State politics and local celebrations: Commemorations of Kraków’s Jewish past

Abstract

Two important anniversaries related to the history of Jewish citizens of Poland were celebrated in Kraków in March 2018. The 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto, which is an important date in the calendar of Kraków commemorations, and the 50th anniversary of the events of March 19681. The former had a local character, while the latter was country-wide, with the main ceremonies taking place in Warsaw. Not even two months beforehand, the Polish government had disclosed the text of The Amended Act on the Institute of National Remembrance2, which stirred a heated debate both in Poland and abroad. The document, better known as the “Holocaust law”, among other things penalised ascribing to Poland and the Polish nation “responsibility or co-responsibility” for the crimes of the Third Reich. One of the chief arguments of the law’s authors was that the use of the term “Polish death camps” is historically false and should be prevented. This article does not aim to analyse the merit and legal aspects of the document (see: Baranowska, GliszczyńskaGrabias 2018); instead, it is dedicated to the way in which the public debate was reflected in local ceremonies. This text is based on ongoing ethnographic research dedicated to commemoration of Jewish past in Kraków which seeks to understand in-depth and bottom-up perspective of city inhabitants on local history and memory3.