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.