Looking at the back of a document: a case of repurposing swastikas into creating Polish statehood in bureaucratic practices in the formerly German lands (1945–1948)

Abstract

Traditionally, the reverse sides of archival documents have attracted little attention from either archivists or historians, except in cases of palimpsests. What remains understudied is that they are material surfaces that might influence the circulation of documents. To challenge this conventional understanding, we propose a close analysis of the repurposing of documents bearing swastikas within the bureaucratic practices of post-1945 Poland. The redrawing of Poland’s borders after 1945 and the incorporation of formerly German territories confronted Polish officials with an overwhelming presence of German material culture, including a substantial number of Nazi documents marked with the swastika. As a symbol of the brutal German occupation of 1939–45 and of the detested Nazi ideology, the swastika carried considerable emotional weight. Despite this, Polish officials reused these documents, writing on their reverse sides and thereby reintroducing them into circulation. We argue that this practice is possible to be interpreted not merely as a pragmatic response to post-war paper shortages but a deliberate act: a form of symbolic retribution against German symbols and, by extension, against the Germans and their state. Drawing on Alison Wiggins’ approach to the materiality of documents, we interpret the turning over of the swastika as a performative act of resistance. Thus, this analysis uncovers the post-war emotions and meanings embedded within these documents. By foregrounding the performative dimensions of documentary practice, along with its temporality and material entanglements in processes of information exchange, our theoretical framework offers a potential of a novel lens for examining the role of documents in post-conflict bureaucratic and archival contexts.