Collective Remembrance in Jedwabne: Unsettled Memory of World War II in Postcommunist Poland

Abstract

This article focuses on problems of remembering a painful and still contentious historical past and examines the interaction between remembrance and reconciliation initiatives undertaken by local communities, on the one hand, and state-sanctioned national commemorations on the other. Using the sixtieth anniversary of the massacre of Jewish inhabitants of Jedwabne in northeast Poland during World War II as a case study, the article argues that interference from theoutside—in this case by groups holding political power, the media and intellectual elites— is detrimental to local remembering.