A Present Past: Representations of Polish-Jewish Coexistence in Word and Image

Abstract

Scholars have produced important studies emphasizing mutual JewishPolish coexistence, interaction, and “influence.” Despite the growing interest in multi-ethnic and multi-religious everyday coexistence, the subject of its representation has so far received only selective scholarly attention. A handful of comprehensive medium-oriented studies comparing perceptions of Polish-Jewish neighborliness have been produced, dealing primarily with coexistence on a daily basis. By applying a comparative approach and discussing how Polish-Jewish everyday coexistence has been represented in literature and art, this section is an attempt to encourage scholars to deal with this lacuna and create a more thorough picture of the modern cultural memory of “living together.” This collection of articles is partly the result of a workshop held in POLIN Museum in October 2016 that explored how the “past” is “present” in “the present.” The past is being perpetually recreated and used as a tool to construct contemporary times by those presenting and representing it. The expression “a present past” was coined in 1993 by Richard Terdiman to emphasize the persistence of the past in the present.1 We complete Terdiman’s motto by adding John Bodnar’s statement that public memory is not only an inaccurate representation of the past, but is in fact constructed according to the needs of both the present and the dreamed future, as imagined by certain social groups that have obtained the power to represent