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Collective Remembrance in Jedwabne: Unsettled Memory of World War II in Postcommunist Poland
- History & Memory
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 18, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2006
- pp. 152-178
- 10.1353/ham.2006.0005
- Article
- Additional Information
This article focuses on problems of remembering a painful and still contentious historical past and examines the interaction between remembrance and reconciliation initiatives undertaken by local communities, on the one hand, and state-sanctioned national commemorations on the other. Using the sixtieth anniversary of the massacre of Jewish inhabitants of Jedwabne in northeast Poland during World War II as a case study, the article argues that interference from the"outside"—in this case by groups holding political power, the media and intellectual elites— is detrimental to local remembering.