Cepelix on the Central Square. Citizens of Nowa Huta as folk arts & crafts creators

The goal of this paper is to expose and analyze the contemporary folklore of the industrial discrit of Kraków called Nowa Huta. „City without God”, how it was created and named, played a significant role in the Polish resistant movement during communist times. Stories of that period are crucial for Nowa Huta citizens, first of all for their indentity, but also for district’s image and marketing. Since the post-war times there is a shop „Cepelia” placed in Central Square of Ronald Reagan in Nowa Huta, Kraków. CPLiA (Centrala Przemysłu Ludowego i Artystycznego, what means: Headquarters of the Folk and Artistic Industry) all the communist period long was govermental branch responsible for folk arts & crafts. In fact it was a huge buissnes employing over 20 000 people to design, create and sell folk art which pleased the socialist party. The shop in Nowa Huta was one connected to this network, however after political transformation in 90s of 20th centrury it changed as well. Cepelia became Cepelix. Nowadays (research was conducted in 2014 and 2022) one can find there some folk art, but also modern design connected to the district indentity and history. Paper contains an analysys of this new assortment and tryies to answer the question is it possible to treat it as a folklore as well as the other items being sold there?

Memories of a Polish school girl exiled to Siberia in the post-war period in the perspective of documents

Background: The article aims to present the fate of children sent with their families to the Soviet Union in the post-war years, preserved in the memory and private collections of Janina Góral (de domo Nesterowicz). The interview touches on such topics as Soviet crimes, conditions in Siberia, the denationalization of Polish children, the struggle against religion, rape – including an example of a mass rape whose victims and perpetrator are still alive – and attempts to cope with inhuman realities. The collected materials also describe the reality of Soviet school, daily and family life of exiled Poles in Siberia. Objectives: Initially, the recording of Janina Góral’s testimony by a team of volunteers from the group Niezapomniani – Inicjatywa Brzeskiej Młodzieży Patriotycznej within the framework of the Kotwica Pokoleń project was aimed at popularizing the history of Brzeg witnesses to history. With the deepening of the research, it became a priority to compile the collected materials into one coherent narrative, which will help answer the question about the course of the deportation of the person reporting and the brutal reality she faced at that time in school and beyond. Methods: The main tool used in the research is oral history, recorded as part of the Kotwica Pokoleń project. The primary source critique was done on the basis of sources, from the private collections of the person who gave his account. These included school certificates, personnel files, schoolgirl characteristics, and documents related to the repatriation, delivery duty and work of Michal Nesterowicz, Janina’s father. Criticism was also extended to Russian and Polish literature related to the issue under study. Results: With the help of the research, the exact history of Janina Góral’s education from grades 4 to 9 was determined, the overwhelming majority of which took place in Siberia near the town of Zima. In addition to determining the living conditions and the course of the deportation, attention was paid to the various forms of oppression and dangers faced by Polish children. Conclusions: The research showed the inconsistency of Janina Góral’s account with the documentation. They also revealed the communist school system in Siberia in light of the experiences of the Polish schoolgirl, and expanded knowledge of life in forced settlements in the Soviet Union in the Irkutsk region. In addition, they revealed the crime of gang rape that occurred against two exiled Polish women and a Ukrainian woman. They also demonstrated the value of combining research conducted by the oral history method with private collections. In addition, they draw attention to the trauma that war and captivity leave in a person.

Imagination of the HOMELAND of the inhabitants of the Belarusian-Polish-Lithuanian cultural and linguistic borderland (based on the material of Polish peripheral dialects)

The article discusses the concept of HOMELAND based on the material of Polish peripheral dialects on the territory of Voronovo district, Belarus. As a context, the author used selected dictionaries of other researchers of the “Polish language of Borderlands” in the Belarusian-Polish-Lithuanian borderlands, narratives of the inhabitants of the Myadel region (Belarus), memories of emigrants from the Vilnius region (Lithuania), as well as residents of Podlasie, Warmia and Mazuria (Poland). The author collected the material as records of continuous texts on various topics, it was not a purposeful study of vocabulary and semantics on the topic of the homeland. The method of cognitive definition proposed by Jerzy Bartminski, which provides for the reconstruction of the “mental object”, i.e. the maximum set of characteristics fixed in the language, was used in the article. As a result of the analysis of the material, similar features, indicated earlier by the researchers of this borderland, were found. Among the components of the imagination of HOMELAND, in the first place there was a warm attitude to native places (the emotional connection of a person with the place of birth and the period of childhood) and ancestors (including the deceased, the cemetery). The importance of the place of residence and neighbours (their own, ours, etc. people with similar experience), as well as religion (their own and neighbouring parishes, the cult of the Virgin Mary) was also emphasized. Less often, but expressively accentuated cultural (for example, traditions and language) and everyday signs of the concept (stability; private property; homeland where you can live). At the same time, more expressive than in other works, sketching of the ideological homeland by local residents was noticed (for the older it is the Second Polish Republic, for the younger – Belarus). According to the author, this is explained by the fact that among the respondents were, among other things, the residents whose ancestors participated in the uprising of 1863, fought with the Bolsheviks in the Polish-Soviet war, as well as those associated with the Home Army. In addition to the traditional point of view of an ordinary peasant/ petty nobleman, the perspective of a patriot not only of a “small homeland”, but also of a non-existent state (Second Polish Republic) is also considered.