Polish Folk Art and the Holocaust: Perpetrator-Victim-Bystander Memory Transactions in the Polish-German Context

最近，大屠杀研究转向在死亡集中营之外、在当地“旁观者”面前完全看到的“分散的”大屠杀，这需要新的数据来源。虽然口述历史为这一领域带来了重要的见解，但白话视觉来源尚未得到考虑。来自波兰的以大屠杀为主题的民间艺术构成了一个重要的、尚未经过检验的来源，为战后纪念过程提供了一个独特的视角。在战后的几十年里，波兰本土艺术家创作的大屠杀场景的雕刻和绘画，他们记住了战前的犹太人，目睹了针对他们的暴行，基本上被波兰民族志博物馆收藏或私人收藏(主要是德国人)所遗忘，从未被作为创伤后记忆过程的知识来源进行系统研究。该项目专注于这种对浩劫的白话表现，以及它们在1945年至今东西方和统一后的德国的影响和工具化，考察它们在波兰和德国记忆文化中的作用。这项研究进一步试图确定，德国收藏家在多大程度上激发了波兰艺术家对大屠杀的记忆，以及德国对波兰的“东方主义”凝视是否影响了这件艺术品在德国各州的生产和接受方式。最后，该项目将深入了解波兰人和德国人是如何就各自作为受害者、见证者和犯罪者的集体地位进行谈判的。虽然我们预计将在大屠杀历史和记忆研究(使用新的原始材料和旁观者视角)和民间艺术研究(使用新的主题，例如创伤历史记忆和群体间对话，以及像情感理论这样的新方法)方面做出重大贡献，但该项目揭示了一些更广泛的问题，包括：波兰-德国-犹太人关系；德国Verangenheitsbewältigung；以及物质文化在记忆过程中的作用。我们将研究广泛的来源，包括：艺术品、展览文件、参观者评论、私人通信，我们将采访收藏家、艺术家和策展人。我们在波兰和德国的收藏品中确定的来源将受到基于多学科解释方法的审查，包括用于研究视觉文化、物质文化、记忆、创伤、情感和跨文化关系的最新方法，关注文化框架、权力关系、情感，以及对我们自己作为波兰、德国和犹太研究人员的主体性的自我反省考虑。所研究的现象是由波兰和德国的参与者在对话中工作的，其历史的痕迹散布在波兰和德国各地，因此需要一个波兰-德国团队、双边参照系、双语专业知识以及接触机构、来源、以及这两个国家的个人。

The recent turn in Holocaust studies towards the "dispersed" Holocaust that took place outside of the death camps, in full view of local “bystander” populations, requires new sources of data. While oral history has brought important insights into the field, vernacular visual sources have yet to be considered. Holocaust-themed folk art from Poland constitutes an important and as-yet-unexamined source that offers a unique perspective on postwar memorial processes. Created throughout the postwar decades, carvings and paintings of Holocaust scenes by Polish vernacular artists, who remembered pre-war Jews and witnessed the atrocities against them, have been largely forgotten in the holdings of Polish ethnographic museums or reside in private (mostly German) collections, without ever having been systematically examined as a source of knowledge about post-traumatic memory processes.This project focuses on such vernacular representations of the Shoah, and their impacts and instrumentalizations in East, West, and reunited Germany from 1945 until today, examining their role in Polish and German memory cultures. The study seeks, further, to determine to what extent German collectors stimulated memory of the Holocaust among Polish artists, and whether Germany’s "Orientalist" gaze on Poland influenced the way this art was produced and received in the German states. Finally, the project will yield insights into the ways that Poles and Germans have negotiated their respective collective statuses as victim, witness, and perpetrator.While we anticipate contributing in significant ways to Holocaust history and memory studies (with new source materials, and bystander perspectives) and Folk Art studies (with new themes, e.g., traumatic historical memory and intergroup dialogue, and new approaches like affect theory) the project sheds light on a number of broader issues, including: Polish-German-Jewish relations; German Vergangenheitsbewältigung; and the role of material culture in memory processes.We will examine a wide range of sources including: art objects, exhibition documentation, visitor comments, private correspondence, and we will conduct interviews with collectors, artists, and curators. The sources we identify in Polish and German collections will be subjected to scrutiny based on multi-disciplinary interpretive approaches, including the most current methods in use for studies of visual culture, material culture, memory, trauma, affect, and inter-cultural relations, with attention to cultural frames, power relations, emotions, and self-reflexive consideration of our own subjectivities as Polish, German, and Jewish researchers.The phenomenon under study was constituted by Polish and German actors working in dialogue and the traces of its history are scattered across Poland and Germany, thus requiring a Polish-German team, bilateral frames of reference, bilingual expertise, and access to institutions, sources, and individuals in both countries.