Holocaust Memory and the Rhetoric of Multiculturalism in Poland

 In the 1980s a new interest in Poland’s pre-War Jewish population gained prominence among the younger, second generation (Irwin-Zarecka 1989). In the recent decade a second wave of Polish commemoration of the Jewish past has emerged, becoming especially visible since 2006 (Lehrer and Waligórska 2012, Marszalek 2012). This wave is carried out by Polish NGOs and artists from the third generation since the War, who, responding to a different global and European context, seek to remember a multicultural past in one of today’s most homogeneous societies. Although the rhetoric of multiculturalism does not always reflect the activists’ more radical views about Polish acknowledgment of past wrongs, their local memory activities in former Jewish towns (Shtetls) and cities around the country are considered radical and often meet denial and suspicion by local residents. However, this rhetoric of reclaiming the multicultural past that was erased by the different occupying powers is the only available discourse that enables inclusion of pre-war populations – primarily Jewish, but also Orthodox, German, and Roma - that are excluded from public debate and political discourse. It also offers a different conversation on the Jewish past with local residents of former Shtetls, who since the early 2000s, are often represented in Polish public debate as bearers of the blame for atrocities against Polish Jews during and after WWII.