The journey of memory : migration, postmemory and family relations in Mikołaj Grynberg’s "Oskarżam Auschwitz : opowieści rodzinne" [I blame Auschwitz : family tales]

The subject of the following article centers around the issues of migration and postmemory (a term by M. Hirsch), using, as a research material, Mikołaj Grynberg’s "Oskarżam Auschwitz. Opowieści rodzinne" (2014), a collection of narrative interviews with persons brought up by Holocaust survivors. Grynberg’s respondents were born and grew up after Second World War and in Poland, in the USA or in Israel. The authoress analyses selected narrations provided by Grynberg’s respondents and compares how the parents’ decision either to stay in Poland after the war or to migrate to the USA or Israel affected their memories - and via transgenetational transmission of trauma - the memories and identities of their children. Analyzing "Oskarżam Auschwitz. Opowieści rodzinne" in the context of migration and memory may show how the experiences of representatives of the second generation vary in different social, political and cultural circumstances depending on the place their parents have chosen to live in and may result in better understanding of the phenomenon of postmemory.