while the similarities of both totalitarian systems were identified also by Szmaglewska and Czesław Miłosz.
2017-01-01T00:00:00Z