Byli polscy robotnicy przymusowi w dzisiejszym krajobrazie pamięci. Prawie zapomnieni

The article is an attempt to investigate the scale, form and scope of memory about forced laborers in the Polish symbolic landscape. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of monuments and plaques dedicated to former forced laborers. In the period of the Polish People’s Republic workers were a group of Second World War victims which was too common be given a special place in the collective memory of Poles. Only the creation of the Association of Poles – Victims of the Third Reich at the end of the 1980s opened the space for a symbolic commemoration of the deportation of Poles to forced labor in Germany. An opportunity to incorporate forced labor into the memory of the Second World War came with the debate on reparations from the German government at the beginning of the 21st century. In today’s Poland there are not many places dedicated to those nearly 3 million people who make up this specific group of victims of the German occupation of Poland. Numerous such places were established in the last few years, mainly as part of grassroots initiatives aimed at discovering the local history of a particular area. However, forced labor is still insufficiently present in the Polish memory of the Second World War.