Recognition that societies will not be able to build a future as long as they do not face the ‘demons of the past’ has become a kind of universal truth over the last decades of the 20th Century (Gibney et al., 2008, p. 1). This view, though challenging and ambiguous, is reflected in the globally present attempts to improve or rebuild relations within and between different communities at the domestic and international level. The question concerning, on the one hand, the essence and most essential elements and, on the other hand, the instruments and the limitations of rebuilding relations, as well as the political implications of those processes have become the broad area of interest and the discourse leading to significantly different ideas and solutions. The article aims at presenting different approaches referring to dealing with the conflicted and traumatized past both at the domestic and international level. Some selected instruments and methods which enable movement from a divided past towards a common future are discussed namely the strategy of engagement with the past versus the strategy of avoidance of the past. The special attention is paid to the notion of reconciliation understood as a process of rebuilding of relations through the multi-dimensional transformation of former adversaries after the period of violence and repression.

The article is dedicated to the problems of history education in the early school years, a question which until now has been almost neglected in literature. Studies on constructing the historical senses of primary school pupils can help, if only partially, to fill in this gap. Two aspects are discussed: historical senses constructed in the context of educational situations (focusing on the content, developed around the teacher, concentrated on pupils’ knowledge) and historical senses constructed by pupils via narration. By analyzing the research material, the author was able to distinguish the subjective senses and meanings which pupils participating in the study assigned to spheres of private life and to spheres which are manifestations of grand history in private stories.

During World War II, Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Due to this atrocity, around 140,000 human beings lost their lives. Almost 20% of them were Koreans. It resulted in the sudden capitulation of Japan and caused the so called higaisha ishiki (awareness of being a victim) among Japanese society. Unfortunately, the question of Korean atomic blast victims has been forgotten and the Monument raised in Memory of the Korean Victims of the Atomic Bomb was placed in the peripheries of the Park. The aim of this paper is to analyze Hiroshima Memorial Park monuments, as locations that serve as political tools, with special emphasis on the issue of the Monument in Memory of Korean Victims of the A-bomb, which characterizes Japanese politics of remembrance towards Korea.

Female corpo-graphies: a matri-archive of the dancing, thinking, migrant body

Ballet is the language that is most representative of dance culture in Italy, with its famous male librettists and choreographers, the archons of its knowledge. This academic tradition is closely connected to the aesthetic representation of the ethereal image of the female body - and the way she must be, without “weight”. By proposing a “matri-archival” methodology, this paper aims to interrogate the roles and the values that have been “choreographed” into the representation of women inside and beyond the Italian theatre-dance scene. The purpose is to discuss the choreographic experimentations where, instead, women dance and make dance themselves through their bodywriting - here proposed as corpo-graphy. I select, in the form of fragments, practices of art of the lives of women and pioneers of western Dance History in order to trace the principles of “repetition and destruction” - which are always at play in every archiving act (Derrida, 1996) - of a specific force and quality of movement: “gravity”. Conceptually and metaphorically, “gravity” is conceived here as both the “weight” of the body and of the choreographic “thinking” that supports it. Following this way of thinking, I recall fragments of dance, theatre-dance, and video-dance, briefly referring to the corporeal stories of women and archons who rewrote the representative memory of the ethereal body transmitted through ballet women who embody, dance, and think the research of a political and poetical protest. I conclude with an example of female corpo-graphy that hosts, on and with a woman’s own corporeality, the experience of contemporary migration.

W niniejszym tekście porównuję kilka filmów z lat 60. oraz przełomu pierwszej i drugiej dekady XXI wieku: Jak być kochaną (1962) Wojciecha Jerzego Hasa i Joannę (2010) Feliksa Falka, Echa (1964) Stanisława Różewicza i Kreta (2010) Rafaela Lewandowskiego oraz Na melinę (1965) Różewicza i Obławę (2012) Marcina Krzyształowicza. Filmy te równie wiele dzieli, jak łączy. Niemniej jednak podobieństwa wydają się zbyt istotne, by przejść obok nich obojętnie. Nie tyle wojna czy lustracja są ich tematem, ile ludzie postawieni w niecodziennej sytuacji, ich wybory, postawy, dylematy, ale i miłości. W każdym razie w żadnym z nich wojna nie jest powodem do dumy czy chwały, niezależnie od tego, czy kończy się zwycięstwem, czy staje się przyczyną heroicznych zmagań i cierpień. Mimo upływu lat i różnych kontekstów dostrzegam w nich te same problemy, postawy, dyskurs wartości, rozwiązania ideowe i dramaturgiczne, ale też odrębność wobec dominujących wizerunków pamięci, przeszłości i wojny. Dzięki temu mogę zadać pytanie o status relacji między dawnym i nowym polskim kinem, skupić się na sensie pewnych prawidłowości bądź znaczeniu powtórzeń. Wszystkie te filmy łączy nieoczywistość, brak wiary w jednoznaczne odpowiedzi, używając pewnego uogólnienia - przełamanie stereotypów funkcjonujących w polskim myśleniu o przeszłości, pamięci i wojnie. Powrót do tych samych tematów, sposobów ujęcia, wątpliwości, porządku aksjologicznego nie oznacza prostej kontynuacji czy nawiązań, mających podkreślić odwołanie do klasyki polskiego kina. Nowe filmy stanowią raczej dowód na to, że kolejni twórcy poszukują odpowiedzi na uniwersalne pytania. Nie pozwalają kulturze zamknąć się w gotowych schematach.

The purpose of the article is to verify the hypothesis that the idea of Polish heroism constitutes an effectively duplicating and spreading meme, and stories of the past constructed in the framework of Polish politics of memory will be effective precisely when they refer to memes duplicated most often in the community. The article proves therefore that the Polish state politics of memory should be shaped on the basis of memes that replicate the most in Polish society, because only then does it have a chance to achieve its goals. What is more, this principle can also be applied to other countries that pursue a politics of memory. It was possible to obtain answers to the research questions raised in the text (in order to verify the hypotheses) due to the use of mutually complementary research methods: analysis of narrative structures and content analysis. The article presents the results of the author’s own research with comments and conclusions.

Heritage and memory. An essay on the absent culture of Polish Jews

The main research problem of the study is the question whether a culture that is already absent from the social space of a local community is the community’s cultural heritage. Has such a culture been remembered by the inhabitants of a small town and how does it fit into the context of regional education? The axis of the article is the Jewish culture that was present until World War II in two shtetls – “Jewish towns” – in the Świętokrzyskie region: in Włoszczowa and Chmielnik. These are two opposite examples of building a town’s cultural and social identity in the context of the almost complete absence of the Jewish culture and, in the second case, its extensive revitalization. The presented sociological and anthropological research shows that this context is socially and politically conditioned, and (above all) that in order to recall an absent culture from the controversial past, the emergence of social leaders, called leaders of cultural heritage, is desirable. They are organizationally able to initiate activities supported by a sound ideological basis.

The paper is an analysis of The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee as seen from the perspective of cultural studies. Treated as a document of culture, it depicts recent changes in Western civilization, particularly in such spheres as religion as and philosophy (specifically axiology and epistemology). The pseudoapocryphal character of Coetzee’s novel provokes one to giving consideration to the attitude western culture has towards its own roots and towards the role the source myths and religious symbols play in it, that is to the shape of the cultural identity of contemporary West. The picture which emerges from the analysis is a culture threatened with ‘amnesia’. It is, however, a erverse picture since it has been painted with the use of the symbol which is “present in absence”.

The article focuses on the analysis of the functioning of the category of the dimension of memory and psychological perception of time by a person suffering from dementia of the Alzheimer type. Our observations were related to the theoretical understanding of psychology researchers memory, psychological perception of time and neuropsychologists. Moving away from a clinical study for the analysis of expression resulting in interaction with investigating, while the participant conversation here is aware of the procedure. This research methodology allows us to grasp the dynamics of changes in the behavior of the test and explore the essence of co-occurring in this type of dementia, cognitive and language. In the first part of the approximate sketch is necessary to understand the practical part, the terminology concerning the psychology of memory, temporal horizon of human rights and basic definitions and assumptions Medical on Alzheimer’s. As part of the empirical analysis of the material shows that due to the disintegration of autobiographical memory adult has difficulty organizing his own experiences and events. As a result, systematically loses the ability to plan for the future, both the distant, perspective, and the next.

Museum as a Medium of Collective Memory. The Case of Sarajevo

This article explores the relationships between memory politics and museums. It shows the institutionalisation of the past, which supports both the creation of historical narratives and the visibility of national identity. Analysing the Sarajevo museums dedicated to the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the author shows how contemporary institutions have become carriers of collective memory and incubators of the national identity of Bosnian Muslims.

Memories of World War II (WW2) have a deeply cultural dimension and therefore are interesting for intercultural studies. This paper is based on an interpretative analysis of some field and desk research data, carried out in Poland by an interdisciplinary team of social scientists, educators and historians in 2018–2020. It is focused on socio-educational factors in the transfer of knowledge and memory of WW2. The researchers try to distinguish socio-educational factors responsible for the preservation of this memory across a range of age cohorts. Sources of knowledge, school curricula and socio-demographic aspects are set against the measured levels of historic facts concerning WW2. The data sets derive from questionnaires, telephone interviews and in-depth interviews with diverse groups of respondents along with a review of teaching history curricula in 1946–2020. On the basis of the findings, it is argued that a successful transfer of memory and knowledge of WW2 goes beyond teaching history at schools and beyond the contemporary political agenda. This article is meant to serve as a barometer of social changes in respect to fading memories of WW2.

The personalities and the space of memory about the holocaust in a modern Ukrainian literature

The Holocaust theme was concealed and falsified for a long time because of non-literary reasons. Therefore, only when our country got its independence, a lot of aspects became clarified – especially the increasing of geographical markers of the Shoah, the aspect of memory and traumas of its victims and witnesses, the aspects of a woman history of the Holocaust etc. One of actual problems of nowadays is the problem of personalization of the Holocaust history with including the names of victims, saved and saviors for extending the space of memory about the tragedy of European Jews in the times of WWII. Literature, as well as historical science and commemorative practices, actively participates in this. The object of our attention in the following article is modern Ukrainian prose – novels “Sonya” (2013) by K. Babkina, “Me, You, And Our Drawn And Undrawn God” (2016) by T. Pakhomova, “A Story Worthy of a Whole Apple Orchard” (2017) by M. Dupeshko, “The Beech Land” (2019) by M. Matios. The aim of investigation is the characters of victims and saviors who have real prototypes: an icon of the Holocaust in Poland and Liublin, 9-years-old Henio (Henryk Zhytomirski), Righteous Among the Nations Maria and Stepan Vrublevski (Maria and Stepan Sichevliuk-Vrublevski), the Chernivtsi poet Selma Meerbaum- Eisinger, the mayor of Chernivtsi Traian Popovici, the diplomats Grzegorz Szymonowicz and Fritz Schellhorn. Implementation the life stories of real personalities into fictional form leads to expanding the memory about the Holocaust in Ukraine, and it’s also a way of creating a modern culture of memory, that is particularly important in a context of the international tendencies of finding the common understanding through awareness of a personal responsibility of others’ lives, and non-admission of repeating the tragic pages of the XX ct. history, one of those was the Holocaust. Since the long-term silence of the traumatic experience of the Holocaust victims didn’t create an intergenerational connection in the process of transmitting the memory of the Holocaust, modern literature, with its artistic construction of the past, becomes not only a tool for spreading knowledge about the Shoah, but also a way of creating the cultural memory about this tragedy. The prospect of further research of the following aspect is seen in a deep analysis of new examples of both Ukrainian and translated literature, including novels written by authors that are biographically related to Ukraine.

The article is devoted to the coverage of the problem of bricolage as a method of memory reconstruction in the novel “Austerlitz” by the greatest German writer Winfried Sebald. The article notes that “Austerlitz” marks the transition from trauma to conscious identity as part of the historical memory of the Holocaust. It shows how the hero of the work, Jacques Austerlitz, acquires his identity by assembling from scattered information his personal history, reflecting a significant part of the collective tragedy. The genre feature of the work as a travelogue, memoir, investigation, as literature bordering on documentary and artistic experience, where the real is combined with the fictional, is highlighted. The article describes in detail the content of the technique of bricolage as a form of “wild”, “pre-rational” way of thinking, as a technique of fitting auxiliary materials (old photographs, newspaper clippings), a montage of disparate episodes, the technique of collage. The structure of the work’s storytelling is analyzed when the narrator does not tell the story but describes what he hears from Jacques Austerlitz. It is as if it is not a text, but the story itself, which someone tells, and also shows pictures for authenticity. The functions of the hero in the novel gradually shift from people to things, documents, bearers of the memory of individual and collective civilizational catastrophe. These indescribable witnesses break the blockade of traumatic silence around the childhood of Austerlitz, embodied in images of blindness, dumbness, oblivion. Before the protagonist of the work, the “man without a past,” the history of his family, the ghostly happy childhood that was rudely cut short by the separation from his biological parents, is suddenly revealed. Sebald demonstrates a contemporary form of novel narrative in which the truthfulness of the Holocaust narrative is revealed by incorporating the exile’s personal authorial biography, pain, and guilt into the memory of this tragedy. The role of photographs and descriptions of architectural structures in revealing the immanent semantic content of the subject, not manifested verbally, is analyzed. The latter is the key document that unites and structures the important for the writer themes of memories, memory, indifference, oblivion, return to the ghostly past, overcoming of the psychological trauma. Based on the analysis the author concludes that the attitude to the reader as a co-author brings Sebald’s novel closer to the tradition of the European intellectual novel and postmodern hypertexts, in which meaningful units are not presented in a traditional linear sequence, but as a multiplicity of links and transitions. The author notes that the acute experience of humanitarian catastrophe, the multilayered text, the density of meaningful meanings make this work a notable phenomenon in the context of artistic comprehension of traumatic memory.

Józef Białynia Chołodecki – a guardian of memory and Lvov regionalist

Józef Białynia Chołodecki is an important figure in borderland regionalism. His views and actions are also a part of the contemporary understanding of regionalism. He cherished the memory of individuals who fought for independence and emphasised all forms of service to homeland. He was an expert in local history and lover of Lvov. His achievements are worth analysing in the context of turn-of-the-century borderland regionalism as an example of commitment and service to the local community.

In this article, I would like to show that the “Siege of Sarajevo” is one such fragment of the past that has grown into a national myth. It will not be an abuse to say that today this city, by the fact that it constantly bears the marks of war, has become a kind of sanctuary for the Bosnian ethnos.