From absence to loss: Holocaust commemoration in present-day Poland

Argues that remembrance of the Jews and the Holocaust in Poland was subject to a conspiracy of silence in the local space of former Jewish communities and villages for many decades after the war. The author is interested in whether and under what social conditions commemorating local Jewish communities in present-day Poland leads to coming to terms with painful memories and, by contrast, when it results in distorting such memories. The author refers to the findings of qualitative research of case studies conducted in three towns: Bobowa, Dabrowa Tarnowska and Rymanów.