Cultural Memory and an Oblivion of Polish Jews

Abstract

The hitherto studies on the nature of collective memory prove that communities are constantly forced to negotiate its content, both with the members of its group and with the social environment. I am going to present this mechanism of remembering by referring to my anthropological studies on traces of memory about the Jewish culture in a selected region of Poland. I examined the social contexts in which Jewish culture is evoked today in the former Polish and Jewish towns. According to observations and in-depth interviews, group memory is not given once and for all; it is necessary to take care of it, and the community has to have a will to remember; otherwise, the memory dies - the traces of memory become blurred. Focusing on the study of transmission of memory between generations, I will present the dynamics of the process of forgetting. I am going to put forward a thesis on the “banality of forgetting,” illustrating it by images and accounts from field studies.