Volume 14 Issue 4 Year 2017

2017

Publication date: 29.01.2018

Description

Volume Editor: Dorota Siwor, Barbara Czarnecka

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Editorial team

Issue editor Dorota Siwor, Barbara Czarnecka

Issue content

Cyganki w Birkenau (w literaturze polskiej)

Arkadiusz Morawiec

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 375-389

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.026.8350

The article deals with the homicide on the Gypsy people perpetrated by the Nazi Germans during World War II and its representations in Polish literature (and, to a lesser extent, in Gypsy literature). The subject matter of the analysis is the motif of the Gypsy camp (Ziegeunerlager) functioning inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau Konzentrationslager, especially the image of Gypsy women inmates, shaped by both the camp reality and stereotypes, including the Orientalizing cliché about their particular sensuality.

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Kobiety w obozowej prozie Tadeusza Borowskiego

Dariusz Kulesza

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 390-407

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.027.8351

The image of women in the camp prose of Tadeusz Borowski is presented through an analysis of three texts: Among Us, in Auschwitz…, The People Who Walked By and Stone World. The first short story is a preparation for the behavioural presentation of the camp. The shape of the work was mostly determined by the fact that it was composed out of reconstructed letters which Borowski had written in KL Auschwitz to his beloved woman and future wife, Maria Rundo. The People Who Walked By is a comprehensive image of the FKL, women concentration camp. In the Stone World cycle, the author of Farewell to Maria functionalizes the figures of women in order to show the effectiveness of camp mechanisms. In each of these texts Borowski repeats the patriarchally determined roles of women, but he also treats them as a personal, humanistic measure of the concentration camp catastrophe. He refers to the context of the Platonic triad, designated by the classical Greek philosophy, in which the measure of truth is beauty, which, admittedly, chiefly denotes the ethical assets, but finds its embodiment in outstandingly beautiful women.

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Między kreacją a świadectwem. Kilka uwag lekturowych na przykładzie poezji lagrowej Grażyny Chrostowskiej i Zofii Romanowiczowej

Violetta Wejs-Milewska

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 408-420

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.028.8352

Adopting the pars pro toto principle, the author of the article chose two concentration camp poets: Grażyna Chrostowska, who died at the age of 21, leaving behind a rather modest corpus of poems, and Zofia Romanowiczowa, who survived the war, moved to Paris and became a well-known, recognized and appreciated prose writer and columnist, who commented on the emigration life of Poles. Chrostowska was a very promising poet, whose talent had no possibility to develop, whereas Romanowiczowa was a fulfilled woman (wife and mother) and writer, who polished her writing style through the years and consciously built up her artistry. The question posed in the article is: To what extent does the prior knowledge of the two authors’ biographies influence one’s reception of their work? Does the aesthetic category, especially in the light of the authors’ camp experiences, retain

the primary character?

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„Wir sind doch keine Versuchskaninchen”. Eksperymenty pseudomedyczne we wspomnieniach więźniarek z Ravensbrück

Piotr Krupiński

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 421-434

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.029.8353

The present article is devoted to the analysis of memories of Polish inmates of KL Ravensbrück. They belonged to a group of 86 women who fell victim to a tragic series of pseudomedical research devoted to the effectiveness of new pharmaceutical drugs, the sulfonamides. The author of the article focuses only on selected aspects of the accounts, chiefly on the question of dehumanization. Even during their stay in the camp, the women subjected to medical experiments by Nazi doctors were referred to as “guinea pigs” (Versuchskaninchen).

It is around this figure, which cumulates “objectification and oppression” (Donna Haraway’s term), that the essential part of the presented discussion revolves. Keywords: memories of KL Ravensbrück inmates, (pseudo)medical experiments, dehumanization, animal studies

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Żydówki w relacjach Polek więzionych w KL Ravensbrück

Kazimierz Adamczyk

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 435-450

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.030.8354

Scholars researching the lives of inmates rescued from German concentration camps and medically treated in Sweden write about anti-Semitic attitudes among the rescued Poles. The article analyzes memories and testimonies of Polish women kept in Ravensbrück chosen with respect to mentions of the Jewish women homicide. The Polish women who directly experienced the Nazi terror adopt the role of a victim – a camp inmate – and, at the same time, a witness of the Holocaust. The Jewish women’s fate is most often absent from their accounts or signaled only by brief remarks. The memories of Janina Fabierkiewicz-Szyrkowska, Karolina Lanckorońska, Zofia Krzyżanowska and Maria Rutkowska-Kurcyuszowa stand out against this dominating silence as to the Jews’ situation in the camp. These accounts are devoted the most attention in the article.

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Obozowa przemoc seksualna i obscena w relacji Lieby Tiefenbrun o przeżyciach w obozie płaszowskim

Justyna Kowalska-Leder

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 451-487

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.031.8355

The article focuses on the account made by Lieba Tiefenbrun in Tarnów in May 1945 (Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute – “Accounts” Unit 301/1182). The twenty-five-year-old woman reported on her experiences in the Płaszów, Auschwitz, Stutthof and Praust camps. One of the recounted episodes is markedly different from both the rest of her narration and from the dominating narration of camp experiences of women. Lieba Tiefenbrun recounts sexual violence against Płaszów women inmates. What is interesting in her account is not only the sole fact that it includes this strongly-tabooed motif, but also the way it is recounted: Tiefenbrun cites the obscene, offensive language of both male and female inmates. Her description of experiences of women in Płaszów shows how strongly the perception of camp experiences has been influenced by the knowledge and memory of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. It induces one to have another look at the archives, this time focusing on those motifs in women’s accounts of camp experiences that have been left out of the official discourse.

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„Nasz mały sabotaż…” – rola polskich więźniarek w życiu obozowym (legalnym i nielegalnym) KL Stutthof

Danuta Drywa

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 465-487

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.032.8356

Among the relatively small group of women who had been evidenced in the KL Stutthof by the end of 1943 there were Polish women inmates who, as far as it was possible, though not being able to help all the inmates, organized the so-called minor sabotage. It involved damaging German uniforms that had been sent in to be mended, burning in stoves the best furs cut up into small pieces, conveying illegally obtained radio information about the army front, organizing additional clothes and food for imprisoned men, damaging the best leather belts, cufflinks and clips to be packed with soldier outfits, as well as taking care of children and teenage inmates of the camp. Teachers and girl-scout activists organized for their fellow-women inmates poetry readings, religious festivals and – in 1944 – secret schooling. The women took advantage of every possible moment and opportunity to devote themselves to illegal work, however little they could do, and even while working under the supervision of kapos or German overseers.

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Reviews

Wszyscy jesteśmy Indianami (Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand, Deportowani z życia. Nowe głosy w narracjach literackich i ich kolonialne konteksty, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2017, s. 348)

Ewa Łukaszyk

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 484-487

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.033.8993

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Budowniczy empatii (Krzysztof Czyżewski, Małe centrum świata. Zapiski praktyka idei, Fundacja Pogranicze, Sejny 2017, s. 248)

Magdalena Brodacka

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 4, 2017, pp. 488-491

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.034.8994

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Słowa kluczowe: Polish literature, Gypsy literature, Gypsies, women, eroticism, homicide, Auschwitz- Birkenau, Ziegeunerlager (Gypsy camp), image of women, concentration camp, camp prose of Tadeusz Borowski, beauty, women in the concentration camp, camp poetry, Grażyna Chrostowska, Zofia Romanowiczowa, memories of KL Ravensbrück inmates, (pseudo)medical experiments, dehumanization, animal studies, Ravensbrück, Polish women inmates, Jewish women inmates, anti-Semitism, testimony, Holocaust, Płaszów concentration camp, sexual violence in the camp, women camp experiences, postwar accounts, KL Stutthof, Stutthof concentration camp, Zivilgefangenenlager Stutthof, women in KL Stutthof

Volume 14 Issue 4

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2017