On the Banality of Forgetting (Studies in Jewish History and Memory)

Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, Poland’s approach to its murdered Jewish community still remains a highly debated and often politicized issue. This book addresses this contested topic in an interdisciplinary way, integrating the approaches of memory studies, social anthropology and sociology. The authors revisited the material from the fieldwork carried out 25 years ago and compared it with the interviews collected recently with the younger generation of Poles. The result is a fascinating account of the process of collective forgetting that offers not only an original insight into Christian-Jewish relations after the Holocaust, but also a significant contribution to the reflection on the social mechanisms of remembrance and identity-building.