Abstract: The author discusses uncommemorated and under-remembered sites of past violence in terms of the conditions of their transformation into memory sites. Commemorative ceremonies, which may be staged at non-sites of memory, are presented as affective media of memory and identity, demonstrating social responses to the sites, as well as placing the local past in the context of supra-local memory forms. The argument is grounded in the material gathered from fieldwork during the research project on uncommemorated sites of genocide in Poland and, predominantly, in a detailed case study of a ceremony witnessed by the author in 2016 in Radecznica (Lublin Voivodship) at a burial site of victims of the “Holocaust by bullets”. In the article the discourse of speeches delivered during the ceremony is analyzed, on the assumption that they can reveal rules of national Polish memory culture dictating what may be commemorated and how cultural mechanisms have a power to hinder commemoration. As a result, seven distinctive framings of past events that kept returning in subsequent speeches were identified and interpreted as “memory devices” that enable and facilitate recollection, but also mark out the limits of what can be remembered and passed on.

non-sites of memory, ceremonies, Polish memory culture, Holocaust, Radecznica, memory device

East-Central European landscape encompasses multiple unmemorialized and under-remembered sites of past violence, related to the Holocaust, but also to ethnic conflicts during and right after World War II. Lacking full and/or official information, delimitation and commemoration, these sites often still contain human remains, although they have not typically been a stage of any religious or secular ritual to neutralize their presence. Roma Sendyka dubbed these localizations “non-sites of memory”, pointing out that “the victims who should be commemorated on such sites typically have a collective identity (usually ethnic) distinct from the society currently living in the area, whose self-conception is threatened by the occurrence of the non-site of memory”; as a result, non-sites can be problematically “transformed, manipulated, neglected, or contested” (2016b: 700). Despite manifest abandonment, however, non-sites of memory are not entirely excluded from the society’s memorial activity, and occasionally can invite various forms of commemoration, even though these commemorative processes are never ultimately or successfully completed. Non-sites of memory are thus being delineated, traced, talked and written about, temporarily marked, and, sometimes, officially commemorated, usually with the use of some forms of monuments (which may also be challenged, subjected to changes, removed later on). The establishment of a monument or memorial is one of many possible ways of transforming a site into a lieu de mémoire, fortunately appealing to collective memory and historical consciousness (although there is no guarantee of that). It is also an occasion on which non-sites of memory may become the stage of ceremonial events. In the course of research of non-sites of memory, I had the opportunity to participate in an event of this kind. In this paper I interpret the ceremonial event in terms of memory forms that were performatively introduced within it.

According to literature, performative practices such as holiday celebrations, anniversaries, ceremonies, funerals, and religious services are considered affective media of memory (Erll and Rigney 2009, Kosiński 2010, Assmann 2011, Erll 2011) that produce identity and integration of a group (Olick 2007). Ceremonies reveal, repeat, and strengthen the dominants of a memory culture that frame past events’ understanding. Speeches delivered at commemorative ceremonies express common values and shared ideologies of the “in-group”, allow us to observe representation of the past in the context of present politics and its role in creating collective (and especially national) self-image and identity (Olick 2007, Reisigl 2008, Wodak 2010, Riehn 2019). A careful “reading” of commemoration forms reveals general remembrance trends, including official interpretations of the past, popular myths and common desires that the forms reflect, along with the use of commemoration to manipulate public memory (Carrier 1996). This perspective was usually applied to study “central” commemorative events organized on a national level, often in the context of established lieux de mémoire. An attempt to commemorate a non-site, in turn, represents a struggle for recognition of minority memory rather than a celebration of communal remembrance. The public inauguration of a monument in a non-site of memory demonstrates social responses to the site, ways of referring to and processing it, as well as placing the local past in the context of supra-local memory forms.

The ceremonial event which I discuss in this paper was organized at the site commonly called “Drugie Doły” (“Second Pits”), a wooded gully in the vicinity of Radecznica, a village in the Lublin Voivodship (south-eastern Poland). It was there that in December 1942 Germans shot and buried ten Jewish Poles from nearby areas, who had previously been hiding in a dugout in a forest. The site, recounted by a Polish bystander, was investigated, marked and commemorated with a modest memorial no sooner than in 2016, thanks to the work of the Rabbinical Commission for Jewish Cemeteries in Poland and the Zapomniane (“Forgotten”) Foundation.¹ The event organized on that occasion, on September 2, 2016, is one of the first efforts directed towards the Radecznica community to commemorate the local history of the Holocaust in the village. In the course of the ceremony, several people gave speeches: Agnieszka Nieradko, representing the Rabbinical Commission and the Zapomniane Foundation; Edward Polak, the mayor of Radecznica; Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland; Mieczysław Cisło, the auxiliary bishop at the Lublin archdiocese, and until June 2016, the chair of the Council for Religious Dialogue of the Polish Episcopal Conference; and Marianna Zybała, a resident of Radecznica and the widow of Stanisław Zybała, a local guardian of memory, with whom she protected the memory of the wartime events. The Zybałas ran the unofficial archive of the village, collecting documents and testimonies, co-authored multiple brochures on regional history, generously sharing their expertise with locals and travelling visitors. It is mostly thanks to their actions that the history of several unmarked Holocaust burial sites in Radecznica has recently been unveiled. The ceremony was attended by a significant group of pupils and teachers of the public school in Radecznica; however, there were hardly any other inhabitants of the village apart from Marianna Zybała and her relatives.

In the course of the article, I analyze the discourse of the speeches delivered at Second Pits, assuming that they can reveal cultural rules dictating what may be commemorated and how. This serves to uncover and look critically at the relations between dominants of the Polish memory culture and particular, local cases of potentially painful memory. The tension demonstrates that, despite tendencies prevalent in official commemoration, collective historical consciousness and politics of memory, Polish memory field is not a homogeneous one. Throughout the ceremony, non-dominant, minority perspectives within it can be observed as confronted with the master narrative. As Maria Janion put it in her authoritative work, the Polish positive self-image is grounded in a “narrative about our outstanding suffering and merits, our grandeur and superiority” (2006: 12), which served as a compensation during prolonged period of Polish non-independence, and resulted in activating defense mechanisms against questioning the narrative. The narrative produces self-concentrated, non-inclusive, and particularly sensitive remembrance structures, prone to defensive reactions to any challenge. Non-sites of memory, in fact, can provide illustrative examples of such challenges. They are not (properly) commemorated for multiple reasons, starting with ethnic difference between victims of past violence that happened at the site and its contemporary neighbors. (The minimum conditions of “proper commemoration” require fully acknowledging historical truth about the past, showing respect to the victims and observing usual traditional rules and/or rituals of cultural [religious, national, ethnic] group they belonged to. Memorial plaques avoiding direct identification of victims or perpetrators may serve as examples of “improper/insufficient commemoration”.) Even though possible reasons for leaving a particular site unmarked can be complex, general lack of commemoration of sites of the “Holocaust by bullets” (Desbois 2008) is in line, at best, with the history of Polish disinterest in the fate of their Jewish fellow citizens and their indifference (if not hostility) towards them. Frequently, the history of non-sites of memory brings back indirect and direct Polish complicity in the murders of Jews, when their present abandonment can enhance the meticulously restrained sense of guilt. All this is hard to integrate into the aforementioned self-image of the group, within which it is Polish suffering that predominates.

Insufficient commemoration does not, of course, equate to absence of any form of (collective) memory. Our research on non-sites of memory has revealed that neighboring communities do not “forget” the difficult past, but maintain a certain relation to it and tacit knowledge about it, albeit underdeveloped and often non-verbal. As Roma Sendyka proposes in this context, “non-memory” can be understood as “inclusive term comprising these elements of remembering processes that resist symbolization” (2016a: 266) – not in stark contrast to memory, but to disclose how the two are inextricably intertwined. “Non-memory” marks a relation to the past which lacks official language to be articulated, and is neither assimilated nor absent. The speakers at the ceremony are thus supposed, putting it in general terms, to transform non-memory into a form of memory: to make it expressible and coordinate it with “official” remembrance. For this purpose, they have to propose, in accordance with their sensitivities, a form of commemorating the events of the Second Pits which would be appropriate, understandable, effective and acceptable for the entire community. This kind of reinterpretation of a non-site of memory requires placing it within the framework of familiar and understandable constructions of meaning, which take the form of general perceptive rules, narratives or images, recurring figures or even stereotypes. This familiar framework provides tools or “devices” enabling people to add challenging content to their existing universe of memory.

In conducting research into the Radecznica event, I identified seven contexts or sets of signs and meanings that keep recurring in the words of the speakers in their efforts to deal with the problem of non-sites of memory. Each of these ways of working on memory could be deemed a “memory device” (Kobielska 2017): a cultural apparatus (in Foucauldian sense – see Foucault 1980) that produces tendencies of remembering by encouraging, supporting and modifying mnemonic content for its users – helping them remember in some ways whilst discrediting others (Basu 2011). Apparatuses manage their subjects: who remembers with the use of a “memory device”, adopts a position of a “remembering subject” defined by what the device offers. By putting forward certain ways of framing the past, memory devices enable and facilitate recollection, but also mark out the limits of what can be remembered and passed on. To identify the devices, I apply the perspective of rhetorical analysis to the subsequent speeches with the aim to unpack the general structure of arguments as well as details of wording and style, while also paying attention to the speakers’ performance. Patterns of addressing the past are deduced from micro-analysis of utterances rather than from pre-existent knowledge of remembrance conventions present in literature. I assume that speakers may refer to and transform historically accrued conventions whether they are aware of the pattern or not.

A detailed analysis of the event that transformed a non-site of memory into a commemorated site has allowed me to identify the main factor “behind the scenes”. Though the need to commemorate the victims officially, the point of the event itself, is recognized and realized by all the speakers, this turns out to be, within the framework of Polish memory culture, a difficult, uncomfortable and questionable task. The speakers’ discomfort, apparent when analyzing the speeches, in turn, leads to the need to accustom themselves to the situation, to sanction the event, make the entire situation easier, more acceptable. To this end the devices I have listed are employed, needed although the event was planned and carried out in an atmosphere of conciliation. The consensus regarding Polish memory concerning World War II is essentially left untouched, but even the slightest shift of emphasis – perhaps the focus on previously uncommemorated Jewish victims was itself enough – brought about the mobilization of defense mechanisms.

To sum up, the seven devices are techniques for reconciling new elements with existing dispositions of the culture of memory; that is to say: for facilitating remembrance and recollection. They have a few features in common: to provide interpretation – to make the history of Second Pits understandable and meaningful; to relieve any possible discomfort, or other negative emotions; and, finally, to encourage memorial practices. The techniques realize these functions to a varying degree. In the first case, the history of Second Pits becomes understandable as a reflection of the changing course of fate – inspiring compassion but burdening no one’s conscience. The “neighborly” formula brings the victims closer to contemporary Poles. The narrative of Polish-Jewish brotherhood, working in a similar way, adds further elements. The idealized past becomes the precedent for good relations between groups, establishing an ideal to aspire to for contemporary Poles. These techniques would convince us that the murdered Jews “deserve” to be remembered: as imagined neighbors, as similar to the contemporary “us”, as friends – and yet they also serve the positive self-image of the Polish majority. Using the fourth device – the codes of memory about the Holocaust – provides a comprehensible context, a whole for the part that is local history, and provides not only meaning but validation. This, however, leads to the potential for anxiety in the majority’s memory which has a competitive nature. As a result, the techniques described perform a complicated balancing act: “disturbing” elements and “alleviating” elements intertwine and, to a certain extent, neutralize each other by means of their constant juxtaposition. The fifth of the devices, the context of Polish martyrdom, causes the Holocaust to be placed alongside Polish suffering and thereby to become less exceptional but more understandable – and perhaps closer. It is also a key element of a positive self-image. The sixth semiotic context – the problem of Polish complicity – is that which most of all cries out for a soothing reaction, for reframing. The most powerful device for this purpose is the argument from help for the Jews, which again serves to save the Polish self-image.

Non-sites of memory seem to be a difficult area for memory cultures, but for this very reason they may become a litmus test: revealing the culture’s mechanisms, strength and limitations in action. The seven framings of the past identified in the course of analysis are grounded in the context of Polish official memory, collective memory and common identity; it is probable, however, that parallel mechanisms can be observed in different national and historical contexts. In the field of Polish culture of memory, the same (or analogous) framings may possibly be applied to cases of difficult past that are not necessarily embodied in particular non-sites of memory, under the conditions that (1) a minority perspective on the past is evoked and activates the discomfort and defense mechanisms while (2) a speaker nonetheless strives to acknowledge it.

The memory devices analyzed in this article provide a double function for the difficult memory of non-sites. First of all, they can open the way for a universe of shared remembering: opening that memory to familiar structures, explaining the past and bringing it closer to users of the memory culture. Here we enter into an (albeit limited) negotiation on the consensus about the past, filling out collective memory with elements that are currently missing from its accepted, common, and shared form. This process can be described as assimilating a difficult memory. However, this leads to another aspect mentioned already: assimilation (Janicka 2015) also means that difficult memory becomes easier, and its aspects that are the most troublesome for the community become alleviated. A condition of its acceptance is a reduction in its explosive potential.

transl. by Patrick Trompiz

The articles presented in this issue were prepared within the scope of the project: “Uncommemorated Genocide Sites and Their Impact on Collective Memory, Cultural Identity, Ethical Attitudes and Intercultural Relations in Contemporary Poland” (Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the National Programme for the Development of Humanities, 2016-2020, registration no 2aH 15 0121 83) developed in the Research Center for Memory Cultures, Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University. Principal investigator: Roma Sendyka, team members: Katarzyna Grzybowska, Aleksandra Janus, Karina Jarzyńska, Maria Kobielska, Jacek Małczyński, Jakub Muchowski, Łukasz Posłuszny, Kinga Siewior, Mikołaj Smykowski, Katarzyna Suszkiewicz, Aleksandra Szczepan. The author would like to thank Agnieszka Nieradko for her help in the course of research, and Dr. Zuzanna Dziuban for her thoughtful remarks.