Postronni? : zagłada w relacjach chłopskich świadków

Książka "Postronni? Zagłada w relacjach chłopskich świadków" proponuje namysł nad tytułową kategorią "postronnych" w odniesieniu do różnorodnych i niejednoznacznych postaw polskiego społeczeństwa wobec Zagłady. Wpisuje się ona tym samym w dynamicznie rozwijający się obecnie dyskurs o bystanders/świadkach. Różne uwikłania polskich postronnych opisuje w odniesieniu do doświadczenia Zagłady na wsi (nie)opowiedzianego przez chłopskich świadków.

The main subject of this work involves the category of the “bystander” and its specific form - the peasant bystander of the Holocaust. The author attempts to develop the Polish term "postronny" as an equivalent to the English term "bystander" which has often been applied to people who were passive and indifferent to the escalating persecution that culminated in the Holocaust. The author considers the term "postronny" a paradoxical attitude that includes the sense of closeness (mostly topographical one) to the violence and, simultaneously, the need to stand back. The analysis deals with three main issues. Firstly - a particular meaning of the Holocaust experience in the village as well as Polish (peasant)-Jewish relationships influenced by the pre-war imaginarium of the peasant culture. Secondly, the forms of affective and sensual attitudes of bystanders towards the Holocaust. Thirdly, the strategies of referring to personal experiences of the war. The proposed analysis aims at understanding the peasant points of view and hearing peasant voices which remained rather unheard in debates on the roles of Poles during the Holocaust. Therefore, theoretical and methodological investigations are mostly based on an analysis of the so-called peasant literature, accounts and memories given by village inhabitants.