Holocaust Memory Without Jews

In recent years Polish filmmakers have made Holocaust memory a defining theme of their national cinema. Contrary to the kitsch souvenir culture that surrounds Polish sites of destroyed synagogues, these films confront audiences with critical perspectives on the fate and memory of Poland’s Jews during the Holocaust and in its aftermath. These films, however, neither commemorate a lost Polish Jewish presence nor depict attempts to restore it. Instead, as I argue, although recent Polish cinema confronts the nation’s Holocaust memory critically, it also recapitulates Poland’s ambivalence towards the history of its Jews and their culture. Each film represents Jews metonymically: as broken gravestones, buried skeleton parts, as specters and demons, or as ghostly hauntings. Living or historical Jews in these films are absent; their presence is only felt as fearful emanations of a past whose horrors produce the return of repressed hatred and brutality.