Frozen in anxiety? On the experience of time in the stories of Polish women prisoners of camps and gulags

Abstract

The Lager and Gulag experience is mainly known and discussed in the Polish school on the basis of male narratives (T. Borowski, G. Herling-Grudzinski). The article is based on long-overlooked female testimonies, which constitute extensive and necessary to take into account material of high source-informational as well as literary value. The author considers one element of a women’s camp experience, which is the sensation of time in a state of imprisonment: confinement in the confined and closely guarded space of a German concentration camp, a Soviet prison and a gulag located in the wilderness of the Russian North. She reflects on the individual and communal nature of the above experiences and their literary representation, situating them in light of the reflections of K. Jaspers, J. Leociak and psychiatrists dealing with post-camp trauma.