Ikonografia witraży Wiktora Ostrzołka w gdańskim kościele Mariackim (1977–1980)

In 1966, a commemorative decoration appeared inside St Mary’s Church in Gdansk: its main component was the painting showing Poland’s Baptism placed in the chancel. Meanwhile, a pillar by the Priests’ Chapel was decorated with a standard bearing striped concentration camp uniform cloth with numbers of priests -prisoners in Nazi camps. This referred directly to the décor of the Priests’ Chapel created not long before, and in which Polish priests murdered during WW II had been commemorated in 1965. Thus the millennial decoration of the chancel clearly associated the history of the Polish state with the history of Christianity in Poland, while the decoration of the Priests’ Chapel emphasized the martyrology of Polish priests. Both motifs were clearly continued in two large –size stained glass windows installed in the church in the late 1970s: one of them fills in the window in the Priests’ Chapel, while the other is to be found in the window closing the church’s chancel. Both were designed by Wiktor Ostrzołek, a leading stained glass designer in post -WW II Poland. The iconographic programme of the first refers to the martyrology of priests, yet it does not limit itself to priests -martyrs in recent history, but shows those connected with it from the very beginning: St Adalbert, Five Martyr Brothers, St Stanislaus, St John Sarkander, St Andrew Bobola and Maximilian Kolbe. Respective figures are interconnected with the use of a clear red line serving as a metaphor of the martyrs’ blood. Its continuity connecting St Adalbert with St Maximilian, thus the beginnings of the Polish state with the present, at the same time shows the continuity of the presence of the Catholic Church in Polish history. This continuity is even more unequivocally expressed by the iconographic programme of the chancel stained glass. Here it is the figure of Mary that stands out; she enshrouds the presentations referring to the Church’s mission, and in particular to the Church’s mission in Poland, in her protective mantle. A deep interconnection between the history of Poland and the Roman Catholic Church was presented in the three acts of entrusting Poland to God and Mary: the Baptism of Poland in 966, the Lvov Oath of John Casimir in 1656, and the Jasna Góra Pledge connected directly with the 1966 millennial celebrations.

State Violence, Justice, And The Suffering Of Others

In 1955, Alain Resnais's now canonical documentary, Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) ended with an ominous question, asking “who, among us, is keeping watch from this strange watchtower [of the ruins of Auschwitz] to warn of the arrival of our new executioners” who might bring about the return of the “concentrationary plague?” One man had already made it his mission to do so: the French writer and former political deportee David Rousset. Rousset had shaken the French world of letters and politics with the 1946 publication of L'univers concentrationnaire (The Concentrationary Universe), which warned of the civilizational and moral cesura that the Nazi camps had been. The term quickly became a widely used conceptual framework. Former deportee and Catholic writer Jean Cayrol borrowed from it to write his voice-over to Night and Fog. In 1949, Rousset published another text that created a scandal in Cold War France: an Appeal to “fellow deportees” calling upon them to “investigate the USSR's concentrationary universe” (Kuby, 46). This indictment fiercely divided the French left. In 1950, he brought a libel suit against another former deportee, communist writer Pierre Daix, who had accused him of amnesiac “apoliticism” (Kuby, 65–6; Dean, 61). Just before, in the wake of his Appeal, Rousset had founded an organization against concentrationary regimes with those, like him, who had been political deportees. In 1951, it put the Soviet Union on trial for crimes against humanity. Rousset and his organization were involved in many trials, eager to denounce the “new executioners” who had revived the “scourge of the camps” in the postwar world. For many today, he is an “exceptional” man because, as philosopher and critic Tzvetan Todorov argues, he was not paralyzed by the memory of “this painful experience”; instead, he harnessed it into action against dehumanizing state violence. For Todorov, Rousset had allowed morality to prevail over base political considerations.

Defiant Germanness

This chapter discusses the Wannsee Conference and the deportations to and the experiences of Jewish veterans in Theresienstadt. The Wannsee Conference in January 1942 established Theresienstadt as the destination for highly decorated and war-wounded Jewish veterans. The German public's negative reaction to the deportations of Jews that began the previous year, together with interventions by senior officers, pressured the Schutzstaffel (SS) to create a special camp for “privileged” types of German Jews. Theresienstadt was merely a ruse, a way station on the road to Auschwitz. But as the chapter shows, despite the brutal conditions they faced there and at other Nazi camps, Jewish veterans' connection to their former status and their identity did not abruptly end.

The Relative Quiet of KZ Memorialization

Chapter 5 examines the period of quiescence in KZ memory which prevailed from the mid 1960s through the 1970s across all three locations. It outlines how practices of remembrance became more routine, with anniversary years providing pops of spectacle and grandeur. It evaluates the locals’ roles and contributions to these standard rites and rituals, which were often national (or otherwise regional) in significance. Amidst the quiet, it examines occasions when locals at Vught and, for the first time, at Neuengamme evidenced a heightened involvement in commemoration. The chapter reviews growing public sensitivities to camp history by the end of the 1970s through the resurgence of an épuration counter-memory at Natzweiler, and the effects of the Holocaust miniseries, which was shown in all locations. The chapter closes with a reminder of the ongoing pragmatic reuses of the camp sites for alternative purposes at Vught and Neuengamme, and the means these provided to constrain and detract from memories of the Nazi camps.

Introduction

Local populations interacted and engaged with their nearby Nazi camps whether in perpetrator or occupied nations, and these interactions continued with whatever became of the camps after the war. The introduction situates the book between historiographical debates that span wartime experience and post-war national memory cultures, and discusses the conceptual relevance of bystanders as a category of analysis. It shifts the perspective of KZ history to the durable intertwinement of camp and community and argues that local engagement with sites of terror is a critical vector in KZ history and memory.

Camps after Camps

Chapter 2 examines what happened to the Nazi camps in the immediate aftermath of the war. It narrates the transition from KZ to internment camp at each location in the context of cleansing responses to Nazism and transitional justice. It demonstrates how local populations responded to the renewed camp presence and the new inmates in their midst, and outlines the extent of official municipal involvement. It addresses the earliest forms of KZ memorialization, in particular the ways and means by which local communities were involved in enacting and debating commemoration, both of their own accord and in conjunction with other actors (namely survivors and the state). It details the swift consummation of Vught’s Fusilladeplaats as an official KZ monument and highlights local fraternity with prisoners as a key aspect of early post-war KZ commemoration (in formerly occupied nations). The chapter finally examines the significance of the actual KZ sites in terms of heritage and tourism.