Projekt księgi umarłych

Abstract

The paper sheds light on the postwar reception of Schulz’s work and biography, usually underestimated by scholars. It reveals that at the very beginning of that period Jerzy Ficowski cooperated closely with the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts and later Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, although his collaboration was rather unofficial and relied on mutual information transfer. It also presents the results of research conducted in the Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute, particularly an analysis of the documents from the Ernestyna Podhorizer-Sandel and Józef Sandel files. These are mainly biographical notes on Bruno Schulz and other Polish-Jewish artists murdered by the Nazis during World War II that were to be included the monumental and unfinished Sandels’ Polish-Jewish Artists Lexicon. The main question is how the Holocaust narrative influenced Schulz’s mainstream reception in the future.