How the Mikołajków and Kunysz Families Saved 13 Jews from Extermination

This text was published on the Dębica24.pl portal on March 24, 2025.

The rescuers were Leokadia and Aleksander Mikołajków, and Bronisława and Józef Kunysz.

"Madam, a miracle happened here," said one of the Reich brothers when he visited Danuta Strzelecka, the granddaughter of Bronisława and Józef Kunysz, who had saved him and his entire family from extermination. Descendants of the survivors remember this to this day; two weeks ago, their grandson knocked on the door of the house on Garncarska Street.

The story of Leokadia and Aleksander Mikołajków's rescue of a 13-member Jewish family is familiar to everyone interested in Dębica's past. However, only half of it has been described so far. There is also a second part. It is time to tell this story in its entirety.

But let us recall the most important facts from the first part, because without them, the continuation would be impossible - a continuation of extraordinary events and heroic efforts to save a Jewish family, when the penalty for hiding them was death.

In the Garage on Kościuszki Street

Aleksander Mikołajków, a 39-year-old doctor, and his wife, three years his junior, had lived in Dębica since 1930. She was a nurse.

Chaskiel Reich and his family lived in the ghetto. They were acquainted with the Mikołajków family, who occasionally employed the family's elders for cleaning work, mainly in the garden. The Reichs were not wealthy; one of their children, Efraim, earned extra money as a messenger at the insurance company where Aleksander Mikołajków worked.

When the ghetto was sealed, the Mikołajkóws' son, Leszek, infiltrated it, bringing food and medicine to the Reichs. As the first evacuation of the ghetto approached in July 1942, the Reichs faced a difficult situation because they had no work. These people were scheduled for deportation to the Bełżec extermination camp. Leokadia Mikołajków then handed Efraim the key to her house's garage through the fence and told him to hide there that evening as many people as he could fit. Efraim, his parents, two sisters, his brother, his brother-in-law, two cousins, an uncle, and an aunt found shelter - 11 people in total.

When the situation calmed down somewhat, the Reichs returned to the ghetto.
 
However, when the Germans planned a second, final liquidation of the Jewish district in November 1942, the Mikołajków family offered help again. The Reichs returned to the garage on Kościuszki Street, this time with 14 members, as a cousin joined them with his wife and three-year-old child.

The Mikołajków family's house contained a health center, a Polish Red Cross office, and the district office of the Central Welfare Council. One apartment was rented out. Many people passed through the building; there was no way to hide Jews inside. However, an annex adjoined the main house: a garage, a woodshed, and a small equipment storage room. The hideout was set up in the attic. At night, the Reichs and their family could go downstairs to stretch their legs. They could not go out into the garden because the windows of the adjacent building—which housed the Kripo police on the ground floor and the Gestapo on the first floor - overlooked the garden and the garage.

The Reichs were not the only Jews being helped by the doctor and his wife. The Mikołajkóws managed to relocate the nine-member Schuldenfrei family to the Bochnia ghetto, where their chances of survival seemed greater. Two Wilner brothers also traveled to Warsaw, where Leokadia's sister helped them hide; they later fought in the Warsaw Uprising.

The Germans Demand the Keys

Providing shelter to 14 people was no easy task. They had to be supplied with food and waste had to be disposed of. Such constant movement could arouse the suspicion of the police or Gestapo. Aleksander Mikołajków started a rabbit farm, placing the cages in the garage. By feeding the animals at least twice a day and cleaning the cages, the couple maintained constant contact with those in hiding. This explained their frequent presence in the annex.

By spring 1943, the Germans obtained a new car. They demanded that the doctor vacate the garage and gave him 24 hours to clear it. The relatively spacious attic could no longer serve as a hiding place for the Reichs, nor could the Mikołajkóws' house. Fear and anxiety about the future gripped both families. What was to be done with such a large group of people? There was little time for reflection.

The Kunysz Family Was Almost Forgotten

In 1960, an article by Efraim Reich appeared in the New York Post, recounting the story of his family's rescue. This story ended at the property on Kościuszki Street.

A few years later (1966), the text was translated and published in a book by Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewinówna titled This Is from My Homeland.

In the same book, in the chapter on untold stories, there is a brief mention by Father Kazimierz Ocytko: "Józef Kunysz hid 13 people in the attic of his house in Dębica."
 
At that time, his story had not been connected to the rescue of 13 Jews by the Mikołajków family.

In 2020, a book by Anna Piątkowska and Katarzyna Pruszkowska-Sokalla titled The Last of the Righteous was published. One of the interviews included in the book was a conversation with Leszek Mikołajków, son of Leokadia and Aleksander. He revealed that the Germans demanded the keys to the garage within 24 hours, which meant those in hiding had to leave the property. He added that his father managed to find another shelter in the home of Józef Kurzyna (a name I incorrectly remembered years later).

In 2022, citing this source (an interview with Leszek Mikołajków), I wrote about this in my book Zagłada i walka (Holocaust and Struggle), also giving the incorrect surname Kurzyna. Previously, I had tried to discover where and with whom the Jews who had to leave the attic on Kościuszki Street were hiding. I was unsuccessful, so this thread remained unexplained in the book.

At the end of February 2023, I held an author meeting with readers in Pustków-Osiedle. I said then that the complete story of the Reich and Wolf families' rescue had to be told, and I appealed to anyone with such knowledge to share it. One of the attendees was Tomasz Wrona. When he returned home, he recounted the event and the untold story of the Jews' rescue to his wife.

"Oh my God, I know what happened next," Marta Wrona replied excitedly.

The couple lives next door to Danuta Strzelecka. Marta frequently visits the elderly woman, and they have a very friendly relationship. During one conversation, the granddaughter of Bronisława and Józef Kunysz recounted to her neighbor what had happened during the war.

A year and a half later, Danuta agreed to speak with me; we met on November 20th of this year.

They Bought a Small House

Bronisława (born 1864) and Józef (born 1871) Kunysz were not natives of Dębica. For most of their lives, they had little to do with our town. He was a railway worker, and she ran a household in Stanisławów. When Józef retired, their good friends Maria and Jan Drozd persuaded them to move to Dębica. A wooden house happened to be for sale on a side street off Sobieskiego Street (now Krakowska Street), near a forest.

The house was small - just a room and a kitchen - perfect for retirees. The Kunyszs bought it and moved to Dębica in 1935. From then on, they lived a quiet life as a retired couple.
 
Their daughter, Maria, lived in Polesie and married Stanisław Strzelecki. Both were teachers; just before the war, they worked in Kamianets-Podilskyi, approximately 30 kilometers from Brest-on-the-Bug. Their daughter, Danuta, was born there.

In 1939, Stanisław Strzelecki enlisted and went to fight to defend his homeland. He was taken prisoner by the Soviets, imprisoned in Kozelsk, and perished in Katyn (his symbolic grave is located at the Old Cemetery in Dębica).

"My mother and I were left alone. In Kamieniec, it was like this: the Germans entered, then the Russians came, after them the Germans again, and finally the Russians again," recalls Danuta Strzelecka.

Her mother was arrested by the Germans in June 1944 in Kamieniec Litewski for teaching clandestinely, along with eight other teachers. She was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and was evacuated to Sweden after nearly a year, pursuant to an agreement signed with the Reich by Count Bernadotte.

In 1945, her teenage daughter, Danuta, came to visit her grandparents in Dębica.

"After my mother returned from Sweden, we learned what had happened here earlier," she says, referring to the extraordinary story whose main characters were her grandmother and grandfather.

They Were Supposed to Stay a Few Days

It is unclear how the Mikołajkóws and Kunyszs became acquainted. However, when the situation became dire and 14 Jews from the Reich and Wolf families had to leave their property on Kościuszki Street, they were placed with the retired couple on Sobieskiego Street. There was little time to think; they had to act quickly. They agreed to take the entire group in.

Fourteen people crossed from Kościuszki Street to what is now Garncarska Street at night. Not all together, but in groups of two or three. Fortunately, it was very dark.

The Reich brothers encountered Germans. They heard their footsteps, and in the silence, the echo of heavy boots on the sidewalk was clearly audible. The conversation, conducted in German, also carried through the air. The brothers were frozen in fear, but fortunately, they did not panic. They stood at the back of a doorway in one of the tenement houses. The Germans did not notice them.

Initially, the Jews were supposed to stay with the Kunysz family for a few days, as the Mikołajków family hoped to obtain false documents and all of them would leave for Warsaw. In a large city, hiding places would have been easier; they could count on the help of Mrs. Leokadia's sister.
 
However, this plan failed; the documents could not be obtained. It is likely that the people who brokered the deal were unable to help this time.

We can only speculate; these stories do not necessarily have to be connected. In Dębica, people who produced false documents for Jews included Helena Bielecka, who worked at City Hall (producing Kennkarte—identity cards), and Stefan Goetz, a railway employee (producing Ausweise - employee ID cards). A few weeks earlier, however, both had been arrested on charges of preparing such documents. How did the Gestapo find out? When the Germans killed a group of Jews in the forest near Niedźwiada, they found forged documents in a hiding place and traced them to those who had issued them.

Were Helena Bielecka and Stefan Goetz supposed to deliver the documents to the Reichs and Wolfs? We do not know, but it is possible that this was the reason Aleksander Mikołajków's plan failed. The Jews could not leave.

"Grandpa said, 'I won't throw people out on the street.' And they stayed," recalls Danuta Strzelecka.

They Hid in the Attic

In winter, it was freezing cold; in summer, it was scorching. At night, they went downstairs to wash and to warm up a bit. On dark nights, they ventured outside to stretch their legs.

Disposing of waste was a problem. Feeding 14 people was an even bigger problem. The Kunysz family had only a modest pension; during the occupation, that money meant very little. The Reichs and Wolfs were poor; they had nothing to sell and no cash. The Mikołajkóws helped. The doctor, working mostly in the countryside, received part of his salary in agricultural produce, and this food was sent to the Kunysz family home. Of course, his frequent visits could arouse suspicion; Germans were quartered on the neighboring street.

Ms. Danuta, like her grandparents before her, was convinced that their neighbors knew everything. Their yard was simply too small; everything in it was as visible as in a frying pan. The removal of waste, the meager food deliveries for such a large group, and the nighttime outings could not have gone unnoticed. Neighboring houses stood just a few meters away.

After the war, the neighbors themselves confirmed they had seen much and guessed the rest. However, no one betrayed the Kunysz family for nearly two years.

For a time, Father Jan Zawada, the vicar and, toward the end of the war, the parish priest of St. Jadwiga's, lived next door. He even ran a branch of his law firm there. Ms. Danuta is certain he helped her grandparents, though she does not know how. One day, a woman came to him with news that Kunysz had Jews. He replied that the war was ending, so they should not tell anyone, because if the Germans found out, there was no telling how it would end for everyone. Fortunately, the woman heeded the priest's advice.

A Miracle Happened Here

When one of the surviving Reich brothers came to Dębica in the 1960s, he stood at the doorstep on Garncarska Street and said that he and his family had been hiding there with the Kunysz family. During one of his subsequent visits, which took place every few years, he claimed that a miracle had happened in this place.

And he explained why he thought so.

When the Kunysz couple left their house, for example, to attend Mass, it always seemed that Mr. Józef was the first to leave, followed by Mrs. Bronisława, who locked the door. But that day, he was taking a bit of a break. So his impatient wife told him she was going first and asked him not to forget to turn the key. As she reached Sobieskiego Street (now Krakowska Street), she passed two uniformed Germans. This did not surprise her; their friends lived in one of the houses. So she calmly continued on.

Mr. Józef was about to leave when he heard a knock. He opened the door to find two Germans standing outside. One of them, perhaps Urban himself, spoke excellent Polish.

"Do you have any Jews?" he asked.

Józef Kunysz looked the German straight in the eye and replied calmly that he did not. "But if you do not believe me, then go and look," he added.
The house was really small; it was hard to imagine anyone hiding there. You entered the hallway, then the tiny kitchen, and from there, a slightly larger room. The Germans looked everywhere, finally opening the door to the pantry, which led to the attic. It was a narrow wooden staircase with a small entrance recess in the ceiling instead of a door.

The Jews heard everything. Terrified, they expected the worst.

"We thought that if anyone showed up, we'd hit them in the head with a bottle. We'll die, but he will die too," one of the survivors recounted years later during a visit to Dębica in a conversation with Maria Strzelecka, Mrs. Danuta's mother.

There was also a pantry and a few household appliances in the room. The Germans only glanced at them, deciding not to enter the attic. Eventually, they left the house.

Then Mr. Józef fell to his knees and thanked God that the hiding place had not been discovered.
 
"I cannot imagine what would have happened if Grandpa had gone first and Grandma had stayed. It probably would have been different, because Grandma would have been upset. And Grandpa was very composed. I do not know - maybe it would have worked out. It was meant to happen that way," says Danuta Strzelecka.

"They probably saw that it was such a small house that hiding Jews here was impossible," she adds.

They Buried Her in the Garden

Another concern for those in hiding, and for those who hid them, was the death of Chaja Wolf, Chaskiel Reich's sister. She died of a hernia. It was unclear what to do with the body; transporting her to the Jewish cemetery was out of the question.

The Kunysz family agreed to have her buried in the garden. This happened at night and was essentially the only solution. From then on, the Jews hid as a group of thirteen, but this number proved unlucky. This was largely due to the sacrifices of the Mikołajków and Kunysz families.

After the war, Chaja's body was exhumed and moved to the Jewish cemetery.

Free at Last

After the Red Army entered Dębica, the Reich and Wolf families were able to leave their shelter. They no longer had their own house; it lay in ruins.

The Kunysz family's neighbors saw them, overjoyed at finally being able to go out into the streets, walking toward the city center. They went to the Sisters Servants convent, where Father Teofil Dec, among others, was organizing help for the survivors.

How Was It Possible?

Danuta Strzelecka still cannot imagine her grandmother and grandfather living with such a large group of people in hiding - and for 23 months. How was it possible in such a small house, in close proximity to neighbors, with Germans stationed nearby, to provide food for both the hidden Jews and the family while maintaining basic hygiene? And how was it possible that no one betrayed them, even though everyone knew?

"But it was a great blessing that they were saved. My grandfather went to church and just prayed, and he prayed really," says Danuta Strzelecka.

"The most important thing is that they survived," she adds.

"The small house did not arouse suspicion that so many Jews could be hiding there," comments Tomasz Wrona, who, with his wife Marta, listened to the conversation with Danuta Strzelecka.
 
They Have Not Forgotten

During Stalinist times, visits to Poland were difficult. The Reichs wrote letters to the Kunyszs. Sometimes they sent a package for the holidays, and even Mr. Józef went around the neighborhoods and distributed coffee.

Bronisława Kunysz died in 1952; her husband Józef died in 1957. They never saw anyone from the Reich and Wolf families, who emigrated to America and settled mainly in Brooklyn, New York.

However, the Jews did not forget those thanks to whom they survived. In the 1960s, they hosted Leokadia Mikołajków in New York. Afterward, they visited Dębica every few years, never forgetting the Kunysz family's daughter and granddaughter. The first such visit took place in the 1960s.

Danuta Strzelecka remembers another visit when one of the survivors arrived with his two sons, both in their thirties.

"They came in, took photographs, and I said, 'This is not the right house.' He spoke very good Polish, because he was raised here," she recalls.

The house was not the right one because the old wooden structure was demolished when a new one was built in the garden.

Efraim Reich, or his brother, was probably in Dębica in 1980, because at that time they were commenting on the fact that the communist authorities had not registered the Solidarity movement.

"He was there once with his granddaughter, a 16-year-old girl, I think. She prayed here because she was very devout," Danuta recalls.

While Father Teofil Dec was still alive, before 1992, Reich visited him, though he was apprehensive about how he would be received.

"When he returned, he conveyed greetings from the priest. He said it was a very pleasant conversation, and he was pleased," says Danuta Strzelecka.

New generations have not forgotten either. Two weeks ago, Reuven Wolf and his wife Fruma, the grandson of the late Chaia Wolf, visited Dębica and Danuta Strzelecka. Reuven is a rabbi in Los Angeles.

"For me, it was a pleasure that my grandson came after so many years and wanted to see this place," says Danuta Strzelecka.

Ryszard Pajura
 

„We dressed up so as not to look like Roma. When the Germans saw a skirt, they shot immediately”

Paula Szewczyk

A German grabbed her by the hair, and her long braid came off in his hand. She escaped. But it wasn’t only the Germans who caused harm. On 2 August, the Roma and Sinti Genocide Remembrance Day is observed.

Maria was born in Czarna Góra, right on the border with Slovakia. Her father was a blacksmith, he had his own forge. He lived with his eight children in a wooden shack – a stove made of bricks stood in the middle, life was poor. There were three such Roma „huts” in the village, as Maria called them. In the other two lived her father’s brothers with their families. „We were despised, the village head hated us, people from the village used to beat us – it’s hard to talk about” – she recalls. She was nine years old when the war broke out.

When the Germans came, the village headman defended the Roma who lived there, he felt sorry for them. „He begged them to leave us in peace”. Asked about the events of those days, 69-year-old Maria remembers that it was at night. They arrived by car, it was dark. They took them away by force – everyone except three children, including Maria. The older ones were to be taken for forced labour, but to this day no one knows where they were taken. „We never heard from them again”.

She was left with her two brothers. Whether it was 1939 or 1940, Maria cannot remember. People in the village gave them food – it was already warm. They went from house to house, wandering around. Everyone knew that their parents had been killed. In winter, they were taken into stables. There was no wood, no coal – it was cold. Maria went hungry. Her brothers called her „mama”, waiting for her to bring them something to eat. And when there was nothing left for her, she ate nettles.

„A person must live – what would you have done?” – she asks the camera.

When the war ended, she and her siblings went to Limanowa, to distant relatives.

„The end of the war? And what of it?” – Maria shrugs – „There was no father, no mother, no place for us”.

Maria’s testimony was recorded. The interview for the Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation was conducted years later by Stanisław Laskowski. There are one hundred and one other recorded testimonies of Roma speakers in Polish who survived the Holocaust preserved in the archive. Although I have been reading and writing herstories of women’s experiences of the Second World War for over ten years, this is the first time I am listening to the account of a Polish woman of Roma origin. And I feel somewhat ashamed.

Dr Joanna Talewicz, anthropologist, co-author of „Voices of Memory 7: Roma in KL Auschwitz” and appointed in 2025 to the Council of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, explains: „It’s not that the stories of Roma victims and survivors of the Holocaust were once part of collective memory and later forgotten. These testimonies were simply never present in mainstream discourse or historical narratives – for many reasons”.

Everything comes back

Olga was born in 1927 in the village of Mszana, near Dukla. Her mother Aniela and father Michał told her when the war began: „We’ll marry you off, Ola, so at least you will survive”. She was twelve years old on her wedding day. But her husband was unable to protect either himself or her. The Germans stormed into their home. She tried to break free. One grabbed her by the hair – her long braid came off in his hand – but she escaped. She survived thanks to a Polish woman who took her in. The woman found her under a window, wearing a thin dress frozen to her body – the same one she had run away in through the fields, in the middle of winter.

That Polish woman – Olga remembers her name – allowed her to warm herself by the stove. What happened next is unknown, because the 71-year-old survivor interrupts her testimony: „I don’t want to tell any more, I don’t want to, really”.

She only adds: „We escaped... I can’t go on, everything comes back to me”. She stops mid-sentence, rips off the microphone, trembles, barely breathes. That is where her account ends.

Dr Talewicz continues: „After 1945, many perpetrators responsible for the persecution and murder of Roma and Sinti were never brought to justice. What’s more – some continued their professional careers in post-war Germany, enjoying full social and institutional recognition. One example is Dr Robert Ritter, head of the Nazi Institute for Research on Racial Hygiene and Population Biology, who, together with his associate Eva Justin, carried out so-called ‘racial studies’ on the Roma community. They decided which individuals were deemed ‘racially pure’ and which were to be sent to the camps. Despite their direct responsibility for the suffering and death of hundreds of Roma and Sinti, they were never held accountable. Ritter became the head physician of a hospital after the war; Justin became a respected child psychologist specialising, ironically, in work with Roma children. This impunity – and the later privileged status of the perpetrators – instilled in Roma survivors a deep and justified fear. They were afraid to speak about their experiences – not only because of trauma, but also because they felt unsafe. How could they trust the state and its institutions if those had never recognised their suffering, nor called their tormentors by name? In fact, the Federal Republic of Germany officially recognised the genocide of Roma as genocide only in 1982 – and even so, it was the first state to do so”.

They shot on sight

Antonina, born in 1933 in Żołynia. Her father Bronisław, a trader; her mother Maria. She remembers fleeing into the forest with her family when the Germans entered the village. The men had already been taken away on carts to Łańcut – from there, sent to a camp.

Her family was nomadic. They had a cart and carriages, with hay and dishes loaded at the back. They slept in canvas tents, lit candles at night. In her interview, Antonina says, „The German didn’t do as much harm as our own – the Poles and the Ukrainians”. She recalls how once the latter took petrol and set fire to two Roma women with small children – and then threw them alive into a well. „The Roma hid like mice – crawling into holes so they wouldn’t be killed”, she says. She survived the end of the war hiding in a forest near Przeworsk.

The testimony of Irena. She came from Krynica and remembered the terrible poverty.

„We slept in the kitchen on the ground, on straw, like little pigs”, she says. Her mother picked blueberries and bilberries to sell, helping her father – a blacksmith – to support thirteen children.

When the Germans came, they hid in the cellar for three days without food. Before they were found, Irena managed to escape into the forest. The others didn’t want to go – they thought nothing would happen to them. When she returned, they were all dead. Shot. Their bodies lay where they had fallen.

I reach for the book „Gypsies on Polish Roads” – by poet, essayist and enthusiast of Roma culture Jerzy Ficowski – through which Joanna Talewicz learned what happened to the Roma and Sinti during the Nazi occupation.

„I was a teenager when my father gave me this book”, she says. „I was astonished by what I read. Although I myself came from a Roma community, I had no idea about that past – even though there had been Holocaust victims in our own family, and I was born and raised near the Auschwitz Museum – in Oświęcim”.

Quoting Jerzy Ficowski: „The majority of Polish Roma were murdered not in camps, but in numerous mass executions”. And further: „The relatively small percentage of Polish Roma murdered in the Roma camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau does not in any way mean that fewer were exterminated than Roma from other countries. It only confirms the otherwise well-known fact of the different methods of extermination used against most Polish Roma – mainly executions carried out in the places where they lived or nearby”.

These accounts are confirmed by further testimonies preserved in the USC Shoah Foundation archives.

Matylda, born in 1927, remembers how the Germans buried children alive. „It wasn’t a happy life. For the Germans, Jews and Roma were like dogs”, she says.

The mother of nine-year-old Bronisława was shot in the village – along with her sister – when she went to the forest to warn others. The men were taken by the Germans to Auschwitz. Before that, they had been ordered to play the accordion at the campfires.

Wacława, aged 62, born in Ostrołęka, says: „I had a very hard childhood”, and immediately starts to cry. She doesn’t remember her father – he was shot in Warsaw, as were her sisters and brothers. „The Germans killed, but there were also good people – Poles. They hid me in barns, in straw. Without the Poles, we wouldn’t have survived”, she says.

Marianna from Warsaw lived with her family in Powązki. She remembers the round-ups in the city. „We dressed up so as not to look like Roma. When the Germans saw a skirt, they shot immediately”.

We pretended to be from Romania

Before the war, Siejana also lived in Warsaw, in „shacks”. „Next to us, the Jews lived in apartments – they traded, gave us bread rolls. We got along well with the Jews – they let us earn a living”, she says. But after September 1939, what she remembers most is that they had to run – „because the Germans were hunting Roma”. They took away her father and brother. In the village of Mańki, she hid in a barn with her mother and other Roma women. „The women – the men took them into the barn cellar at night. They came and raped the Roma women – one of them was pregnant”.

This is the fourteenth testimony I’ve listened to in the past few days. The word „rape” appears for the first time. From the context, it seems the women were abused by Poles. The interviewer doesn’t ask for more detail, although in other parts of the interviews he often follows up with additional questions.

I stop at Siejana’s testimony for longer because of another detail. In Ficowski’s „Gypsies on Polish Roads” I read that Łódź was the first place in Poland where the „preliminary extermination” of Roma was carried out in camp-like conditions. And that very little information has survived about what took place in the „Roma camp” located within the Łódź ghetto – mainly because the „Roma district” was completely separated from the rest of the ghetto.

Siejana spent twenty-four hours there. According to her account, the Germans in Łódź – where she and her mother were taken – carried out a round-up. They drove people together with rifles. „Into the car, into the car. They gathered fifty cars full of Roma and took them to the camp”. Friends, strangers – all together. „We saw poor Roma who had nothing to eat, children crying, hair being cut, lice everywhere. Lice on the grass – it was summer. We were sitting there in the camp with Jewish women; the Roma women next to us. Then the Jews, the men – a big fenced square. Germans with guards – they were killing, and we cried. Mother just kept saying ‘quiet, quiet’, afraid they’d shoot us. We slept there – those children – one day and one night. Then they let us go, because we were supposedly from Romania”.

Romania, at that time, was one of the Axis states – an ally of the Third Reich. According to her memory, around two hundred people managed to leave the Litzmannstadt Ghetto (as the Germans renamed Łódź) on that occasion.

Dr Joanna Talewicz: „In ‘Gypsies on Polish Roads’, Jerzy Ficowski – for the first time in Poland – published not only information about sites of non-camp extermination of Roma men and women, but also about the Zigeunerlager in the Łódź ghetto and KL Auschwitz. We must give him credit – it was thanks to him that these stories were recorded and brought into the light for the first time”.

Murder of them all

Because so many Roma men and women were killed where the occupiers found them, the number of victims is difficult to determine today. Dr Joanna Talewicz explains: „It is estimated that around half a million people were killed – between 70 and 80 per cent of the pre-war Roma population in Europe. These figures are only approximate and imprecise, just like the data concerning their pre-war numbers. We know of about two hundred mass graves located in Polish forests. Unfortunately, because the extermination of the Roma community often took place outside of camps – including in countries of the former USSR – and because no systematic research was carried out on the subject, we may never know the true number of Roma victims of the Holocaust”.

Only since 2011 has 2 August been recognised by the Polish Parliament as the Day of Remembrance of the Extermination of the Roma and Sinti. The European Parliament later adopted this date as the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day – in 2015.

On the night of 2–3 August 1944, the liquidation of Block 18 – the so-called Zigeunerfamilienlager, the „Gypsy Family Camp” in KL Auschwitz – took place. Some Roma and Sinti who were deemed fit for work were spared, but the rest – mainly women, children, and the elderly – were murdered in the gas chambers. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum estimates that around 4,300 people were killed that night.

2 August is not only a date commemorating the Auschwitz massacre – it is also regarded as the symbolic day of remembrance for the genocide of all Roma and Sinti during the Second World War. In the Romani language, it is called Porajmos – literally „the devouring” or „the swallowing up” – or Samudaripen, meaning „the murder of all”.

From the author: In the recorded testimonies, the survivors use the term „Gypsies”. They used the expression that was common in Poland in the 1990s. Today, however, we have greater awareness, and due to the derogatory nature of the word beginning with „G”, I have chosen to use the term „Roma” consistently in public communication. Similarly, in quotations from Jerzy Ficowski’s book, I have left its title unchanged.

The term Sinti refers to the German-speaking minority of the Roma people who have lived in Central Europe since the late Middle Ages.

This text was created thanks to a grant from the YES Foundation, whose mission is to create a better world for women. My thanks go to the Foundation „Towards Dialogue” for their substantive support.

This article appeared in the Polish weekly Polityka, issue 51/52 (3545), on 16 December 2025. The original title: “Ikona z torebką.”

The woman who struck a neo-Nazi in Sweden became a symbol of civic courage, resistance to nationalism, and an inspiration for mass culture. For a long time, she remained anonymous. It turned out she was Polish.

It was Sunday, 13 April 1985. In the sleepy town of Växjö in southern Sweden, home to 60,000 people, something was finally happening. At 11:00 a.m., supporters of the left had called a demonstration on Stortorget (the main square); an hour later, members of the Nordic National Party (Nordiska Rikspartiet) were to demonstrate.

Both had received permission from the authorities. Such events usually passed without incident. In the mid-1980s, Swedes enjoyed a high standard of living and social calm; politics still seemed like a boring idyll (Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated a year later). The residents of Växjö did not necessarily share the demonstrators’ views, but they acknowledged their right to demonstrate, and so they watched passively as a dozen or so neo-Nazis marched through the city, shouting racist slogans. At the intersection of Norrgatan and Kronobergsgatan, one of them (waving the flag of the Nordic Reich) was suddenly approached by a woman in a short coat and a pleated skirt. And she struck him on his shaved head with her handbag.

The Perfect Shot

The woman’s gesture acted like a detonator. Insults and eggs flew toward the demonstrators, and then the crowd surged forward. Several neo-Nazis were injured in direct clashes; one was beaten unconscious and only saved from a fatal lynching by a left-wing activist. In the end, the neo-Nazis fled. According to SVT Nyheter, they found refuge in the toilets at the railway station, from where they were escorted by police, who had to call in reinforcements to control the crowd. The disturbances shocked Swedish public opinion, unaccustomed to physical aggression in politics. This shock also had its detonator: a photograph by Hans Runesson.

The reporter for Dagens Nyheter, one of the country’s largest newspapers, pressed the shutter at the moment the handbag landed on the neo-fascist’s occiput - just as in the concept of the “decisive moment” formulated by the father of photojournalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson. This is a key principle of reportage photography: the intuitive capture of a fraction of a second in which action, composition, and emotional expression converge to form perfect harmony within the frame. The photograph was named Photo of the Year (Årets Bild 1985), and later the Swedish Association of Historical Photography recognised it as Photo of the Century.

The image lives on today, taking on a life of its own: as an icon of the fight against neo-fascism, it has appeared on T-shirts, graffiti, banners, and tattoos. On the other hand, voices emerged from the realm of political correctness taken to the point of absurdity - claiming that the woman had “brutally attacked an innocent protester”.

„We were wondering if publishing the photo does not increase the risk of the woman being accused of assault, since she could be identified easily”, recalled Anita Bengtsson, then editor-in-chief of Dagens Nyheter. Journalists flocked to Växjö to find the heroine of the photograph, but she gave no interviews. According to Swedish media, she feared retaliation from nationalists (some sources say her family was under police protection for a time). She was also reportedly unhappy with how she appeared in the photo: she was only 38 years old, yet the public saw her as a grimacing tant - a stereotypical “auntie” who likes handicrafts, walks, and gossip.

Today, the term tant can symbolise authenticity, civic courage, quiet wisdom, and an ethical compass in a world dominated by fashion, status, and appearances. There is even talk of tantpower – the strength of women who no longer have anything to prove to anyone – but the “woman with the handbag,” as she was called, did not live to see that shift.

Three years after the neo-Nazi march, she jumped from a water tower in Växjö. According to journalists’ findings, the suicide was rooted in earlier mental health disorders, though the uproar surrounding her person may have contributed. Her son said at the time that she disliked the photograph and the publicity it brought. He criticised both anti-fascists and nationalists for exploiting his mother and denied rumors that she had been mentally unstable when she struck the protesters.

Where did such a powerful impulse came from- one that was able to pull the "woman with the handbag" out of the crowd? Speculation intensified when her identity came to light. Swedish media reported that her name was Danuta Danielsson. She was a Pole who married a Swede in the early 1980s and emigrated. At the demonstration, she reportedly lost her temper because her mother was said to have been a Jewish woman imprisoned in a German concentration camp in occupied Poland. This narrative appeared in every publication - and there were many thanks to sculptor Susanna Arwin, who in 2014 created a miniature statue based on Runesson’s photograph.

This led to an initiative to create a life-size sculpture and place it in Växjö on the 30th anniversary of the events. More than 11,000 people signed in support, and the debate reignited over whether the monument would glorify “political violence”. “We in Växjö work for democracy and free speech. Of course, we don't like Nazis. But we can't accept that one can hit a person because one does not like him or her”, said city councillor Eva Johansson, quoted by The Washington Post. The American journal also cited a comment by writer Ola Luoto for Dagens Nyheter: “What [Johansson] forgets it that art is multi-layered and open to different interpretations. [Danielsson] was undeniably one of the real victims of the Nazis. The fact that she got enraged is understandable”.

Handbags on Monuments

From a protocol obtained by Polityka from the municipality of Växjö, it emerges that, at the request of Councillor Johansson, the city’s Culture and Leisure Committee withdrew its earlier approval for the monument, also due to the lack of consent from a member of Danuta Danielsson’s family. “In the previous term, attempts were made to locate relatives of the woman depicted in the photograph, but no one could be found. Now, however, a close relative has contacted us and opposes the erection of a monument depicting this woman,” we read.

The decision by Växjö councillors sparked a wave of outrage. In protest, women’s handbags were hung on monuments across the country and photos of them shared on social media. A handbag was also placed on the statue of one of the country’s greatest national writers - Astrid Lindgren, author of the iconic series of novels about Pippi Longstocking. News of this spread around the world, and local politicians declared their willingness to install the monument in their own cities. “It looks fantastic, and the photo is iconic. Although this monument should belong to Växjö, because the incident took place there, we’ll take it if they don’t want it,” said Nils Karlsson, a representative from Malmö.

Ultimately, sculptures based on Runesson’s photograph were installed in the cities of Alingsås and Varberg. In Växjö - though not on Stortorget, as planned, but on the university campus - another monument by Susanna Arwin was erected, titled Den Svenska Tanten (The Swedish Aunt): a woman standing politely with a handbag slung over her shoulder. The website dedicated to it states that it is part of an artistic project that was created in 1995, guided by the slogan “Dare to be ordinary.” Not a word about the immigrant from Poland.

Even more surprising may be the silence of the family. Her son guards his anonymity, and Polish relatives never sought to commemorate Danuta. “There’s nothing to talk about!”, snaps her nephew angrily over the phone. A Polityka reporter finds him in Poland, in the Zamość region. His mother (who also refuses to talk about it), the only surviving sibling of Danuta out of four, lives in the same village. A second sister died shortly after birth. Two brothers lived until their deaths in the 2000s in Gorzów Wielkopolski, as did Danuta before she emigrated to Sweden. This city of 110,000 readily boasts of former and current residents who have gained fame at home or abroad - but it consistently omits Danuta. Does her story therefore have a hidden second layer?

Codename Trio

Apartment no. 5 in a neglected post-German tenement at 19 Strzelecka Street in Gorzów was Danuta’s last Polish address (she lived there for 16 years), but current tenants have never heard of her. In the civil registry records comes the first surprise - althoug a minor one: upon marriage, she did not give up her maiden name. Thus, her full name was Danuta Seń-Danielsson. To this day, the registry office has not received information about her death.

According to The Washington Post, she reportedly regretted striking the neo-Nazi almost immediately. This may indeed have been the case, though not necessarily due to remorse. In response to Polityka’s questions, Swedish police confirmed that 40 years ago they conducted an investigation into her “assault.” It was launched only five months after the demonstration, in September 1985, so the complaint was likely filed by neo-fascists seeking political gain. “The investigation was concluded and forwarded to the prosecutor, but I do not know whether charges were brought against Mrs Danielsson afterward or not,” wrote Martina Alma, a police archivist. The trail ends there.

We also attempted to verify the camp past of Danuta’s mother. There is no trace of her in the Arolsen Archives (the world’s largest archive of data on victims of German National Socialism and survivors), nor in the IPN (the Polish Institute of National Remembrance) database (

straty.pl), nor at the Auschwitz Museum (this camp was mentioned in some press publications). We find her thanks to a query conducted by Anna Wójcik, head of the archive at the State Museum at Majdanek. Some details do not match, but the unusual name (Prakseda), place of birth, and place of residence (the same village where Danuta’s sister still lives) indicate that her mother was indeed imprisoned by the Nazis. Probably not at Majdanek (too many details do not fit), but the local archive contains a form filled out in 1964 by her husband and Danuta’s father for former prisoner Prakseda Seń (she was “barely literate”).

Arrested on 20 July 1941 for participation in the partisan movement (as a courier), supplying partisans, and “for hiding Jewish children and women and providing them with food” (Prakseda Seń did not claim Jewish origin but could “speak Jewish”). Initially imprisoned in Nowogródek. From October 1941 in concentration camps - she lists Majdanek, Dachau, and Mauthausen. “I miraculously escaped death by burning and gassing; I was a guinea pig for experiments,” she dictated to her husband. She was beaten and abused; “SS doctors” forcibly bound her arms and legs, “took enormous amounts of blood,” and “administered experimental injections” (original spelling). When the Allies liberated the camp (no name given) in March 1945, she was ill and exhausted, maimed and starving. She required six months of treatment, and in February 1946 the Polish Red Cross transported her to Poland. The form does not mention it, but there was also France along the way: in the summer of 1945, Danuta’s still-living sister was born there.

So there is nothing here that would explain the family’s distance from commemorating Danuta - quite the opposite. The explanation may lie, however, in what we find in the IPN archives, specifically in the files of an “operational verification case” under the codename Trio.

The so-called Trio consisted of three people: Danuta Seń-Danielsson, her husband Björn Danielsson, and her father Jan Seń, who traveled to Växjö at his daughter’s invitation. He was to spend three months there, but after only two, at the beginning of March 1984, he went to the police and reported that his daughter and son-in-law had taken his passport to prevent him from returning to Poland and to force him to apply for political asylum. Officers spoke with Björn, who denied it, and that ended the matter for the local police. The father, however, did not give up: he went to the Swedish Red Cross headquarters for assistance, as he had left his daughter’s home without clothes or money, and then to the Polish consulate, where he applied for a new passport.

Under the former system, this was no trivial matter. The document did not belong to the citizen: “This passport is the property of the Polish People’s Republic,” stated the note on its cover. Citizens did not keep passports at home. They were stored at communist militia stations and later at passport departments of the Security Service and were issued only for a specific trip. Permission to travel depended on so-called environmental inquiries, even opinions from the workplace or the security services, and upon return the citizen had to surrender the passport. Its loss therefore set consular services in motion: the IPN files contain an urgent telex stating that citizen Jan Seń had reported to the consulate without a passport. He also complained that he had not been fed properly at his daughter’s home and that he had been beaten. He was issued a so-called blank passport (temporary), put on a ferry to Świnoujście, and the Security Service took the case under scrutiny.

Intimate Contacts

Had Jan Seń sold the passport or handed it over to someone? If so, for what purpose? Had he lost it? For what purpose might his Swedish son-in-law have taken it? What role did Danuta play in this? Was it really about forcing him to apply for asylum? These questions were entered into the justification for opening the case codenamed Trio.

The “operational verification” lasted as long as three years. It was conducted by the Second Department of the Provincial Office of Internal Affairs in Zamość and involved other departments and offices dealing with the surveillance of foreigners (including in Gorzów Wielkopolski and Wrocław), as well as militia units. The Security Service activated secret informants. Neighbors and acquaintances of Danuta, her parents, and siblings were questioned. The Danielssons were surveilled when they came to Poland. Those who had contact with them were interrogated - even a taxi driver who drove them on New Year’s Eve. Among Poles traveling to Sweden, individuals were selected who might have contact with them and report on them. The past and beliefs of the entire family were scrutinised. The identity of the father of Danuta’s illegitimate son was established (the boy was eight when she married Björn). The father was a physician from Gorzów Wielkopolski (another person is listed as the father on the birth certificate), and the boy was born in the Lublin region. Danuta’s career path was analyzed: from nurse and orderly at the Gorzów Wielkopolski hospital, to manual worker at the Stilon fiber factory, to making coffee at a student club in Växjö and occasional work as a cook at the local hospital.

Björn was said to have arranged the latter job for her. Earlier, she had received a Polish disability pension, but it was suspended when Danuta left the country permanently in August 1982. She received permission to travel as the wife of a foreigner. They married on 21 November 1981 in Gorzów Wielkopolski. Björn, a journalist at a Växjö radio station, was 22 years older than her. They reportedly met shortly before the wedding - at a music festival, according to other sources during a Baltic Sea holiday. “At that time he did not know about her past,” noted one Security Service document.

“As established through operational findings, she is a woman of loose morals, maintaining for many years extensive intimate contacts with men, mainly foreigners, for which she also received material benefits,” reads a security service note about Danuta Seń-Danielsson. In others: “She actively practiced prostitution throughout the country,” “She maintained numerous contacts with foreigners arriving for the International Trade Fairs in Poznań. They were mainly traders from the West Germany”. At the Orbis-Panorama hotel in Wrocław in the late 1970s, she met with the secretary of the Finnish Embassy in Warsaw. The files record his name, room number, and meeting time. There was also a second “intimate meeting” with the Finnish diplomat, for which she allegedly received 400 dollars. “Currently, she also proposes intimate contacts to most men she meets, not concealing this from her husband,” an officer wrote. Similar accounts were repeated by her acquaintances and the taxi driver who drove her in Poland.

The “operational verification” ended when Danuta’s father died, followed shortly by her mother. Due to their deaths, the Danielssons would no longer have anyone to visit in Poland, since Danuta “lives in conflict with her extended family and maintains no contact” with them, as noted in the analysis. The materials indicate that the Danielssons consumed alcohol “in excessive quantities” and frequently held drinking parties during which she boasted of having married a Swede for money and an inheritance, and of intending to return to Poland with her son after his death. Danuta eagerly told security officers about named Polish acquaintances in Sweden, including those staying illegally, and about their views on the political system and Poland. She declared a willingness to cooperate with the security service, even “thrusting information upon us that might interest us,” as the case officer observed. “The subject was twice treated in the psychiatric hospital in Radecznica. Due to her health condition – a nervous illness – she is not suitable for operational use,” he noted.

It was not established that any of the Trio engaged in activity hostile to the Polish People’s Republic or the system; the state also recovered Jan Seń’s passport (the daughter sent it back to the consulate). The case was therefore archived as “fully clarified.” Before that happened, the memorable demonstration of 13 April 1985 took place in Växjö. A few months later, on 25 August 1985, Seń-Danielsson described it in a protocol of the Security Service. This is most likely her only documented statement on the matter.

The Verdict

“A fairly large group of residents, mainly foreigners permanently residing there, attacked the participants of this march. Among the group attacking the neo-fascist gang was the interviewee, and her photo was to appear in many Swedish newspapers,” noted Lt. Zygmunt Wojciechowski. “As Danuta Seń claims, in Sweden there are quite a lot of such [neo-fascist] groups and they derive from young Swedes, because Swedes do not regard Hitler as a criminal but as a defender of the German nation, who sought to remove foreigners from the country (mainly Jews), who were a burden to Germans. Swedes currently also believe that foreigners are a burden to them, as they do nothing, and that they should somehow be gotten rid of, even with the help of neo-Hitlerite groups. People who were in concentration camps - and there are very few of them in Sweden - consider these groups dangerous and threatening to world peace.”

The man Danuta struck with her handbag proved dangerous indeed. Seppo Seluska, shortly after the famous photograph was taken, murdered a gay Jew, first torturing him. In 1992, he attempted to drown a person of Arab origin in a particularly brutal manner. The victim survived but suffered serious injuries. In 1995, Seppo Seluska was again involved in the murder of a gay man. In 2004, he murdered another person, after which he was sentenced to life imprisonment and is currently serving his sentence.

My perception of objects has been shaped by the places and moments in time when they passed through extraordinary experiences. They lost their owners, were plundered, destroyed, confiscated. They were organized, fashioned from nothing, treated as talismans, concealed at the peril of life itself. They were the sole possessions, the entire lineage’s chronicle, all that remained of home, of identity, of memory and hope. No object is merely a thing to me—each tells its own story and speaks of the many human histories in which it is enmeshed.

Since the late 1990s, the humanities have witnessed a movement known as the “turn to things,” and—intensified by years of constructivism and textualism—a longing for the real, for the concrete materiality of existence. “Back to things!” appeals Bruno Latour, the French anthropologist and pioneer of the new humanities. Things have always constituted the object of historical, anthropological, and sociological inquiry, but what is novel is not the subject of study but rather its perspective. Things help us regain contact with reality. The turn toward materiality signifies an appreciation of the synthesizing value of things, their weight as essential interpretive categories, and their role as active creators of social life.

Latour wrote:“For too long, objects have been wrongly portrayed as matters of fact. This is unjust to objects; unjust to science, unjust to objectivity, unjust to experience. Objects are far more interesting, colorful, indeterminate, complicated, elusive, diverse, hazardous, local, material, and networked than the pallid visions with which philosophers have fed us for far too long.”

For Latour, the narrative of things is naturally also a narrative about the owner—the human being—yet one arrives at his/her story “through the thing.” Its role shifts from an episodic decoration to playing one of the principal parts upon history’s stage. From an object wielded by man, the thing becomes his companion on the journey. It shares, and sometimes symbolizes, his/her fate, becoming an extension of the human and co-creating interpersonal bonds.

This can also be told metaphysically.

According to Kabbalah, the world came into being as the consequence of a cosmic catastrophe called the shattering of vessels filled with divine light. The light mingled with the shards of the vessels. This process gave rise to evil. The existence of the world is an unceasing process of repairing the broken vessel, eliminating evil, reuniting what has been sundered. The process of repairing the world is a task given to humanity by God. With the word tikkun, Jewish folk philosophy describes the fulfillment of the destiny of all divine and human creations—that is to say, things. Things are, in our hands, fragments of the world, each marked by our deeds.

Family heirlooms possess a special status, for they are exceptionally precious on account of the love for the hands that cherish them, on account of their association with the fate of those dearest to us. Things must be cherished so they may fulfill their destiny—tenderly nurtured, repaired, entrusted to worthy hands. This is not merely an obligation born of sentiment, but of morality and spiritual mitzvah.

Especially today, in an age of consumerism, ultra-rapid shopping, promotions for disposable items, yet simultaneously in a time of conflicts, wars, and anxieties, it is particularly socially responsible to comprehend the value of things, their history, their identity. Such knowledge will enable us to protect what cannot be replaced by a commercial simulacrum; such knowledge will enable us to discern what we place in the evacuation rucksack, what we preserve, what we entrust to institutions or safe havens. This is our duty as family chroniclers, but also simply as responsible citizens. Family heirlooms are not trinkets from online marketplaces; they are objects capable of preserving our most precious moments and the narratives of who we are. They are fragments of culture, personal and singular things that no one will understand better than we do. Family heirlooms anchor us in reality, in the analog world of life and death, where we can sense what truly matters.

Here is the story of a particular scarf from my book Personal Histories: About People and Things in Wartime. It will best convey what I mean.

The scarf, adorned with a beautiful nautical pattern, protected a stack of photographs for years. They belonged to Ida, mother of the Israeli artist Mirjam. Mama categorically forbade little Mirjam from looking at them. Only after her death and the death of her husband, in 1996, did her daughter take the bundle into her hands. She quickly put it away again. She did not feel ready to unravel this mystery. Several years later, she thought of it anew. She was then curating the exhibition “Fabrics Remember.” She invited artists to create works inspired by textiles inherited from loved ones. She herself displayed a tablecloth from her grandmother—entirely embroidered with the names of guests who had once sat at grandmother’s table. They would sign the fabric, and grandmother would embroider along the lines. The photographs preserved in the scarf were also like signatures, indecipherable hieroglyphics. She could no longer avoid naming them. The Lohamei HaGetaot Museum in Haifa helped unravel the mystery. She learned that these photographs had been taken by friends from her mother’s home after all its inhabitants had been deported to the camps. They survived the war in hiding. Among the photographs, she found letters her mother had exchanged with family, written in special codes. There were also dates of transports, and finally letters from the Red Cross announcing the deaths of loved ones. Mirjam’s parents managed to escape to Switzerland in time. When her mother learned that no one from the deported family had survived, she collapsed. She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Grandmother told little Mirjam that mama was ill with typhus.

As an adult, Mirjam calls her creations fiber art. For years she has worked with material, with threads; she crochets, embroiders, knits her pieces. Materials are like people to her—equally sensitive, susceptible to influences, beautifully reciprocating when treated with care. They possess an inevitable expiration date, and none can be replicated.

War enters the homes where we find not only ourselves—the inhabitants—but also our possessions. War reveals that we dwell in fragile containers that disintegrate under the onslaught of violence, and things spill from them like confetti. While our homes remain intact, replete with things and histories, it is well to lend them our ear. We now possess myriad ways of remembering, countless variants for storing objects and histories. Yet simultaneously, we lose patience for quiet listening; we lose sensation in hands touching cold screens. Attending to things can be not only a captivating intellectual and familial adventure but can also bestow upon us restorative, meditative time. No special education is required—it suffices that curiosity, patience, and willingness to enter the labyrinth guide us. Nothing demonstrates better than the stories of family things that grand history always courses through our small lives.

In 2024, on the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Uprising, I co-created an exhibition at the Warsaw Uprising Museum with the fitting title “Real Things.” It comprised 80 objects that narrated what this uprising meant for the city and its inhabitants, its euphoria and its suppression. It is a collection of ordinary objects that became sites of historical inscription 80 years ago—yet their testimony resonates with painful contemporaneity. For several months, through the graciousness of the conservators of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, who invited me to collaborate on the exhibition, I examined objects selected for display. All of them survived because someone determined that these particular ones could not be abandoned in the rubble, in a forsaken home. Someone took them at some moment—during bombardment or after the fall of the uprising, after the war’s end, or while rebuilding the city from post-war ruins.

The museum possesses over a thousand objects in its collection—partly discoveries by museum staff, but largely also gifts from private individuals who performed a gesture of care toward some particular thing, discovered in it a medium of memory, a witness, and decided that they no longer belonged solely to their private sphere but must become public exhibits.

These are things as disparate as: a doll, powder compact, bicycle, bottle, wooden spoon, cup, fork, painting, spectacles, shoes, a dachshund-shaped key chain, letters, cigarettes—yet also remarkably similar, for they are no longer entirely their own, no longer ordinary, but things of a state of emergency—war. Among the objects displayed at the exhibition was also a suitcase—one could scarcely find a more eloquent symbol of wartime fates—you must flee, abandon your life, so you pack only what will fit, what can be carried—literally, but also figuratively. The contents of suitcases are a calculus of reason, intuition, and fear.

The suitcase from the museum is leather, with metal fittings. Katarzyna Pietrusińska- Bojarska carried her possessions in it. Maria Lambasa recalled: “Mama had two suitcases. Tiny suitcases. One was yellow, of pigskin, and the other brown. In the brown one were all the documents, all the mementos, diplomas and so forth. In the pigskin one were three things. There was a tablecloth embroidered by nuns who rescued Jewish children, and there was a little book, my first ever, about the Guardian Angel. There were some photographs from bygone years, and the third thing was mama’s ball gown (…) when they put us in that freight train in Pruszków, it was an open wagon, and we traveled perhaps two days and the rain poured mercilessly, so we held that tablecloth over ourselves, wrung it out, and now every Christmas I spread out that tablecloth.”

Things are also bearers of culture. The fragile walls in which they are housed can collapse all the same, whether they be the walls of an apartment block, a library, or a museum. Family heirlooms are part of profoundly intimate history, yet simultaneously priceless witnesses of time for the entire community. Things are exceedingly particular, yet they are also our universal human language through which we narrate the everyday to one another. They are “anchors” of our memory, which summon images, words—such as Hanna Krall describes them—“hooks” that can be positioned in the appropriate fold of reality, enabling us to hold fast during our life’s ascent.

Of such “anchors” Ewa and Maria told me a story. Both preserve remarkably special family heirlooms—one might say, recovered from traumatic events for blessed memory. Ewa preserves with reverence a bojtel—a camp bag from Ravensbrück, salvaged from pre-war life. Mama embroidered her camp number upon it: 77150. On the bag there still appeared the name of Ewa’s sister, who had carried it to school. Two worlds colliding on a scrap of cloth. The camp registry was not preserved; Ewa discarded the triangles because they reminded her of suffering she wished not to revisit for many years. But she kept the bag. It was pre-war, embroidered by mama; she could not bring herself to part with it. Though only a single number is embroidered there, through it she remembered all the women in the family, for when prisoners were numbered, they stood one behind another. Flattened upon a napkin, on the table, it was indeed the size of a shoe bag. The upper portion whiter, the lower more reddish, but above all gray-brown. The embroidery thread of the name retained a distinct blue hue, but the once sky-blue camp number had grayed. It must have been thread of inferior quality. I noticed upon the material traces of mending and tiny copper-colored stains. A family memento, evidence of atrocity, a school bag, a trace of mama, of sister, relic, testament to survival.

Maria also possesses a memento recovered from a traumatic experience. At a certain moment in our acquaintance, she placed a small bundle before me. Inside was a black-and-red sweater. It emerged that when she departed the Stutthof camp, she assembled herself a “trousseau” for new life—she took whatever might prove useful, for she possessed nothing. Many things were destroyed, but not the sweater. In the sweater from the Effektenkammer, Maria attended high school, and then she carefully folded it and secreted it in the wardrobe. It smells of mothballs. It seems so small to me, as if for a little girl. It has not even worn thin. Affixed to it is a yellowed Post-it note inscribed “Memento from Stutthof.”

In the final section of my 2023 exhibition about women in the Warsaw Uprising, “The Journey of Heroines: Women’s Uprising,” there were no mementos from the war or from times profoundly marked by grand history. I wished for visitors who could examine various aspects of quotidian life—fighting, enduring—of women during the Second World War to be able to experience and comprehend that their lives, those who survived, did not conclude with the Uprising but had in truth only just begun. I wished for them to be remembered not solely as soldiers, scouts, nurses, officers—but also as private individuals who possessed their own preferences, chose engaging professions, accumulated objects that speak not of war but of the good lives they managed to construct.

Together with the exhibition designers, we called this chamber “grandmother’s room”— there was furniture from the PRL era, a sofa, table, armchairs. One could sit and watch video conversations with Uprising participants about their lives—beyond the Uprising, observe how they live, what they cherish. In this section also appeared their beloved objects, their mementos, as displayed artifacts—a treasured shawl, stuffed companion, figurine, commemorative photograph. One cannot grasp the magnitude of effort, courage, hope, and losses bound up with great historical events that tear us from the everyday unless we understand what constitutes our ordinary existence. And likewise, after learning of this grand history, this struggle for survival, without such a postscript, we shall not sense what makes life worth living. These family heirlooms of my heroines, my “grandmothers,” gave me hope that every era possesses things that witness tragedy, but also things that witness miracles. Both varieties of mementos are equally vital—they speak of the full spectrum of humanity.

What we can do is shield them from the refuse heap—of history and of our attention. They will reciprocate with a story. And as the writer Joan Didion observed—we tell ourselves stories in order to live.

The term “camp art” may seem out of place, as concentration and extermination camps were designed to reduce human beings to numbers — to dehumanise them. And yet, in defiance of the logic of the system, drawings, paintings, poems, songs, and even theatrical performances were created there. This artistic output constitutes one of the most powerful testimonies of the twentieth century and stands as evidence that culture can become the last form of freedom.

Art created in concentration camps includes both works produced on commission for the Schutzstaffel (SS) and displayed in the Lagermuseum established by the Germans, as well as illegal works that prisoners created secretly, in hiding. In this context, art is understood both as an expression of intense emotions and as a strategy of survival. A significant number of these works were created anonymously; nevertheless, the names of some artists are known. Among them are, for example, Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz, Maria Hiszpańska-Neumann, Maja Berezowska, Imre Holló, as well as Esther Lurie and Dinah Gottliebová-Babbitt.

The origins of camp art

There were many reasons for the development of camp art, and it emerged along multiple paths. This artistic production did not arise as an organised artistic movement; rather, it grew out of three overlapping sources.

The first was a powerful need to bear witness and to document crimes. Many prisoners wanted to “leave a trace” — to describe a reality the outside world might not believe. Not all illegal artistic activity had a documentary purpose, however. Many works were created out of the prisoners’ own psychological and emotional needs.

The second reason was psychological survival, as artistic creation could serve as a means of preserving one’s identity. It functioned as a remedy for dehumanisation and as a form of escape from everyday camp reality. This can be understood as a need for emotional regulation, symbolisation, and the recovery of a sense of agency.

The third cause of the development of camp art was coercion and its use as an instrument of power. In many cases, artworks were produced on commission or under the supervision of the perpetrators. Workshops existed in the camps (for example, for technical drawings, charts, or signage), and artistic talent could become a form of currency, offering extra bread, lighter work, or a chance of survival — at the cost of dependence and profound moral dilemmas.

Why did they create? Motives and functions of camp art

Camp art constitutes a distinct phenomenon and can be attributed multiple functions. Above all, thanks to camp artists, it was possible to document everyday life in the camps. After the end of the Second World War, these works became a basis for indictments and for proving the guilt of the perpetrators. Drawings depicting selections, roll calls, barracks, physical exhaustion, and the “everyday reality” of violence serve as visual testimonies to brutality. They were often created in hiding, on scraps of paper, sometimes using makeshift tools. Many camp artists devoted themselves with particular care to creating portraits of loved ones or landscapes. This group of works also includes religious motifs and memories of the family home. This strand of artistic production was intended to preserve the memory of the world “before” the Second World War.

Yet this was not all. Songs, satires, and short performances fostered a sense of connection and contributed to the rebuilding of community — something the camp systemically sought to destroy. Undoubtedly, art also functioned as a tool of survival, understood not only metaphorically but quite literally: in exchange for a portrait, a decorative card, a sign, or a drawing, one could receive bread, soup, or shoes. Thus, “barter exchange” flourished. In accordance with the camp economy, artworks became resources that carried a certain value and functioned as a form of currency.

It should also be remembered that camp authorities tolerated or commissioned certain forms of artistic production—decorations, posters, and performances intended to mask reality or to organise camp life in a manner deemed desirable. In some places, prisoners were forced to create works for the SS, which exploited their artistic skills for a variety of purposes. These included instructional drawings, scale models of planned camp expansions, as well as documentation of diseases and medical experiments. Prisoners also produced works for the private use of SS men, such as portraits, landscapes, greeting cards, and decorative objects (including platters and wooden caskets), often adorned with symbols of the Third Reich. They likewise created decorations for camp authorities, for example paintings and sculptures used to furnish SS offices and living quarters (including the offices of Commandant Rudolf Höss). At this point, it is worth mentioning the Lagermuseum at Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp, established in the autumn of 1941 on the initiative of Commandant Höss. It represented the most striking manifestation of this system. The Lagermuseum fulfilled a triple, macabre function: as an artistic workshop commissioning works from a group of several talented prisoners; as a storehouse and “gallery,” where both commissioned works and items looted from deportees (such as Jewish prayer books, tallitot, and coins) were collected; and as a tool of propaganda.

The Lagermuseum was intended to demonstrate that prisoners were performing work “appropriate to their education” and was occasionally shown to official delegations. Artists involved in its activities included, among others, Franciszek Targosz, Władysław Baworski, Józef Putka, Stanisław Korwin-Pawłowski, Stefan Didyk, and Bronisław Czech, as well as Jan Komski, Moses Blum, and Aaron Brün. Cooperation with Targosz was refused by, among others, Ksawery Dunikowski, Mieczysław Kościelniak, and Wincenty Gawron.

Similar institutions existed in other camps (such as Dachau and Buchenwald), although they often assumed a pseudo-anthropological character, involving, for example, the collection of plaster casts or “exhibits” made from human skin.

Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt

An example of “official” camp art is the work of Dina Gottliebová-Babbitt (1923–2009). She was a Czech-American artist of Jewish origin. In January 1942, she and her mother, Jana, were arrested and deported to Theresienstadt, where they spent nearly eighteen months before being imprisoned in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. The artist’s camp experience related to painting differs from the biographies discussed earlier. Dina had demonstrated artistic talent from an early age, later confirmed by her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in what was then Czechoslovak Brno. After arriving in Auschwitz, she painted a mural on the wall of the children’s barrack depicting a scene from the popular Disney fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The mural attracted the attention of Josef Mengele, the SS physician known as the “Angel of Death.” He commissioned her to paint watercolour portraits of Roma people, whom he used in his pseudoscientific experiments. He reportedly insisted that she emphasise physical features that differed from those deemed “Aryan,” which was central to racial theory. Dina worked deliberately slowly, aware that haste could accelerate the extermination of the people she was portraying. Moreover, she tried to help them by sharing her bread.

Her cooperation with Mengele saved her from death in the camp. Furthermore, she managed to ensure the survival of her mother, who had been sent to Auschwitz with her in 1943. Dina painted the Roma portraits in watercolour, using an improvised easel made from a chair. As she herself stated in a recording (Oral History Interview with Dina Babbitt) made available by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, her talent made her “useful,” and thus she and her mother “were placed on the list to be spared”. After the end of the Second World War, she emigrated to the United States, where she married Arthur Babbitt (1907–1992), an animator who worked for the Walt Disney studios and was responsible, among other things, for creating the character Goofy.

The modus operandi of camp artists: how was camp art created?

The fact that artistic production emerged in the camps does not mean that its creators had free access to materials, which were in fact an almost unattainable luxury. Those engaged in artistic work used literally anything available: scraps of paper taken from the margins of forms, packaging, and sometimes even cement sacks. Tools for creation included, among others, pencils, charcoal, improvised ink, and paints. Finished works, if not produced on commission for the Germans, were concealed.

Camp artists demonstrated remarkable ingenuity and skill, both in their artistic practice and in hiding completed works. Artworks were concealed, for example, in false bottoms, in mattresses, within walls, and were sometimes passed clandestinely to others. Not all works, like many of their creators, survived the hell of the camps. The surviving examples represent only a small fragment of a much larger whole. Many were destroyed, burned, or discarded. What remains today is merely a partial legacy. As Barbara Czarnecka observes: “Paradoxically—since one must acknowledge that under such dramatic circumstances every act of creation was an exception—FKL Ravensbrück became a fertile ground for the artistic work of several exceptional women artists. Seen from another perspective, it is precisely in connection with this camp, which ‘received’ numerous transports of educated women, including those trained in the arts, that one should seek the roots of women’s camp art.”.

Associated with this camp is the work of, among others, Éliane Jeannin-Garreau, Nina Jirsíková, Jeannette L’Herminier, Violette Rougier-Lecoq, Maja Berezowska, Maria Hiszpańska, and Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz.

Adam Franciszek Jaźwiecki (alias “Sandor”)

In the history of concentration camps, there exists a distinct category of testimony: drawings created in defiance of the logic of the extermination system. They were not meant to decorate or soften reality, but to preserve it. One of the most important Polish creators of such a visual record was Franciszek Jaźwiecki (1900–1946)—a prisoner of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a draftsman, and a witness who, at the risk of his life, recorded what was meant to disappear without a trace. He possessed solid training in drawing and painting, having studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków under masters such as Fryderyk Pautsch and Teodor Axentowicz. This very talent—which under normal circumstances would have offered a path of artistic development—became in the camp reality both a tool of survival and a means of testimony. During the First World War, Franciszek Jaźwiecki served as a legionnaire; during the Second World War, he was active in the underground resistance.

In 1942, he was arrested and imprisoned in Auschwitz. There, Jaźwiecki found himself among prisoners whose artistic skills were exploited by the camp administration. He produced, among other things, technical drawings, charts, and utilitarian works—activities that could mean lighter labour and a greater chance of survival. At the same time, however, the artist made a decision of far greater significance: he began to secretly document camp reality. Some of his works he hid, others he passed on to fellow prisoners or smuggled out in fragments. Only a small number survived—but enough to form today one of the most important collections of visual testimonies of Auschwitz created by an eyewitness.

Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz

Among the artists who documented the Holocaust, many were women. One of them was Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz (1906–1955)—a painter, draughtswoman, and graphic artist. After completing a girls’ secondary school, she trained under Adam Rychtarski at the private Konrad Krzyżanowski School of Painting and Drawing in Warsaw, and subsequently studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Władysław Skoczylas. She actively participated in Warsaw’s artistic life and received numerous awards for her work.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, she joined the underground resistance. In 1941, she shared the fate of many Poles when she was arrested and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison. Already there, she began documenting prison life, creating, among other works, portraits of fellow inmates, including Karolina Olszyńska and Zofia Kwiecińska. She used coloured pencils and drew on wrapping paper. In September of the same year, she was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. There, she worked in the so-called Kunstgewerbe, where she was involved, among other tasks, in painting wooden toys. At the same time, she secretly recorded events unfolding in the camp and portrayed victims of Nazi medical experiments, including works such as “Babcia Belawender,” “Maria Grabowska — experimentally operated on in Ravensbrück,” “Hospital Sister from Oświęcim,” and “Ukrainian Women at Work.”.

Interestingly, portraits were also commissioned from her by female guards. Not all of her works survived the war. Some were smuggled out of the camp, while others remained hidden in her bedding. The works from the first group were transported to Warsaw but were destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising; those from the second group survived. When, on 25 April 1945, she was able to leave the camp and travel to Sweden with the assistance of the Swedish Red Cross, she took with her the drawn documentation of the crimes committed in Ravensbrück. After leaving the site of her ordeal, she created the series “Visions from the Camp.”.

Maria Hiszpańska-Neumann

Maria Hiszpańska-Neumann (1917–1980) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the 1930s. During the Second World War, she demonstrated remarkable courage and commitment through her involvement in the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej). A native of Warsaw, she was arrested in 1941. She was initially imprisoned in Radom and later transferred to Pińczów, from where, on 10 April 1942, she was deported to the Ravensbrück–Neubrandenburg camp. As prisoner no. 10219, she created approximately 400 drawings during her imprisonment, becoming— as Renata Osiewała writes — “a chronicler of human suffering and humiliation.”

She survived. After returning to Warsaw, she worked as a graphic artist and painter, designing ration cards and city coats of arms. She also illustrated books and created drawings for poems by, among others, Maria Konopnicka (“I miasto i wioska to jeden nasz świat”), Kazimiera Jeżewska (“O Kacperku Warszawiaku”), and Maria Kownacka (“Kwiatki Małgorzatki”). She never forgot the hell of the camp. For years, she continued to create drawings depicting scenes that reflected the reality she had faced in Ravensbrück.

Many of her works were donated to the local museum as well as to the Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej). They have been made available at the IPN Educational Centre Przystanek Historia in Warsaw. As Renata Osiewała recalls, works from the “Camp Cycle,” created both during imprisonment and after liberation, were published in Kazimierz Jaworski’s 1959 book “Hearts Behind the Wire: Memories from Sachsenhausen” and also illustrated the poetry volume “Ravensbrück: Camp Poems”, published in 1961.

Mieczysław Kościelniak

Mieczysław Kościelniak (1912–1993) also made a significant contribution to documenting camp life and conveying the truth about German crimes to the world. He was a painter and illustrator from Kalisz who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in the studio of Józef Mehoffer. His biography also includes a military chapter: between 1933 and 1935, he completed his compulsory military service in an artillery unit in Września, and after the outbreak of the Second World War he took part in the September Campaign of 1939. Fighting in the ranks of the 70th Infantry Regiment, he participated, among other engagements, in the Battle of the Bzura.

After his arrest in 1941, he was imprisoned in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. There, he became involved in the underground activities of the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej). He was entrusted with the task of documenting events, which he recorded in drawings. In total, he created more than 300 works, which were later transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim. After the end of the Second World War, he was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Art to help establish the museum in Oświęcim, created on the site of the former death camp. In 1955, his work received official recognition when he was awarded the Gold Cross of Merit for his artistic work during his imprisonment in the concentration camps.

Esther Lurie

Esther Lurie (1913–1998) was a painter of Latvian origin, a graduate of theatrical set design and drawing studies in Belgium. While visiting her sister in Kaunas, the war broke out. In 1941, both women were confined to the Kaunas Ghetto. It was there that Lurie began her documentary work. She soon attracted the attention of the Judenrat (Jewish Council), whose envoys commissioned her to officially document life in the ghetto for a secret archive, which afforded her a measure of protection.

Two years later, anticipating the impending liquidation of the ghetto, she buried more than 200 of her works in ceramic jars beneath her sister’s house. This liquidation indeed took place in July 1944. Lurie was then transported to the Stutthof concentration camp and later to its subcamp Ľubica, where she continued to draw, often exchanging portraits for a slice of bread.

The works created by Lurie documenting life in the concentration camp fulfilled their documentary purpose. They were used during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a war criminal convicted of genocide, as evidence of the crimes committed. She donated her drawings to institutions of memory such as Yad Vashem and the Ghetto Fighters’ House.

Maja Berezowska

Maja Berezowska (1892/3–1978) turned art into an act of resistance and a tool of survival during the Second World War. Born in Baranovichi, in what is today western Belarus, the painter and caricaturist was already a recognised artist before the war, known for her subtle, erotic graphics published in widely read magazines. A turning point in her life came in 1935, when she published a series of caricatures of Adolf Hitler entitled “The Amorous Adventures of Sweet Adolf” in the French magazine “Ici Paris”. The mocking and sexually provocative drawings caused a scandal and led to a court case in Paris, and Hitler himself reportedly never forgot the insult. These drawings are believed to have been the reason she was deliberately located and arrested by the Gestapo in Warsaw in January 1942.

She was first imprisoned in Pawiak prison and, a few months later, after receiving an official death sentence for “insulting Hitler,” she was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. With the help of fellow prisoners, who smuggled drawing materials to her, she recorded everyday camp life. She portrayed women from her cell and the camp, deliberately departing from realistic documentary representation. She gave her subjects rosy cheeks, enhanced their beauty and physical presence, and portrayed them as “radiant with health.” This beautification of fellow prisoners was not intended to erase the truth, but rather constituted an act of psychological resistance and care, meant to give courage both to the women portrayed and to their families.

A second strand of her camp work focused on depicting genre scenes such as roll calls, labour, and preparations for clandestinely organised cultural events, including a camp New Year’s nativity play. Her artistic practice was not merely a form of record-keeping, but an activity that sustained humanity—her own and that of others. Maja Berezowska survived the camp. After the liberation of Ravensbrück in 1945, she travelled to Sweden to recover, and in 1946 she returned to Poland, where she worked as an illustrator and scenographer until the end of her life.

Albin Maria Boniecki

Through his art, Albin Maria Boniecki (1908–1995) also offered comfort and hope to fellow prisoners. A sculptor trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, a soldier of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), and a prisoner of the Majdanek concentration camp (KL Lublin), he transformed his artistic practice into an act of resistance and a means of assistance to others. His most important works were created under the inhumane conditions of the concentration camp.

Taking advantage of the SS authorities’ permission to “beautify” the camp grounds ahead of a visit by the Red Cross, Boniecki created sculptures with double, concealed meanings that conveyed hope and provided tangible help to prisoners. The first was “The Frog”, which, according to Boniecki’s plan, served as a pretext for building a water reservoir. As Irena Siwińska noted: “The ruse succeeded: in Camp Field III the SS agreed to create such a reservoir.” He then created “The Tortoise”, a sculpture referring to the slogan of so-called “minor sabotage,” which read “Work slowly.” The piece was intended to provoke a smile and to remind prisoners of resistance through deliberately slow labour. Next came The Lizard, an allusion to the underground Lizard Union (Związek Jaszczurczy). Worth mentioning as well is the “Column of the Three Eagles”, symbolising freedom, brotherhood, and victory. Work on the column protected exhausted prisoners from death by offering them lighter tasks and a moment of respite.

Imre Holló

Not all documentarians of the Holocaust were trained artists. Imre Holló (1898–1967) was a qualified dentist who ran a dental practice in Sátoraljaújhely. During the First World War, he fought in the ranks of the Hungarian army and was taken prisoner by Russian forces. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he was confined in the Budapest Ghetto. From there, in June 1944, he was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp and subsequently transferred to the AL Riese Dörnhau labour camp in the Owl Mountains, a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. The camp was located on the premises of a carpet factory in Dörnhau (today Kolce near Głuszyca).

Holló secretly created a unique series of drawings depicting everyday life in the Dörnhau camp. He documented living conditions, the forced labour of prisoners, roll calls, scenes of guards abusing inmates, beatings, and executions. He made his drawings in black and blue ink on pieces of cardboard taken from advertising brochures. He then hid the drawings in mattress covers, deliberately choosing beds used by prisoners suffering from typhus. As a result, the works were not destroyed.

In the 1950s, he donated 49 drawings to the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. His works are also held in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. It is worth noting that they can also be seen in Poland: in December 2018, a permanent exhibition of Holló’s graphic works created during his imprisonment in the camps was opened at the Walim Tunnels. These are copies of the works donated by the artist to the National Museum in Budapest.

Conclusion

Taking into account the examples of activity by prisoners of concentration camps discussed above, one may conclude that camp art reminds us both of the scale of violence exercised by the modern state—capable of organising death on an industrial level—and of the human capacity to preserve meaning even when everything was meant to be rendered meaningless. Camp art, whether official or created illegally, in all its tragic and complex spectrum, remains one of the most important testimonies of the era of the Holocaust. These objects speak not only of crimes, but above all of an indestructible need for beauty, dignity, and spiritual resistance.

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Editorial note

This article was produced in cooperation between the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity and the historical portal Histmag.org as part of a campaign marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed on 27 January.

***

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Not only bodies, but habits. Not only memories, but objects, languages, gestures, and fears carried quietly into ordinary lives. This reflective essay explores the legacy of Holocaust survivor and artist Marianne Grant through the testimony of her daughter, Geraldine Shenkin, tracing how trauma, care, and resistance are transmitted across generations. Based on a conversation between Barbara Walshe and Geraldine Shenkin, it examines survival not as an endpoint, but as an ongoing ethical relationship between the past and those who inherit it—through everyday objects, artistic practice, and the fragile act of remembering itself.

(A reflective essay based on a conversation between Barbara Walshe and Geraldine Shenkin, Marianne Grant’s daughter).

Fragile beginnings

The conversation begins, disarmingly, with everyday logistics: a device that will not sit steady, a camera angle that feels wrong, a phone upgrade that has “changed everything.” Yet this opening is not incidental. It anticipates what will later become the central theme of the testimony itself: how fragile the channels of transmission can be—how easily a story of survival might be distorted, interrupted, or lost. And still, the story goes on.

Geraldine Shenkin lives in Glasgow, within a few miles of where she was born, surrounded by an ordinary architecture of continuity: marriage, two daughters, five grandchildren. She speaks from a life that is recognisably settled. But the conversation’s deeper current is that settlement does not cancel rupture. It contains it.

Geraldine’s childhood, she says, was marked by a persistent sense of difference. The household’s “common language” was German—shared by her parents and her grandmother, carried into Glasgow from elsewhere—and Geraldine “loathed” it as a child. The language itself becomes a sign of displacement, an audible reminder that the home she inhabits is unfamiliar as well as a post-catastrophic refuge. Friends later noticed her parents’ accents; Geraldine did not—“it was just Mum and Dad.” The distinction matters. In the child’s perspective, difference is not exotic; it is intimate. It is ordinary. But the household still recognised that language could render children vulnerable: Geraldine and her siblings were sent to elocution lessons “in order that we pronounce English properly.” Assimilation is presented here not as ideology but as precaution, a quiet technique to encourage safety and strengthen belonging.

The everyday after catastrophe: objects, habit, and embodied inheritance

From language, the conversation shifts to objects—paper, food, newspapers—and it is here that the moral grammar of post-traumatic life becomes visible. Geraldine describes her mother’s inability to discard anything: envelopes written on “every bit,” birthday cards reused as notepads, newspapers stacked and stored for future use. This is not merely frugality. It is a lived theory of dispossession: when everything has once been taken, waste becomes ethically intolerable.

Geraldine still keeps one of her mother’s repurposed cards and shows it to schoolchildren. The pedagogical gesture is telling. She does not instruct by abstraction; she teaches through material culture. The card becomes an artefact of a survival economy, a small object that carries an argument: the past is not only remembered, it is enacted in habits—habits of keeping, saving, reusing, fearing loss.

The same logic governs food. “We could never leave anything on our plate,” Geraldine recalls. Even now she resists discarding anything past a “best before” date, and her explanation expands from the personal to the global—“you think of all the starving people.” Trauma here is not a closed private wound; it becomes a moral lens through which the world is constantly judged. The past shapes not only memory but conscience.

This material ethic is mirrored by an equally embodied inheritance. Geraldine learns as a teenager that her mother had been “in the gas chambers… three times,” and the knowledge does not remain cognitive. It transforms sensation: the smell of gas becomes nauseating, “retching,” incompatible with domestic life. Geraldine cannot tolerate gas cookers; even Jewish ritual is disrupted, because striking a match and lighting Sabbath candles evokes fire and threat. She eventually “overcomes” the reaction—but the point is that knowledge has become physiological y. The trauma of one generation migrates into the sensory system of the next.

The conversation returns to another key inheritance: distrust. Geraldine’s mother hides her handbag inside a plastic carrier bag so it will not attract attention; she cannot trust “anybody.” Geraldine recognises the logic—“a total breakdown of trust”—and then names its psychological consequences in herself: she is “a terrible worrier,” inclined toward pessimism and anticipatory fear. The testimony here does not romanticise legacy. It makes visible the cost of survival when survival becomes a permanent state of vigilance.

And yet Geraldine experience tells her that her mother was also “the friendliest, warmest, intelligent lady,” deeply sociable, loved by neighbours, capable of humour, and astonishingly competent with languages. That duality is essential: the survivor is not only a victim. She is a person—warmth and suspicion, humour and dread, generosity and hoarding, courage and fear—held together uneasily.

If the first half of the conversation is about how the Holocaust persists in the everyday, the second half is about how it is transformed—through art—into an intentional legacy.

Art, recognition, and the ethics of transmission

Marianne Grant’s artistic talent, Geraldine argues, “saved her life through the whole war many times.” In Theresienstadt, Marianne works in agriculture and spends her limited “spare time” making art and crafts with children—small acts of imaginative care under coercion. Later, in Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp, she decorates the walls of the children’s block with fairy-tale imagery—Snow White, Bambi, Mickey Mouse, sunshine, mountains. The images are not escapism; they are a counter-environment. Marianne’s remark that there were “no trees” and no birds, only thick yellow mud, underscores what the murals oppose: not simply ugliness, but the deliberate stripping away of life’s ordinary colours. “She wanted to give the children a bit of colour in their lives,” Geraldine says—a sentence that functions as an ethical thesis.

But the conversation does not allow this thesis to become sentimental. Geraldine also describes Marianne being summoned to Josef Mengele and forced to draw markings of children—twins—used in experiments, as well as “Gypsy family trees.” The scene is narrated with minimal embellishment: Mengele “never spoke,” marched in “black shiny boots,” pointed; Marianne understood that “if she made an ink blot, she’d be finished.” Here, the same skill that makes murals possible also makes documentation of atrocity possible. Art becomes both refuge and instrument, both the creation of beauty and the forced rendering of violence. The title “Painting for My Life” is therefore not metaphorical. It is literal.

This is where the conversation’s most striking reflective turn occurs. While writing an epilogue for the book created with Glasgow Museums, Geraldine realises the bitter irony: Mengele’s obsession with twins aimed at racial eradication, and yet Geraldine herself is a twin; her mother gave birth to twins. “He failed,” she says. The claim is not triumphalist—nothing “undoes” what happened—but it locates a thin line of historical resistance in continuity itself. Survival, in this reading, is not only endurance. It is the denial of the perpetrator’s intended finality.

The essayistic depth of Geraldine’s testimony is amplified by two episodes of unexpected encounter—moments when memory returns via others, as if the past insists on meeting the present in public.

At an International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance event in Glasgow in 2024, two Slovak men approach Geraldine with “best wishes” from Dita Kraus, known as “the Librarian of Auschwitz.” Geraldine’s reaction is visceral: she nearly falls. Dita is not an abstract figure; she is a person her parents once knew, now suddenly alive and reaching out. Geraldine travels to meet her, and in three hours learns new dimensions of her mother’s and grandmother’s lives. She discovers that after liberation, Dita lived with Marianne and her mother in Bergen-Belsen; that Dita’s mother died; that Marianne arranged transport for Dita back to Prague and promised to secure a proper burial.

This is an important counter-narrative to popular accounts of survival. It frames the survivor not only as a recipient of rescue but also as an agent of care for others, even amid catastrophe. The ethical question shifts from “How did she live?” to “How did she keep others human—how did she keep herself human—while living?”.

The second episode involves Ella Weisberger and the hand-painted Hansel and Gretel storybook created in Theresienstadt. Ella does not recognise Marianne’s name at first—not even the nickname “Mausi.” Yet the recognition arrives later through an image. In a café, Geraldine opens a catalogue and turns to the page with the storybook illustrations. Ella grips Geraldine tightly and reveals, from beneath the table, a scroll: a photocopy of one of those drawings, given to her that morning because she recognised it from her own childhood. The discovery is psychologically precise: memory is not only verbal; it is visual, bodily, instantaneous. Geraldine cannot sleep for days.

In these moments, the essay’s guiding question—what survives when everything is taken?—receives a complex answer. What survives is not only a set of facts but a network of recognitions: a drawing remembered, a friendship renewed, a promise fulfilled, an object preserved, a name recovered from ivy and the resilience of human beings.

The return to Prague in 1993 further complicates the notion of survival. At the airport, Marianne cries uncontrollably—an unusual eruption in a woman who described herself as often “numb.” The family visits her father’s grave; they then visit the apartment where she grew up, entering without warning, invited in by a stranger charmed by Marianne’s fluent Czech. Geraldine’s tears here are not only empathy. They are the affective charge of stepping into a space that was once theirs and is now another’s—of confronting the physical normality of stolen continuity. The scene holds an implicit ethical tension: the current resident may not have known the apartment’s history; yet the history is now present in the doorway. The past is not politely distant It is present.

A final axis of the conversation is the shift from private memory to public testimony. Geraldine suggests her mother began speaking openly after Geraldine’s father died in 1986. The explanation is both personal and historical: it was too painful for the couple to speak earlier given their compounded losses; and Britain lacked a public framework for recognition until later developments such as Holocaust Memorial Day. The point is not merely temporal. It is structural: testimony needs an audience capable of hearing it. When the social conditions change, the private story becomes a civic responsibility.

The conversation then anchors this civic responsibility in the present. Geraldine notes rising antisemitism following 7 October and describes it as echoing the incremental restrictions her mother reported—being barred from school, cinema, public life. The past is not invoked as analogy for effect; it is invoked as warning grounded in remembered pattern: exclusion often arrives in stages that appear “small” until they are not. In this sense, Marianne’s legacy is not only commemorative. It is diagnostic.

And then we return—quietly but decisively—to the question of transmission. Geraldine’s grandchildren “know so much.” A fragment of Marianne’s mural practice—Mickey Mouse, Snow White, toadstools—becomes a framed heirloom hanging in a child’s bedroom. A granddaughter, age nine, writes and delivers a Holocaust Memorial Day speech at a non-Jewish school; a rabbi attends to listen. Here, legacy is neither museumification nor myth. It is a living act: a child speaking in her own words, not because she witnessed the past but because she inherits responsibility for it.

If this essay has a closing claim, it is that Marianne Grant’s legacy survives through a triad: material traces, aesthetic resistance, and intergenerational speech. The traces are humble—cards, envelopes, newspapers, a trunk, a roll of paper—yet they encode an entire ethics of post-traumatic life. The resistance is not abstract; it is painted, drawn, and risked under threat. And the speech is not automatic; it is cultivated, chosen, repeated—by a daughter who admits she wishes she had asked more questions, and by grandchildren who speak anyway.

In the end, “what survives” is not simply the survivor. It is the relationship between the survivor’s inner world and the world that comes after: a relationship built from objects that refuse disposal, from art that refuses dehumanisation, and from voices that refuse silence.

***

Editorial note

This essay was conducted as part of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026 campaign: The Art of Remembrance, organised by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS).

Not only life itself, but the fragile, stubborn forms through which life insists on meaning: language shaped by caution, objects guarded against loss, art created under threat, and memory carried forward by those born after catastrophe. In this conversation, Geraldine Shenkin reflects on her mother Marianne Grant’s survival of the Holocaust—not as a closed chapter of history, but as a living legacy embedded in everyday habits, sensory memory, artistic practice, and ethical responsibility. Speaking with Barbara Walshe, she traces how trauma is transmitted quietly across generations, how art becomes both refuge and evidence, and how remembrance survives not through abstraction, but through intimate acts of care, recognition, and speech.

Barbara Walshe: Geraldine, thank you for speaking with us. I’d like to begin with you, not with history. How are you and where is “home” for you?.

Geraldine: Home is Glasgow. I was born here, and I’ve never moved far—only about two miles from where I was born. I’m married, and I have two daughters, both married with children. One lives in London and one lives near me in Glasgow. I have five grandchildren—three boys and two girls. I feel very blessed.

Barbara: You’ve often said you grew up “a little bit different.” What did that difference feel like inside the house?

Geraldine: The common language between my parents and my grandmother was German. German was spoken in the house—and as a child, I loathed it. My mum later suggested I study German when I was sixteen so she could help me, and I did. But growing up, it made me feel different. Friends later said my parents had accents; to me, they were just Mum and Dad. Still, there were phrases said “the wrong way round,” and we were sent to elocution lessons early to make sure we pronounced English properly.

Barbara: The “difference” wasn’t only language, though. It sounds like the war lived in the everyday—quietly, but constantly.

Geraldine: Yes. My mother couldn’t throw anything out. Envelopes, letters—she’d write on every bit of paper, inside, outside, back of cards… Everything became a list, a note, something reused. I still have a birthday card with numbers written on it, and I show it to children in schools—because when you’ve had everything taken from you, nothing feels disposable. Nothing.

Barbara: So the house itself held a kind of memory—through objects.

Geraldine: Absolutely. Food too—nothing could be wasted. If we left food, she’d keep it for later, the next day. And she kept newspapers—there was a kitchen shelf packed underneath with papers piled high. Everything could be reused: lighting the fire, stuffing shoes, protecting bulbs in the garden. After she died in 2007, it took my siblings and me a year to clear the house.

Barbara: A year. That sounds like grief, but also archaeology—like you were excavating a life.

Geraldine: That’s exactly it. And in the loft we found her treasures. There was a trunk we were never allowed to open as children. That trunk is now on display in Glasgow at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It came with her from Sweden after the war. Some paintings and drawings were kept hidden.

Barbara: Can I ask something sensitive? When did you truly begin to understand what your mother had been through?

Geraldine: It came out slowly. She didn’t want to burden us—she didn’t want to scare us. There were moments. I remember eating an egg once, and she told me how she had been given an egg by an SS soldier in Auschwitz after doing something—painting for him—and how she shared that egg among several people. She described it like diamonds. Stories like that appeared, but we didn’t ask too many questions.

Barbara: You said something striking: that as children you somehow knew not to ask.

Geraldine: Yes. I’ve spoken to other children of survivors and they say the same: there was a boundary. And I still wonder—why didn’t I ask? I’m the nosiest person in the world. But you just… didn’t.

Barbara: And yet some knowledge arrived anyway—sometimes with a physical cost. You spoke about gas.

Geraldine: I learned in my early teens that my mum had been in the gas chambers in Auschwitz three times. That haunted me. For years, I couldn’t go near a gas cooker. The smell of gas made me retch. I never had a gas cooker. Even food cooked on gas bothered me. And as a Jewish woman, you light Sabbath candles on Friday night—but I couldn’t strike a match at first. Fire… it was very hard. I did overcome it over time, but it affected me deeply.

Barbara: That’s an important point: the Holocaust isn’t only “history.” It becomes a bodily inheritance.

Geraldine: Yes. And not just that. My mum was so nervous, so unable to trust. She’d hide her handbag inside a plastic carrier bag so nobody would steal it. That total breakdown of trust… it shapes you. I’m a worrier. My daughters say I’m pessimistic—always thinking what could go wrong. I try not to be, but it’s there.

Barbara: And yet you also describe her as warm, friendly, intelligent—someone people loved. How do those two truths live together?

Geraldine: She was both. She was the friendliest, warmest, cleverest woman—ahead of her time. Her language skills were incredible. She could speak to anybody. Even in hospital, dying of cancer, in pain—she still had that sharp clarity. She told me, “Don’t be so daft. I’ll be dead by tomorrow.” And she was. She was right to the end.

Barbara: Let’s talk about what sustained her—and what she carried forward. Her art seems central. You’ve said it saved her life.

Geraldine: It did. Her talent—art and languages—saved her many times. She was first taken from Prague to Theresienstadt in 1942, and she spent about twenty months there. She worked in agriculture there and, in her spare time, did art and crafts with the children—trying to bring them something.

Barbara: This idea of bringing “something”—colour, perhaps—into a world built to erase colour.

Geraldine: Exactly. She always said she wanted to give children “a bit of colour in their lives.” Later, in Auschwitz, she decorated the children’s block. She painted Snow White, Bambi, Mickey Mouse, sunshine, mountains—lovely things. She said Auschwitz then wasn’t like it is now; there wasn’t a tree, no birds—just thick yellow mud. The murals were colour in a place without colour.

Barbara: You mentioned a friend who helped preserve her drawings—someone who literally carried her art forward.

Geraldine: Yes—Peter Erben. She gave him drawings and paintings to keep safely. That’s how they survived. And there’s a story from Theresienstadt: a starving little girl threw her shoe into an apple tree to get an apple down, the apple fell but the shoe got stuck. It was discovered. My mum used her language and charm and bravery to spare that girl a beating. The girl later grew up—Eva Urbanist—and she told me the story years ago, laughing.

Barbara: So art and language—two tools—become two ways of saving: saving objects, saving people, saving a sense of humanity.

Geraldine: Yes.

Barbara: You also spoke about your mother’s relationship to her own mother—your grandmother—especially around deportation.

Geraldine: In Theresienstadt my grandmother was put on the cattle wagon “to the East.” My mum managed to get her off the train three times—but then couldn’t get her off again. She couldn’t. The wagons stood there all day; they were filling them. Eventually my mum and grandmother were reunited later in Auschwitz, but it was horrific.

Barbara: I want to bring in another part of the story: your father. Often Holocaust narratives flatten families into a single “survivor story,” but yours is two histories meeting.

Geraldine: My father came to the UK at the end of 1938 or early 1939, from Königsberg, East Prussia. His family paid for him to come; someone had to sponsor him. He was a teenager. He never saw his parents or brother again. They were murdered. For years my parents thought they died in 1941, but I’ve only discovered in recent months they were rounded up in November 1943 in Berlin, among a group of just under 5,000.

Barbara: That late discovery—how does it land emotionally, decades later?

Geraldine: It shakes you. You think you know, and then you learn there were more years, more time, more waiting. The grief changes shape.

Barbara: Let’s move to a moment you described as profoundly emotional: returning to Prague with your mother in 1993. What happened when she stepped back into that city?

Geraldine: She became overwhelmed. She didn’t cry often, but at the airport she couldn’t hold back tears. We visited her father’s grave in the Jewish cemetery—enormous, with mausoleums. It took a long time to find the grave because ivy had grown over the stone. When we pulled it off, the writing was preserved.

Barbara: The ivy preserved the name. That’s such an image—nature covering, and also protecting.

Geraldine: Yes. Then we went to the apartment block where she grew up—beautiful flats in a good part of Prague near a park. My grandfather worked for the Bohemian Union Bank; the flats were for bank employees. My mum rang the bell, charmed the woman in Czech, and suddenly we were invited in.

Barbara: What did it feel like to walk into a home that was yours—and not yours?

Geraldine: It was emotional. I cried. My grandmother had described details—parquet floors, a gas heater on the wall—and it was exactly as she’d said. The woman who lived there was an architect and lived there with her son. We arrived without warning. I can’t imagine what she felt—a Jewish family turning up at the door of an apartment that had been taken. She likely felt shock, maybe awkwardness, maybe guilt—even if she hadn’t known the history.

Barbara: This raises a difficult question: what is “return” after dispossession? Is it closure, confrontation, or something else?

Geraldine: It’s all of it. It’s draining. It’s hard. But it mattered to my mother—to show us.

Barbara: I want to ask about how memory keeps “finding” you—sometimes through strangers. You spoke about a remarkable encounter at an IHRA event in Glasgow in 2024.

Geraldine: Yes. It was a conference with delegates from all over the world. I spoke at an event at Kelvingrove, after the Scottish First Minister. Two Slovak gentlemen came to me and said they had best wishes for me from a woman called Dita Kraus—who is known as the “Librarian of Auschwitz.”

Barbara: What did it mean to hear that name, out of nowhere?

Geraldine: I almost fell flat on the floor. My parents had been friends with Dita and her husband after the war. I didn’t even know she was still alive. She was turning 95 two weeks later. They put me in touch with her. We spoke on the phone, emailed—her English was excellent because she’d been an English teacher in Israel. She sent photographs of my mum and her together from earlier years.

Barbara: And you went to see her.

Geraldine: Yes. In March, I decided I had to go. I went with my niece. At first she didn’t feel well enough, but the next day I spent three hours with her. It was incredibly emotional. That’s where I learned so much about my mother and grandmother.

Barbara: What did she tell you that changed your understanding?

Geraldine: I learned that after liberation, Dita lived with my mum and grandmother in Bergen-Belsen. They arrived there ten days before liberation in April 1945. Dita was travelling in the same group with her mother, and after liberation they were put together. Dita’s mother was very ill. My mum arranged for her to go to hospital, but she died. My mum bought Dita a transport to Prague and promised she’d make sure her mother was buried properly—she did. They stayed lifelong friends.

Barbara: That’s extraordinary. It’s also a form of “legacy” we don’t always speak about: survival as responsibility for others.

Geraldine: Yes. My mum did that kind of thing. She had that strength.

Barbara: Another “memory finding you” moment was with Ella Weissberger—connected to the Hansel and Gretel storybook. Tell me that story.

Geraldine: My mum created a hand-painted Hansel and Gretel storybook in Theresienstadt. For the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Ella Weissberger came to Glasgow to speak. The day before, I met her at the Scottish Parliament. She didn’t recognise my mother’s name. I even mentioned my mum’s nickname, “Mausi”—because she was so skinny as a child, like a little mouse. Still no.

Barbara: And then?

Geraldine: The next day I went early to a museum café for a coffee. Ella walked in and sat next to me—unexpectedly. I had brought a catalogue book of my mum’s works—don’t ask me why, I just had a feeling. I opened it, turned pages, and when we reached the page showing four illustrations from the Hansel and Gretel storybook, her hand dug into me—she gripped me tightly. Under the table she pulled out a scroll: a photocopy of one of the drawings. She had been given it that morning by the museum because she recognised it—she had seen it before as a child. My mum had been creating that with her.

Barbara: That is… almost unbearable in its intimacy. The past reaches out through a child’s memory and touches you physically.

Geraldine: I couldn’t sleep for days.

Barbara: Geraldine, I want to ask about something ethically complicated. Your mother created beauty—murals for children—inside a place designed for murder. How do you hold that paradox?

Geraldine: She said the children were there only for a short time—three to six months—before they were taken to be gassed. She wanted to give them colour, something human. She got permission. And at the same time, she was also summoned to Mengele. She had to draw markings of children—twins—he had experimented on, and also “Gypsy family trees.” She said he never spoke, just marched in black shiny boots and pointed. She knew if she made an ink blot, she would be finished.

Barbara: And that connects to the book title—“Painting for My Life”.

Geraldine: Yes. And when I was writing the epilogue for the book with the Glasgow Museums curators, something hit me: Mengele was trying to wipe out Jews, doing experiments on twins… and I am a twin. My mother gave birth to twins. He failed. It’s ironical. It’s justice of a kind.

Barbara: When did your mother begin to speak publicly about the Holocaust? You suggest that happened after your father died. Why then?

Geraldine: My father died in December 1986, on the 23rd—his burial was on Christmas Eve. He was so loved that shops closed; it was an enormous funeral, with a police escort. About a year or two later, my mother began to speak publicly—first at a fundraising event. I think it was too painful for both my parents before that. My father had lost everyone. My mother lost 22 relatives. They carried too much grief. And also, in Britain, there wasn’t really public recognition for a long time. Holocaust Memorial Day changed that—the Britian became more aware, more willing to listen.

Barbara: Listening isn’t only a ritual, though—it’s a responsibility. You brought up antisemitism rising after 7 October, and how it echoes what your mother described from the early years of Nazi restrictions. How does that affect you now?

Geraldine: I’m Jewish first, and Scottish. I’ve had a protected life here, and I feel privileged. But I worry about the future. When antisemitism rises, it feels like history’s shadow lengthening again. I spoke in Scottish Parliament about how my mum told me Jews were banned from cinema, school—how life becomes restricted step by step.

Barbara: And yet you also carry your mother’s moral lesson—her insistence on the equal worth of people.

Geraldine: Yes. She taught that we are all human beings—flesh and blood—whatever colour, whatever background. She integrated with everyone. Neighbours weren’t all Jewish; we welcomed them. She believed people should love each other.

Barbara: Geraldine, let’s end where we began: what survives when everything is taken? I want to ask about your grandchildren. What do they know—what do they carry?

Geraldine: They know a lot. They talk about Mausi. They’re proud of her. I once found a roll of paper when clearing the house—part of the frieze she practised for Yad Vashem, remembering the colours. It had Mickey Mouse, Snow White, toadstools—you could see pencil marks behind the paint. I framed it and gave it to my eldest granddaughter when she was about six. It hangs in her bedroom. And my younger granddaughter—Freya, she’s ten now—spoke at her school last year for Holocaust Memorial Day. It’s not a Jewish school. The rabbi came to listen. She wrote and delivered a speech herself about her great-grandmother. She was nine. These children were born long after my mum died—and yet it’s still going on.

Barbara: That is legacy in the deepest sense—not nostalgia, not biography, but a living transmission. If you could say one thing your mother would want future generations to understand, what would it be?

Geraldine: That it must be taught—for decades ahead. She wanted everyone to learn what happened. And I’m proud—proud of her, proud that her story continues through the art, through the museum, through the book, and through the children.

Barbara: And what do you wish for yourself, inside this legacy?

Geraldine: I wish I had asked more questions when I was younger. But I’m grateful we made the book—because it holds the whole story. And I’m grateful that people want to listen, and that her story can reach further.

Barbara: Geraldine, thank you. Your mother’s art survived the camps—and you’ve helped it survive time. That is a different kind of courage.

Geraldine: Thank you. I’m trying. I’m trying to keep her alive.

***

Editorial note

This interview was conducted as part of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026 campaign: The Art of Remembrance, organised by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS).

Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp, Marianne Grant drew for children. Not because the camp allowed innocence, but because the children still needed it — and because drawing could carve out a few minutes in which fear did not occupy the entire room. A line, a colour, a familiar figure on a wall: small gestures against a system built to erase personhood.

Years later, Grant would describe the purpose of these gestures with disarming simplicity: her art saved her life. It saved it in ways both practical and cruelly paradoxical — as a means of exchange, as a shield, and at times as a skill exploited by perpetrators. What began as survival, however, became something else: a form of witness created not after the Holocaust, but within it. Her drawings do not recall the camp from a distance; they carry its presence.

Before survival: becoming an artist

Art did not enter Marianne Grant’s life as an accident of circumstance. Long before it became a tool of survival, it was a language she had learned to speak with discipline and intent.

Born in Prague in 1921 as Mariana Hermannová, Marianne grew up in a cultivated, middle-class Jewish family for whom education and cultural life were self-evident values. Her father, Rudolf Hermann, encouraged intellectual curiosity; her mother, Anna, herself a skilled craftswoman, embroidered, drew, and painted. From an early age, Marianne was surrounded by images, textures, and forms — not as luxury, but as part of everyday life. Drawing was not an escape; it was practice.

Her artistic education was formal and demanding. In 1937, she was accepted into the renowned Rotter Studio in Prague, led by Vilém Rotter — a centre of modern graphic design with a strong emphasis on technical precision, observation, and professional discipline. There, Marianne studied graphics, illustration, and design, training her eye and hand long before she could imagine how decisive this training would become. She learned both how to draw, and how to work: methodically, efficiently, and with limited means.

This distinction matters. Grant did not survive because she possessed some ineffable, miraculous “talent”. She survived because she had a skill — a practised craft — that could be recognised, exchanged, and exploited. Her drawings were not spontaneous expressions of emotion; they were the result of years of study, repetition, and refinement. In the camps, this difference would prove crucial.

When German-Nazi racial laws closed off educational and professional paths to Jewish citizens, Marianne’s training was abruptly interrupted. Her plans to study art formally were shattered by the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Yet even as restrictions tightened, she continued to draw, to teach, and to refine her skills — quietly, persistently, without knowing that these acts of continuity would later form the basis of her survival. Art, in other words, preceded catastrophe. It was not born from trauma; it was carried into it.

Art as protection

In the camps, survival depended not only on physical strength or chance, but on visibility. To be seen in the right way, by the right people, at the right moment could mean the difference between life and death. Marianne Grant learned this quickly — and learned how art could make her visible.

After being deported to Theresienstadt in April 1942, Marianne was assigned to work in agriculture. This was not an arbitrary decision. She had actively sought this placement, having heard that agricultural labour offered better access to food — both for consumption and for barter. Hunger governed every aspect of camp life, and even marginal advantages mattered. Working in the youth garden placed Marianne in a slightly less exposed position within the camp’s rigid hierarchy, while also bringing her into daily contact with adolescent girls under her supervision.

Here, art quietly re-entered her life. Even in the ghetto, Marianne continued to draw, teach, and observe. She sketched in moments stolen from labour, using whatever materials she could acquire or improvise. Drawing was not an act of resistance in any overt sense; it was something more pragmatic. It created usefulness. It created a role.

In Theresienstadt, usefulness meant protection. Marianne became a leader within the youth garden, responsible for girls aged twelve to seventeen. This position afforded her limited authority and, crucially, access to slightly better food rations. Art functioned as a form of currency — not in the romanticised sense of beauty, but in its capacity to be exchanged for survival essentials. A drawing could secure vegetables, bread, or favours that might later be repaid in kind.

Yet art also provided something less tangible but equally vital: recognition. In a system designed to reduce individuals to numbers and replaceable bodies, Marianne’s drawings marked her as someone with a skill, a function, a name attached to an ability. This recognition did not make her safe — no one was safe — but it made her less invisible.

This visibility followed her to Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration Camp, where she was deported in December 1943 together with her mother. Upon arrival, Marianne was assigned to work in the children’s block, caring for children who had been separated from their parents. Once again, art became a means of protection, though now under far more brutal conditions.

Using scraps of paper, charcoal, and improvised tools, Marianne drew with the children, taught them to draw, and painted murals on the walls of the block. These were not grand compositions, but simple, recognisable images: animals, trees, landscapes, figures from fairy tales. Mickey Mouse and Bambi appeared alongside forests and imagined homes. In a space defined by deprivation, these images opened a narrow window onto another world.

Protection here was not only physical. It was psychological, relational, and fleeting. Drawing created moments in which the children were no longer merely inmates, no longer defined solely by fear and separation. For Marianne herself, caring for the children and drawing with them established a fragile sense of purpose. It anchored her to others at a time when isolation could be fatal. Art did not shield her from violence. It did not stop selections, hunger, or disease. But it made her necessary — and in Auschwitz, necessity could delay death.

This protection came at a cost. Marianne’s talent did not go unnoticed by the camp authorities. Her drawings attracted the attention of an SS officer, who commissioned her to create hand-painted storybooks for his children and later demanded a portrait as a gift for his wife. When Marianne fell ill with pleurisy, this same officer intervened, bringing her bread and butter when no medicine was available. His actions likely saved her life. Yet this intervention also exposed her. Through these acts, Marianne’s art brought her to the attention of Josef Mengele. What had protected her would soon be used against others — and against her own sense of moral agency.

Art as relation: children

In the children’s block of Auschwitz-Birkenau, drawing was not a distraction from reality. It was a way of inhabiting it differently — if only for minutes at a time.

Marianne Grant was assigned to work with children who had been torn from their parents upon arrival in the camp. Many of them were too young to understand where they were or why they had been separated; others understood far too well. The children’s block was not a place of safety, but it was distinct from the rest of the camp in one crucial respect: it was a space where a fragile form of care still existed.

Here, Marianne’s art took on a relational dimension. She did not draw for herself alone, nor even primarily for survival. She drew with and for the children, responding to their need for familiarity, reassurance, and structure. Using whatever materials she could find — scraps of paper, charcoal, makeshift pigments — she encouraged them to draw, to recognise shapes, and to imagine scenes beyond the barbed wire.

The images she painted on the walls of the block were deliberately chosen. Disney characters, animals, trees, and landscapes appeared not because they denied the surrounding horror, but because they countered it. These figures were not abstract symbols of hope; they were recognisable elements of a shared childhood culture. Mickey Mouse and Bambi were not metaphors — they were reminders of a world in which children were allowed to be children.

For brief moments, drawing created continuity. It restored a sense of before and after in a place designed to erase both. In this sense, art functioned as a form of resistance that did not announce itself as such. It resisted the logic of total dehumanisation by insisting, quietly and persistently, on relationship.

Marianne was acutely aware of the limits of this protection. She did not believe that drawing could shield the children from deportation or death. But she understood that it could shape how those moments were lived. Her drawings accompanied daily routines in the block — roll calls, meals, waiting. They did not remove fear, but they gave it form, and sometimes distance.

Importantly, these acts of drawing were also acts of mutual recognition. The children were not passive recipients of comfort; they participated, observed, imitated, laughed, and concentrated. Art established a temporary community, grounded not only in shared suffering, but in shared attention.

This relational aspect of Marianne’s art complicates later interpretations that frame camp art solely as documentation or protest. In the children’s block, art was neither. It was care. It was presence. It was the deliberate creation of a space in which the camp’s total claim over the individual was momentarily suspended. Yet even here, art could not escape the structures of power that governed the camp. The very visibility that allowed Marianne to draw with the children also exposed her to scrutiny. The walls she painted were observed not only by the children, but by guards. The space of care existed only insofar as it was tolerated. This tolerance would soon collapse into coercion.

Art under coercion

The same skill that allowed Marianne Grant to draw with children and create moments of fragile care would soon be stripped of its relational meaning and placed at the service of violence. In Auschwitz, art did not remain neutral for long. After her illness and the intervention of an SS officer who provided her with food, Marianne’s work came to the attention of Josef Mengele. From that moment on, drawing was no longer something she could choose to do. It became an order.

Mengele assigned her to produce detailed drawings documenting the bodies of prisoners subjected to his medical experiments — particularly twins and people with dwarfism. She was instructed to draw family trees, physical markings, and anatomical features. Precision was demanded. Emotion was irrelevant. The same disciplined hand trained years earlier in the Rotter Studio was now required to serve a system of pseudo-scientific cruelty.

This was not art as survival through exchange. It was art under coercion — extracted, commanded, instrumentalised. Marianne did not control what she drew, for whom, or to what end. Her drawings were taken from her immediately. She did not know how they would be used, nor whether they would survive. What she knew was that refusal was impossible.

Here, the moral tension embedded in camp art becomes unavoidable. Marianne’s drawing saved her life, but it did so by entangling her in a system that harmed others. There is no clean ethical resolution to this fact. To frame her work for Mengele as collaboration would be a profound misreading; to frame it as resistance would be equally misleading. It was neither. It was coerced labour under threat of death.

What distinguishes Marianne’s experience is not moral purity, but moral clarity. She never romanticised this period. She did not retrospectively justify it, nor did she collapse under guilt. She described it as what it was: something she was forced to do in order to stay alive. Survival did not erase the violence of the act; it coexisted with it.

Even in this context, traces of her earlier relational work remained. Mengele eventually permitted her to paint murals in the children’s block — an extraordinary concession that again reveals the contradictions of the camp system. Art could be tolerated, even encouraged, when it served the regime’s purposes or reduced unrest. That these same murals might also sustain the humanity of prisoners was incidental.

Marianne’s experience under coercion exposes the limits of any attempt to categorise camp art neatly as either resistance or documentation. In Auschwitz, art was never free. It existed within a web of power, threat, and survival strategies. The question is not whether art was compromised — it was — but whether compromise erased its meaning. For Marianne Grant, it did not. But it changed it irrevocably.

Art as witness

Marianne Grant did not set out to document the Holocaust. She did not draw with the intention of creating evidence for the future. And yet, this is precisely what her work became.

What distinguishes Grant’s drawings from many post-war artistic responses to the Holocaust is not style, but time. Her drawings were not acts of remembrance; they were acts of presence. They were created inside the camps, under their rules, rhythms, and terrors. They do not reconstruct memory — they record experience as it unfolded.

This immediacy gives her work the character of first-hand testimony. Unlike artists who returned to camp imagery years later, Marianne drew what she saw when she saw it, using limited materials and without the possibility of revision. The lines are spare, sometimes hesitant, sometimes abrupt. There is no compositional flourish, no symbolic framing. Bodies appear thin, postures slumped, faces simplified almost to anonymity. What emerges is not expressionism, but observation. This lack of aesthetic distance is precisely where the power of her drawings lies. They do not ask to be admired. They do not dramatize suffering. They insist on attention.

Art historian Jo Meacock has described Grant’s work as occupying a space between survival and witness — not fully conscious of its future function, yet unmistakably bearing it. Marianne herself resisted the idea that she had been “documenting” the camps. She did not see herself as an artist-reporter. Drawing, she maintained, was simply what she did to stay alive.

And yet, intent is not the only measure of testimony. What matters equally is position. Grant’s drawings were produced inside the system of persecution, not from its aftermath. They were not shaped by hindsight or narrative coherence. They record fragments: a queue, a body, a posture, a moment of waiting. In their accumulation, these fragments refuse abstraction.

In this sense, her art challenges the very category of “camp art”. It is neither illustration nor protest, neither private diary nor public accusation. It is closer to a visual statement made under duress — an involuntary archive of the everyday mechanics of dehumanisation.

Crucially, Grant’s drawings do not attempt to explain the camps. They show them. This distinction matters. Explanation risks closure; showing resists it. The drawings leave space for the viewer’s discomfort, refusing to guide interpretation or provide moral resolution. This quality becomes particularly striking when contrasted with the popular expectation that Holocaust art must be sombre, dark, and overtly tragic. Grant’s work does not conform to this expectation — and that refusal is itself significant.

Colour, innocence, refusal of despair

One of the most striking aspects of Marianne Grant’s camp drawings is their use of colour. In a visual culture that has come to associate the Holocaust almost exclusively with greys, blacks, and the stripped-down aesthetics of despair, her work unsettles expectation.

Colour, in Grant’s drawings, is not accidental. Nor is it decorative. It appears where it seems least appropriate — in the children’s block, on the walls of barracks, in scenes of imagined nature. Flowers bloom, animals move, familiar cartoon figures smile. At first glance, these images may appear incongruous, even naïve. Look closer, and their function becomes clear. Colour was not a denial of reality. It was a refusal to allow reality to define the entirety of human experience.

Grant did not use colour to soften the camps or make them bearable in retrospect. She used it in the moment, as a deliberate counterweight to a system designed to drain life of meaning. In spaces where everything was regulated, rationed, and stripped of individuality, colour reintroduced choice. It asserted that not everything could be dictated by the logic of the camp.

The presence of Disney characters and fairy-tale imagery has often puzzled later viewers. How, one might ask, could such motifs coexist with mass murder? But this question misunderstands their purpose. These images were not attempts to escape the camp through fantasy. They were anchors to a shared cultural memory of childhood — a memory that the camp sought to erase.

For the children who lived in the block, these figures were recognisable, comforting, and relational. They did not transport the children elsewhere; they reminded them of who they were before arrival. In doing so, the drawings resisted the camp’s central aim: to transform people into interchangeable, dehumanised units. Grant herself was acutely aware of the fragility of this resistance. She did not believe that colour or drawing could undo terror. What they could do, however, was preserve a narrow space of inner life — a space not fully accessible to violence.

This insistence on inner life marks a crucial ethical stance. Grant did not aestheticise suffering. She did not draw scenes of brutality for their own sake. Instead, she chose to depict what the system tried hardest to annihilate: ordinary gestures, moments of care, traces of imagination. In doing so, she rejected the idea that horror alone should define representation.

Her use of colour also complicates later expectations placed on Holocaust testimony. Viewers often demand that such testimony conform to a specific emotional register — solemn, sombre, unrelievedly dark. Grant’s work refuses this demand. It insists that despair was not the only emotional reality of the camps, and that acknowledging moments of light does not diminish suffering. On the contrary, it reveals what was at stake.

Silence after survival

Survival did not lead immediately to testimony. For Marianne Grant, it led first to silence. After liberation, she and her mother were evacuated to Sweden to recover from illness and exhaustion. There, Marianne slowly returned to physical health, learned to live without constant fear, and began to imagine a future not defined by the camp. Soon after, she moved to Scotland, married, raised a family, and resumed her artistic education at the Glasgow School of Art. From the outside, her life followed a trajectory of rebuilding and stability.

Her drawings, however, did not follow her into public life. For decades, the works she had created during the war remained stored in a trunk in her home. She did not exhibit them. She did not speak publicly about her experiences. Even her children grew up knowing little about what she had endured. This silence was not imposed; it was chosen.

Grant never described this period as repression or denial. Rather, it was a way of living forward. She did not see herself as a witness-in-waiting, nor did she feel an obligation to narrate her past for others. The drawings had served their purpose once already. They had helped her survive. She did not yet need them to speak.

This long silence complicates common assumptions about Holocaust testimony. We often imagine survivors as either compelled to speak immediately or traumatically unable to do so. Grant’s experience suggests a third possibility: testimony postponed, not out of fear, but out of a desire for ordinary life. Silence, in this sense, was not absence. It was containment.

The drawings waited. They existed, intact but dormant, carrying meanings that had not yet been activated. Their potential as testimony depended not only on the act of creation, but on the moment of reception. That moment would come much later, when Grant herself felt ready to relinquish private ownership of her past. This delay is ethically significant. It reminds us that testimony is not an automatic consequence of survival. It is a decision — one shaped by time, context, and the changing demands of memory.

When art returned to the world

When Marianne Grant finally decided to bring her drawings out of the trunk and into the public sphere, it was not because she felt compelled by history to do so. It was because the conditions around memory had changed — and because she herself had changed with them.

The turning point came after the death of her husband. For the first time, Grant found herself alone with a body of work that no longer belonged solely to her private life. The drawings, once tools of survival and then objects of silence, began to demand a different kind of presence. They were no longer only reminders of what she had lived through; they had become documents of a world that was receding into history.

Grant’s decision to exhibit her work was deliberate and measured. She did not seek recognition as an artist in the conventional sense, nor did she frame her drawings as masterpieces. Instead, she presented them as what they were: visual records created under conditions that defied comprehension. In 1997, she was invited to recreate her mural from the children’s block of Auschwitz for Yad Vashem’s exhibition “No Child’s Play”. The act of recreation was itself significant. It was not an attempt to reproduce trauma, but to translate memory into a form that could be shared responsibly.

Exhibitions followed in Scotland, most notably at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. For many viewers, these drawings were their first encounter with camp art created not after the war, but within it — and created by a woman who had chosen, for decades, not to speak. The impact was profound precisely because the works resisted spectacle. They did not overwhelm; they invited sustained attention.

As Grant began to speak publicly, she did so without bitterness or accusation. She did not frame her story as a moral indictment, nor did she claim authority through suffering alone. Instead, she spoke with restraint, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to human dignity. Her testimony was not about vengeance, but about responsibility.

Education became a central aspect of this renewed public role. Grant worked closely with schools, educators, and museums, engaging directly with young people. She understood that as the generation of survivors diminished, the burden of memory would shift. Her drawings were not meant to shock students into awareness; they were meant to teach them how to look, how to ask questions, and how to recognise the early signs of dehumanisation.

In this phase of her life, art assumed yet another function. It was no longer protection, relation, or survival. It became mediation — a bridge between lived experience and historical understanding. Grant did not insist on how her work should be interpreted. She trusted viewers to meet it with seriousness. What returned to the world was not only a body of drawings, but a mode of witnessing grounded in humility. Grant did not speak because she had to. She spoke because she chose to — and because she recognised that silence, once protective, could no longer carry the weight of the future.

Marianne’s legacy: responsibility after witnesses

Marianne Grant never claimed ownership over Holocaust memory. She resisted the idea that her experience granted her moral authority over others. Yet in the final decades of her life, she became acutely aware that memory does not survive on its own — and that when witnesses disappear, responsibility does not vanish with them. It shifts.

Grant’s legacy is not defined solely by what she endured or what she drew, but by how she understood the future of remembrance. She observed with concern the growing distance between historical events and contemporary consciousness, especially among younger generations for whom the Holocaust risked becoming an abstract chapter rather than a human catastrophe. Denial, distortion, and trivialisation were not theoretical dangers; they were already present.

In this context, her drawings assumed renewed urgency. They did not compete with photographs or archival documents. Instead, they offered something different: a human-scale entry point into history. Created without the intention of educating future audiences, they nevertheless proved uniquely suited to that task. Their simplicity resisted sensationalism. Their restraint demanded attention. They asked viewers not only to learn, but to reckon.

Grant believed deeply in education — not as the transmission of facts alone, but as the cultivation of ethical awareness. She worked with schools and educational initiatives that emphasised critical thinking, empathy, and historical responsibility. Her participation in programmes such as Vision Schools Scotland reflected her conviction that Holocaust education must extend beyond commemoration into the present, addressing prejudice, exclusion, and the early warning signs of dehumanisation.

Crucially, Grant did not frame memory as inheritance alone. She spoke instead of stewardship. Memory, in her view, was not something received passively from the past, but something actively maintained — or lost — through everyday choices. This belief shaped how her family engaged with her work. Her children and grandchildren did not become custodians of a fixed narrative, but guardians of a fragile legacy that required care, interpretation, and renewal.

This understanding resonates powerfully today, as the last survivors pass away. The absence of living witnesses does not absolve societies of responsibility; it intensifies it. Without direct testimony, remembrance must rely on materials, narratives, and ethical commitments shaped by those who remain.

Marianne Grant’s art does not offer answers to this challenge. It offers a framework. It shows how art can function without grandiosity — how it can preserve dignity without simplifying suffering, and how it can bear witness without claiming closure. Her drawings endure not because they are exceptional artworks in a conventional sense, but because they remain honest to the conditions under which they were created. They do not ask to be admired. They ask to be read.

In the end, Marianne Grant did not paint to be remembered. She painted to survive. That her art now teaches others how to remember is not a coincidence, nor a triumph. It is a responsibility — one that begins where witnesses end.

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Editorial note

This article is based on the publication “Painting for My Life: The Holocaust Artworks of Marianne Grant” (2021), by Dr Joanna Meacock, Peter Tuka, Deborah Haase, and contributing authors. The book is one of the most comprehensive studies of Marianne Grant’s life and work, presenting her art as a first-hand visual testimony of the Holocaust and offering crucial insight into the role of artistic practice under conditions of extreme violence.

Olga Boznańska was an artist who captured more than likeness – she preserved the subtle atmosphere of a world on the edge of change. As 2025 is dedicated to her name, her work invites us to look again at a Europe that existed before the great ruptures of the twentieth century. In her muted colours and quiet, attentive gazes, we sense echoes of a bygone world whose traces still shape the way we think about memory and history today. It is this ability to reveal the human, intimate dimensions of the past that makes her art resonate so strongly in our current reflections on Europe’s shared heritage.

Olga Boznańska – Polish Patron of 2025

The designation of 2025 as the Year of Olga Boznańska invites renewed reflection on an artist whose oeuvre transcends aesthetic categories and enters the realm of cultural memory. Boznańska (1865–1940), often described as one of the most important women painters at the turn of the century, created a body of work that captures the psychological depth of individuals living in a Europe on the threshold of profound historical transformation. Her portraits, enveloped in subdued light and a muted palette, form a unique visual archive of a continent whose cultural landscapes, social structures, and interwoven identities would soon be irrevocably altered by the catastrophes of the 20th century.
Boznańska lived and worked across multiple cultural centres – Kraków, Munich, and Paris – moving within transnational artistic networks characteristic of late 19th-century Europe. This mobility shaped the cosmopolitan character of her work and situates her firmly within what today we might call a Central European cultural constellation: multilingual, diverse, steeped in both local particularities and transboundary exchanges. Her milieu was a Europe before ruptures, before mass displacement, before the political and ideological divisions that would define the decades after her death. In this sense, Boznańska becomes not merely a portraitist, but a chronicler of a vanished Europe, one whose atmosphere, sensibilities, and tensions can still be traced on her canvases.

Memory in Layers: Boznańska’s Art as an Archive

Art historians have long noted that Boznańska’s portraits rarely aim at realistic representation. Instead, they evoke a psychological state – an interiority marked by introspection, fragility, and an acute awareness of time passing. Her sitters, often depicted in quiet contemplation, appear suspended between presence and absence. As Agnieszka Karpowicz argues, Boznańska “renders memory not as a static record but as a living, vibrating tension between what is and what is no longer” [Karpowicz, 2018].
This approach aligns with the very idea of memory central to the work of the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity: memory as a process, as an interpretative act shaped by emotion, vulnerability, and shifting cultural contexts. The individuals Boznańska painted – intellectuals, children, anonymous figures – become carriers of larger historical narratives. Although her works predate the devastations of the First and Second World Wars, they seem imbued with a faint premonition of loss. Many art historians have noted that her muted palette – dominated by greys, greens, and earth tones – echoes the atmosphere of uncertainty and transition characteristic of fin-de-siècle Europe.
Her famous Girl with Chrysanthemums (1894) exemplifies this. The child’s gaze is neither naïve nor serene; it is contemplative, unsettlingly mature. The painting has often been read as a metaphor for the fragility of European childhood on the brink of the age of war. The historian Piotr Piotrowski suggested that “Boznańska paints the moment before history breaks in – a threshold image, trembling with the tension between innocence and catastrophe” [Piotrowski, 2009].

Women, Memory, and Silence

Boznańska’s oeuvre also enriches the discourse on women’s history in Europe – a subject increasingly recognised as essential to understanding the 20th century. As Linda Nochlin famously argued, women artists of Boznańska’s generation navigated structural barriers that shaped not only their careers but also their modes of expression [Nochlin, 1971]. Boznańska’s quiet, introspective style may thus be read as an artistic strategy forged in a male-dominated world: her paintings resist monumental heroism, favouring instead the intimate space of human vulnerability.
This subtlety becomes significant in contemporary debates on remembrance. If the 20th century is often narrated through wars, heroism, political ruptures, and large-scale tragedy, Boznańska reminds us of the quieter histories: the everyday emotions, private worlds, and fragile human bonds that endure even through periods of crisis. Her work broadens the scope of what is worth remembering, offering a counter-narrative to the traditional, male-encoded models of historical commemoration.

Boznańska and the Transnational Identity of Central Europe

Living outside Poland for most of her adult life, Boznańska became part of the intellectual and artistic fabric of Western Europe, particularly in Paris, where she spent over four decades. In this sense, her biography mirrors the trajectories of countless Central Europeans – artists, writers, scientists – whose mobility shaped the cultural dynamics of the continent. Her studio in Paris was itself a microcosm of transnational exchange, visited by artists from Poland, France, Germany, and beyond.
This mobility, however, was not a simple narrative of success. Boznańska’s letters reveal the emotional cost of living “in between” – between languages, between cultures, often in poverty, frequently in solitude. These tensions resonate with contemporary discussions on migration, belonging, and identity – areas central to the work of ENRS, which emphasises the need to understand the cross-border entanglements of European histories.
Boznańska’s life thus provides an entry point for reflecting on the broader historical processes – from the fall of empires to the redrawing of borders – that shaped the 20th century. Her art, in turn, visualises the psychological landscape of individuals negotiating these transformations.

Portraiture as European Memory

To consider Boznańska’s portraits through the lens of memory studies is to recognise them as complex documents of a culture in transition. Portraiture – often dismissed as a traditional genre – becomes, in her hands, a tool for capturing the nuances of identity, social atmosphere, and emotional climate that written sources cannot fully convey. Her sitters are not idealised; they are marked by ambiguity, introspection, and a subtle sense of estrangement. These qualities mirror the experience of modernity itself, with its feelings of dislocation and fragmentation.
Boznańska’s work offers an opportunity to think about how artistic expression contributes to understanding the past. Her paintings remind us that remembrance is not merely about facts or events, but also about the affective undercurrents – fear, hope, longing, vulnerability – that shape human experience.

Why Boznańska Matters Today

In an era marked by rapid change, tensions surrounding identity, and renewed debates about the meaning of European unity, Boznańska’s art offers a valuable lens through which to view the continent’s cultural heritage. Her portraits – neither purely Polish, nor fully French, nor tied to a single national tradition – speak a universal language of introspection and empathy. They show individuals situated within, yet slightly detached from, their social surroundings – much like Europe itself, perpetually negotiating the relationship between the familiar and the foreign.
Boznańska’s legacy thus enriches contemporary discussions about what it means to remember, to belong, and to carry the heritage of a century marked by both artistic brilliance and unprecedented destruction. Celebrating her in 2025 is not only an act of homage, but an invitation to reflect on the fragile beauty of a Europe that once was – and the responsibility we bear to preserve the memory of those worlds that have faded.

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References:
Bal, Mieke. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Princeton University Press, 1999.
Boznańska, Olga. Letters and Correspondence (various editions).
Karpowicz, Agnieszka. Czas, pamięć i obraz w sztuce Olgi Boznańskiej. Kraków: Universitas, 2018.
Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Art News, 1971.
Piotrowski, Piotr. In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe. Reaktion Books, 2009.
Sieradzka, Anna. Olga Boznańska. Warszawa: Arkady, 2015.
Young, James E. The Texture of Memory. Yale University Press, 1993.

August 23 marks the anniversary of the signing of the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact – the secret agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that paved the way for the outbreak of the Second World War, the Holocaust, the gulags, and decades of repression and division across Europe. This year's edition of the Remember. August 23 campaign, organised by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, encourages reflection on how the crimes of totalitarian regimes continue to reverberate across generations.

To explore the psychological and societal legacy of mass violence, we interviewed Dr Yael Danieli – a world-renowned clinical psychologist, traumato¬logist and psychohistorian – whose pioneering work with Holocaust survivors and their families has transformed how we understand trauma, memory and healing.

ENRS, Magdalena Żelazowska: What exactly is intergenerational trauma? Is it just a metaphor – or is it a real, measurable psychological condition?

Intergenerational trauma is not just a metaphor – it is a measurable, lived reality. In my work, I refer to its consequences as Reparative Adaptational Impacts, or RIFEs. These are patterns of behaviour, thought and emotion that children – and even grandchildren – of trauma survivors unconsciously adopt in response to the emotional atmosphere shaped by their parents’ or grandparents’ trauma.

This process is shaped by several interwoven elements: the original trauma itself, what I call broken generational continuities, the conspiracy of silence that often follows massive trauma, and the adaptational styles that survivors develop – whether as victims, as emotionally disengaged, or as fighters striving for meaning and justice. The child is born into that world, and adapts to it. That adaptation, in turn, becomes part of their identity.

In my research, I’ve found that these impacts often show up as an intense need to protect others, chronic self-doubt, emotional constriction, over-identification with ancestral trauma, or a dependency that binds them tightly to the family system. Beneath all of it is often a profound, mostly unconscious, drive to repair – to heal not only for their parents, but also for themselves, and even for the world.

These aren’t vague tendencies – they are concrete, observable, and they correlate with clinical symptoms: anxiety, depression, PTSD. More importantly, they shape how people live – how they see themselves, relate to others and navigate their everyday world.

There is also a biological dimension, as research by scholars like Zahava Solomon and Amit Shrira has shown – indicating that children of survivors may carry a latent vulnerability to future trauma. That’s why we created tools like the Danieli Inventory, which assesses both the survivors’ adaptational styles and the resulting impacts on their children – not just whether certain patterns are present, but how intensely they are experienced.

Intergenerational trauma is not just theory. It is real, researchable and treatable. And understanding it is essential if we are to help individuals and families reclaim meaning and healing after the most devastating of human experiences.

This year we are commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Is the transmission of trauma naturally coming to an end with time, or do we need to actively handle trauma for it to be healed? What are the mechanisms of intergenerational trauma’s transmission?

The adaptational styles of parents lie at the heart of how trauma is transmitted. In our studies, we found that when survivors – especially mothers, though not only – adopt what we call the victim adaptational style, their children are at significantly higher risk. The most severe impacts occur when both parents are survivors and both have internalised this style. In such cases, we’ve observed the most intense reparative adaptational impacts – or simply, the deepest psychological distress in their children.

Trauma doesn’t fade with time. If it remains unaddressed, it persists. The way survivors adapt – how they cope, raise children and make meaning of their experiences – becomes the vehicle of transmission. And when these styles remain stuck in what I call non-adaptation – meaning the trauma is neither integrated nor transformed – it is passed on. That’s why it’s essential for society, in the aftermath of mass trauma, to support survivors in moving beyond the victim identity, or at least in reducing its intensity. This helps not only the survivors but also protects future generations.

Unfortunately – and we must be brave enough to name this – in both the 20th and 21st centuries, the victim identity has sometimes been politicised or misused. Leaders, religious figures and cultural influencers have instrumentalised it to serve other purposes. But this kind of appropriation does not promote healing. On the contrary – it often reinforces the trauma and blocks survivors and their descendants from reclaiming their lives.

So, to answer your question: no, the transmission of trauma does not end on its own. Healing requires conscious, intentional work – on the individual, family and societal level. Survivors have the right to heal. And their children have the right to be raised by parents who are no longer defined by their wounds.

To what extent is intergenerational trauma a personal or family matter, and to what extent does it become a national, or even global, issue? Can we talk about post-traumatic societies or nations? And is addressing trauma on an individual level different from dealing with it on a societal scale?

Trauma doesn’t exist in a vacuum. While individuals and families suffer the consequences, it is often society or the state that creates the traumatic conditions in the first place. So healing isn’t just a private matter for families to deal with behind closed doors. In many cases, society must be involved – not only to support recovery, but to acknowledge its own responsibility in the trauma that occurred. Instead of viewing history as just a list of dates, names and events, psychohistory explores how history is lived – how it affects our thoughts, emotions, choices and convictions on a daily basis. It’s about how our past shapes our present and future, both individually and collectively.

To come back to your question: the traumatised family did not cause the trauma – it was inflicted upon them by society or by historical events, often political or systemic in nature. Therefore, healing must involve society as a whole.

How does trauma affect identity across generations? How should we understand this connection beyond the individual psyche?

When we think of identity – Who am I? – we need to understand it as a complex, layered system, shaped not only by biology or internal psychology, but by family, culture, society, spirituality, history, law, even politics and the environment. It’s all interconnected. I often picture this as an elevator shaft, moving vertically through past, present and future – our identity constantly navigating those layers.

But trauma breaks that flow. It ruptures the natural continuity of self. I like to use a painting by Fred Terna, a Holocaust survivor and dear friend, to illustrate that rupture – a deep break in the timeline of identity.

How does this silence affect both survivors and their children?

Survivors learn, often painfully, that the world doesn’t want to hear about their pain. Society prefers to celebrate victory, not tend to the wounds. And so, in my research, I identified 49 distinct ways in which people fail to listen. It’s profound. It’s not just absence – it’s betrayal. And this betrayal – the silence, the denial, the distancing – can be more damaging than the original trauma.

Survivors internalise this silence. They tell themselves: “I won’t speak. I want my children to be normal.” But what gets passed on is not healing, but shame, isolation, a sense of not belonging. And the children – they are born into this silence. Into this fractured continuity of identity. That’s why I speak of “trauma in the continuity of self”. Because it’s not only psychological. It’s multidimensional – biological, social, cultural, historical. And that’s why healing must be multidisciplinary and integrative. On the surface, survivors may look “okay” – maybe a bit scarred, but functioning. But beneath that, the wound remains open. And so, the trauma lives on – in them, and in the next generation.

In your model, how is trauma transmitted within families?

As I mentioned earlier, it all begins with the trauma – a rupture in the continuity of self – and a kind of psychological “fixity” in that rupture. That’s the starting point in the dimension of time. From there, the victim-survivor develops survival strategies, first during the trauma itself, and later – especially under the conspiracy of silence – these strategies evolve into adaptational styles. These adaptational styles then repeat and manifest in the next generation, becoming what I call repetitive adaptational impacts in the lives of the survivor’s children.

What are the main intergenerational patterns that emerge in families of trauma survivors, and how do they shape the emotional lives of their children?

Altogether, this dynamic – the trauma, the adaptations and their intergenerational echoes – forms the family history and emotional environment, all deeply embedded within the broader societal context. In what I call the Numb Style, we often see emotional isolation: parents are distant, there is little to no emotional expression, and an intolerance for weakness emerges, because vulnerability feels dangerous. This is accompanied by a conspiracy of silence, not only with the outside world but within the family itself, leaving children confused and emotionally disoriented, unable to understand the atmosphere they are growing up in.

The Fighter Style, on the other hand, is driven by values such as justice, identity and meaning. It is characterised by speaking out, preserving memory, and transforming trauma into purposeful action. Many survivor organisations – including yours, I would say – operate in this mode. They believe: We must talk about it, learn from it, and act.

Each style is different, though there may be some overlap. And all are shaped not only by the trauma itself, but by culture, context and collective values.

Can you describe how children of survivors internalise the trauma of their parents, even without directly experiencing it themselves?

The Adult Child Reparative Adaptational Impact – the way children of trauma survivors adapt as they grow up, often taking on emotional burdens that aren’t theirs.

First, there’s reparative protectiveness – a deep urge to protect and “repair” the parent, often from a very young age. Then comes insecurity about competence. Many of these adult children carry the feeling that they’re not capable, that every task is a test. Historically, this comes from being expected to help their parents at age three or four, and, of course, not being able to. That feeling of failure stays with them, even though it was never really theirs to carry.

There’s also defensive psychosocial constriction – a rigid emotional posture, a need for power and control, because softness or vulnerability feels unsafe. You’re not allowed to be dependent, not even briefly.

This sometimes manifests as obsessive focus on trauma, like the Holocaust – reading everything about it, trying to master it intellectually, as if that could undo it. But, as I sometimes tell them: even God cannot undo the Holocaust. That’s a heavy truth to carry.

Then there’s immature dependency. Because everything is tied up within the family system, leaving or creating emotional distance feels like betrayal. The child stays – emotionally, psychologically – because loyalty is everything, even if it’s painful.

All of this adds up to a profound emotional burden, a sense that there’s always more to do, more to repair, more to carry.

How does broken historical continuity contribute to trauma transmission beyond the family context? What does your research tell us about this broader rupture?

What we examined in our study was the impact of family history across four generations: the generation before the trauma, the generation that experienced the trauma, their children, and those children as future parents. We looked at the family milieu – how many survived, whether families held on to their religious or cultural beliefs, how identity was preserved or fragmented. All of these elements matter.

It’s not just about diagnoses or labels – it’s about how people live, how they make sense of life, how trauma and its echoes shape that sense across time.

Our model shows that family history and experience lead to post-trauma adaptational styles in parents, and these in turn generate repetitive adaptational impacts in their children. That part might be expected. But what we also found – and this is crucial – is that trauma doesn’t affect the child only indirectly through the family. It can have a direct impact. And that’s a pivotal finding in our understanding of intergenerational trauma.

In cases like the Holocaust, what enters the family is not only the silence or behaviours of survivors – it’s also what we call a broken generational linkage: the rupture of history itself.

And this isn’t just theory – it’s something children express in very concrete ways. For example, a child might say: “I know my family history only in bits and pieces.” There’s no coherent narrative of where they come from – just fragments here and there, disconnected.

And that disconnection isn’t only because the parents didn’t talk, or the child didn’t ask, or the family couldn’t bear to remember. It’s also because society itself silenced it. It shut it down. It didn’t want to know.

Another example that speaks to the depth of this loss: children of survivors often say they don’t really think of their grandparents as their grandparents. They think of them as their parents’ parents, abstractly – because they never actually had a grandparent. They never experienced what that relationship means. And that absence, that missing link, leaves a mark – a particular sense of rootlessness, of something never known but deeply felt.

So when we talk about intergenerational trauma, we have to go beyond the family. We need to recognise that trauma can be transmitted directly to the next generation – not just through silence or behaviour, but through the very rupture of history and belonging.

It’s not enough to treat individuals or families. We must also work to prevent trauma itself. That’s a different way of seeing things. “Never again” cannot remain a phrase we repeat – it has to become a principle we act upon.

In your opinion, what role should institutions, governments, courts and international bodies play in addressing and healing collective trauma? What can be done today?

Speak. Teach. Open up. Don’t leave things hidden. Don’t let things remain vague or opaque. If the trauma was national – and many of the traumas we’re talking about are – then full transparency is key.

People have lost trust in institutions – and not without reason. That trust was broken. So what must be done? Regain it. With honesty. With openness. With consistency.

Institutions must remember: they exist for the people. And that means the people – especially the victims – must be an integral part of any decisions made about them. They cannot just be informed after the fact. They must participate. Otherwise, it’s just another abuse of power. Even if that’s not the intention, that’s how it will be experienced.

So live up to your founding ideals. Become idealistic about yourselves again. Remember why you’re there in the first place. Keep that purpose alive. Let it challenge you. Let it inspire you. Don’t fall asleep in bureaucracy. Don’t reduce your work to a routine: go to the office, go home, eat, sleep, repeat. That’s how you lose the meaning of what you do.

And this is not only about institutions as a whole – it’s also about the people inside them. Remember: what you do matters to people. They look up to you. So live up to that. Live up to what they believe you can be. It’s so easy to forget that, isn’t it? So easy to flatten everything and slip into indifference. And then suddenly, it becomes culturally acceptable to hate your job, to complain all the time. But why should you? Why not make it meaningful again? Why not reconnect to what brought you there in the first place?

Look at me. I’m 85 years old. Why do you think I’m still here, still working? Because I look forward to every single day – to what I might learn, what I might contribute. And yes, like anyone else who cares deeply, I feel despair. I feel fear about where we’re going. But still – I choose to show up. Because the work matters.

You’ve spoken so powerfully about the legacy of trauma. I was going to ask what gives you hope when you look at how the world is responding – but I think, in a way, you’ve already answered: speak and listen.

Yes – speak and listen. Those are the two essential steps. They help us move forward, but also protect us. And when you need to cry – take the time. When you run from grief, you run from parts of yourself. The same is true for anger – we’re often afraid of it. But every emotion matters. That’s why I created what I call the Principles of Self-Healing . At first, it was for psychotherapists. But truly, it’s for anyone who engages with human suffering – journalists, peacebuilders, caregivers, survivors themselves.

First: awareness. Your body often knows before your mind does. Pay attention. Second: words. We must learn to name what we feel. As Bettelheim wrote – what cannot be talked about cannot be put to rest. Then: containment. It’s not just the emotion that overwhelms us, but its intensity. Know your limits. Stay open. And remember – no feeling lasts for ever. Nobody has cried for ever. Nobody has screamed for ever. Let it move through you.

There’s no “back to normal” after trauma. Instead, we ask: what now? What can we build? Take time to heal before showing up for others. If someone’s story awakens your own pain – seek help. That’s not weakness. That’s integrity. Don’t do this alone. We build communities so we can hold each other.

And finally – joy is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. I always say: have fun. Not because every day is happy, but because purpose gives us the strength to go on.

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Dr Yael Danieli (www.dryaeldanieli.com) is a clinical psychologist, traumatologist, victimologist and psychohistorian. Having developed the first program to help Nazi Holocaust Survivors and their Children in the 1970s, she has devoted much of her career to studying, treating, writing about, and preventing lifelong and multigenerational impacts of massive trauma worldwide, to ensuring victims’ rights, the rights of future generations, and to reparative justice.

In the last two decades Dr Danieli created the Danieli Inventory – the gold measure to (comparatively) assessing intergenerational legacies of Trauma and founded the International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma (www.ICMGLT.org).

As a victimologist, she has spent over four decades participating in drafting, adopting, implementing victims' rights, and ensuring that victims’ rights reach the victims.

When I was choosing the topic for my doctoral dissertation, I was guided by what my parents had taught me, by European ideals. Despite the Holocaust, despite having lost everyone who stayed behind in Europe, my parents also shared with me what they loved about that world, what it had given them, the good, solid values they had carried with them. And one of those values was the importance of knowledge, of scholarship, of meaningful intellectual work.

When it came time to choose my dissertation, I knew it had to matter. I drove myself crazy over it — sleepless nights, truly. I kept asking: what is the most meaningful thing I can study? I remember thinking, in light of such horrific history, why do people stay alive? And the only answer I could come up with was: hope.

So I decided to focus on the psychology, or really the phenomenology — of hope. Even back then, I was already working in a multidisciplinary way, and I was teaching at the time. My students were also involved — we looked at what challenges hope, how people respond when it is threatened.

Some students observed people who had just missed their bus — which sounds minor, but it taught them that even something small can hold deeper emotional weight. Back then we didn’t have iPhones. Missing a bus might mean missing a job interview, or missing the one person you love. It wasn’t just about being late — it could be a rupture in a life path.

My students interviewed each other — divorced students interviewed divorced students, disabled students interviewed disabled students. And I took on what I believed to be the greatest challenge to hope: I began working with concentration camp survivors, blockade survivors, people terminally diagnosed, prisoners of war, and their families. I learned an extraordinary amount.

My doctoral committee warned me: “They won’t talk to you. Holocaust survivors don’t talk to anyone.” It was the same conspiracy of silence I would later study in depth. But I’ve always believed in meeting people where they are — not in some lab, not in a setting that’s only convenient for the researcher. So, for example, I worked with cancer patients directly in the wards. I would speak with one, and soon more would come. It was the first time someone had come to listen — truly listen. We even placed a big glass jar in the middle of the ward where patients could leave their thoughts, anonymously, at any time — even in the middle of the night. And so, group therapy for cancer survivors was born.

And then I began to work more deeply with Holocaust survivors. I would visit them in their homes — and they would put me in the kitchen. And I rarely left before morning. These people who supposedly “wouldn’t talk to anyone”? They spoke. All of them. And not just survivors — also their children, their neighbors, their extended families. Everyone gathered. It was as if they had been waiting for someone who would truly listen.

And what they told me, every single one of them — and I know this sounds scientifically impossible, but it’s true — was that no one believed them, no one really heard them. They said only another survivor could understand — that even a Nazi might understand them better than someone who hadn’t lived through what they had. They said therapists didn’t listen, judges didn’t understand, lawyers didn’t care…

I was a very idealistic graduate student. I was shattered by what I heard. But it became immediately clear to me that the conspiracy of silence was not just a theme — it was a central obstacle to healing, and one that had to be understood. So I made the decision to shift the focus of my dissertation. I still wrote about hope, but I began to focus much more on investigating how silence functions after trauma.

The only profession in the world trained not only to listen to others, but also to be aware of their own internal reactions to listening, is psychoanalysis. So I decided to study psychoanalysts who knew they were treating Holocaust survivors. Because let’s be honest — if you don’t ask, if you don’t truly listen, you don’t know who you’re treating. You don’t even know what’s in the room with you. And what I found — and this became a core part of my work — were 49 ways of not listening.

Why was it so crucial to focus on psychoanalysts? Because while society has a moral obligation to listen to survivors, professionals — therapists, clinicians — have a contractual obligation. If they don’t listen, they can’t understand. If they don’t understand, they can’t help. And yet many of them, knowingly or not, failed to truly hear.

That study taught me a great deal. And it confirmed what I would later find in broader research: that the conspiracy of silence after trauma — particularly after massive trauma, but really after any trauma — plays a decisive role in determining whether healing is even possible. I say “possible,” not “likely,” and not “ability,” because I want to be clear: this is not about blaming the survivor. It’s not about capacity. It’s about whether society creates a space where healing can occur. We’ve all heard it — the damaging logic of “What did you wear?” when a woman is raped. It’s the same dynamic — blaming the victim instead of challenging the structure that enabled the violence.

That was one of the first things that emerged from my early interviews. And from there, I moved on to create the group project Holocaust Survivors and Their Children. At the time, no one was trained to work with survivors — not in psychology, not in social work, not in law, not in medicine. So I thought: the survivors themselves are the only experts who can teach us. And they did.

We formed groups, and while we as professionals could facilitate the process, they taught us who they were. They told us what mattered — in their past, in their present, in their fears and hopes for the future. We listened. We learned.

So my initial work on hope, and then my findings on the conspiracy of silence, led me down two parallel but connected paths: one, researching silence itself, and two, studying adaptation to trauma and how that trauma is transmitted across generations. The deeper I went, the more I saw how much injustice survivors had endured — not only through the original trauma, but through what followed, or didn’t follow. That sensitised me to the absolute necessity of ensuring victims’ rights — not just in the therapeutic space, but in law, in society, and in policy. That realisation was foundational. It shaped who I became as a researcher, as a clinician, as an advocate, as a teacher, and as a writer. Because I always believed: each book should do a job. It should serve a purpose.

When the World Federation for Mental Health asked me to represent them at the United Nations, I wrote my first book to teach the UN about the importance of mental health, and to remind them — just as I said earlier about institutions — that the UN itself was born from trauma. The Charter begins with that trauma language: “to save succeeding generations…” That’s not a political phrase. That’s a trauma-informed mission statement.

My second book was about the impact of helping — not just on the victims, but on those who serve them: peacekeepers, humanitarian workers, justice professionals. Their wounds matter too.

And then came the book many people know: The International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma. That took me 25 years to complete. It includes 30 populations around the world, including children of perpetrators — because they are affected too. No one is untouched.

And after 9/11, I wrote two more books — this time on victims of terrorism. Because again, while the world focused on counterterrorism, almost no one paid attention to the victims. And that silence, once again, was devastating. This work is never done. No, it’s never done. But at least now... we know what we need to do.

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Dr Yael Danieli (www.dryaeldanieli.com) is a clinical psychologist, traumatologist, victimologist and psychohistorian. Having developed the first program to help Nazi Holocaust Survivors and their Children in the 1970s, she has devoted much of her career to studying, treating, writing about, and preventing lifelong and multigenerational impacts of massive trauma worldwide, to ensuring victims’ rights, the rights of future generations, and to reparative justice.

In the last two decades Dr Danieli created the Danieli Inventory – the gold measure to (comparatively) assessing intergenerational legacies of Trauma and founded the International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma (www.ICMGLT.org).

As a victimologist, she has spent over four decades participating in drafting, adopting, implementing victims' rights, and ensuring that victims’ rights reach the victims.

What gives me hope, when I look at how the world is now responding to the legacies of mass violence and repression, is the ability to speak and listen.

Speak and listen. Those are the two essential steps. They’re not just important to move forward, but to protect ourselves. When you need to cry – take the time. You must take the time. Because when you run away from grief, you’re also running away from parts of yourself. And it's not just the tears – it's also the rage. It's very hard to be angry, because we’re often afraid of our own anger. But every emotion matters. And this brings me to something I’d like to share – what I call the Principles of Self-Healing. I originally prepared it for psychotherapists, but really, it’s for anyone who works with human pain, with evil, with terror – whether you’re a therapist, a journalist, a peace worker, or just someone who cares.

The first step is to develop awareness – even of how your body responds. Your body is wise. It will often let you know what your conscious mind is not yet ready to see. Pay attention to it. The second step is to find words. Learn to name your inner experience, to articulate your emotions. One of my favourite quotes – one that I had posted at the entrance to my office – comes from Bruno Bettelheim:

What cannot be talked about cannot be put to rest. And if it is not, the wounds continue to fester from generation to generation.

So first, recognise your reactions. Then, contain them. Because it’s not just the emotion that can feel overwhelming – it’s the intensity of it. You have to know your own level of comfort so that you can stay open, tolerant, and ready to hear anything – especially when you work with others. And then comes something that I think is so liberating: every emotion has a beginning, a middle, and an end. People fear that if they start crying, they’ll cry forever. Or if they scream, they’ll never stop. But nobody ever cried forever. Nobody ever screamed forever. Let it run its course – without resorting to defense, without shutting yourself down too quickly.

And to heal – and to grow – you must also accept that nothing will ever be the same. People say, “I want things to go back to normal.” But there is no "normal" after trauma. Instead, we have to ask: What now? What can we build?

When we feel wounded, we need to take time to understand what we’re feeling, to soothe ourselves, and to heal, before we can go back out and offer ourselves to others again. And that’s true whether you’re a therapist, a caregiver, or a journalist. Anyone who listens – truly listens – must be fully present. And to be present, you have to have tended to your own wounds first.

If something someone says triggers an unexplored pain in you, seek help. It’s okay. It just means you want to do your work with integrity. And that’s a good thing. Any strong emotional reaction: grief, mourning, rage – may bring up old material. If you allow it to move through you, you can grow through it. That’s the gift hidden inside the pain.

This is so important – don’t do this alone. Find others. Create a network of people who understand what you’re doing. That’s why we build organisations. Not only to act, but to support one another, to hold each other when the work becomes too much. And finally: be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to feel joy, to have fun. That’s not a luxury in this field – it’s a necessity. Without it, you can’t fulfill your responsibilities, not to others and not to yourself.

I often say: have fun. But understand, it’s not about being happy every day. I don’t wake up smiling every morning. No. But I wake up with a sense of purpose. And that is what sustains me.

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Dr Yael Danieli (www.dryaeldanieli.com) is a clinical psychologist, traumatologist, victimologist and psychohistorian. Having developed the first program to help Nazi Holocaust Survivors and their Children in the 1970s, she has devoted much of her career to studying, treating, writing about, and preventing lifelong and multigenerational impacts of massive trauma worldwide, to ensuring victims’ rights, the rights of future generations, and to reparative justice.

In the last two decades Dr Danieli created the Danieli Inventory – the gold measure to (comparatively) assessing intergenerational legacies of Trauma and founded the International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma (www.ICMGLT.org).

As a victimologist, she has spent over four decades participating in drafting, adopting, implementing victims' rights, and ensuring that victims’ rights reach the victims.

23 August marks the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes – a day on which we pay tribute to those who suffered as a result of the violence of totalitarian systems in the 20th century - systems based on control, repression and ideological enslavement. This year's campaign "Remember. 23 August", organised by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, focuses on intergenerational trauma – one of the most complex aspects of historical heritage. Although it leaves no visible scars, it can permeate generations and influence entire societies, shaping relationships, identities, ways of thinking and reacting.

We invited a distinguished researcher to reflect on this topic: Professor Michał Bilewicz, a social psychologist and author of Traumaland, a book on the social effects of violence and collective memory.

ENRS, Mariola Cyra: What exactly is intergenerational trauma?

Professor Michał Bilewicz: In psychology, intergenerational trauma is the phenomenon of traumatic experiences being passed on from one generation to the next – not only in a narrative sense, but mainly in a psychological dimension, affecting the mental health of descendants. This phenomenon became the focus of intensive study in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Israel. At that time, it was noticed that veterans returning from the war in Lebanon, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, showed significantly stronger symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than those whose parents had not had such experiences. Research conducted at the time by Solomon, Kotler and Mikulincera showed that trauma can affect the sensitivity of subsequent generations to stressors, causing them to react more strongly to new, difficult situations.

Systematic research on this phenomenon is still being conducted in Israel today. Among other things, there is a research panel involving descendants of Holocaust survivors and people with identical demographic profiles but from families without such experiences, such as those who lived in the former Soviet Union or the Middle East during the war. They are regularly surveyed, both in everyday situations and in times of crisis. In stressful situations, the differences are clear: descendants of survivors are more likely to experience mood swings, anxiety, symptoms of depression or PTSD.

At the same time, Professor van IJzendoorn's meta-analyses show that in everyday conditions there are no significant differences in mental health between descendants of trauma victims and people from families without such experiences. Differences only appear in response to stressors – and it is this increased sensitivity to threat that is one of the key mechanisms of intergenerational trauma.

Of course, this clinical understanding of the phenomenon is only one perspective. I am also interested in the social consequences of such trauma, such as heightened distrust, a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories, hypersensitivity and anxiety. These are traits that cannot be reduced solely to mental disorders – they are rather manifestations of a specific social functioning shaped by the legacy of past traumas.

To what extent have totalitarian regimes left their mark not only on history but also on the psyche of society? Can we talk about post-traumatic societies?

Yes, we can definitely talk about such societies. In transcultural psychiatry, but also increasingly in psychology, the term historical trauma is used in this context, which differs from transgenerational trauma. The latter refers mainly to psychological or psychiatric effects passed down from generation to generation. Historical trauma, on the other hand, is a broader phenomenon that encompasses the ways in which societies adapt to extreme experiences – war, occupation, ethnic cleansing or genocide – and how these adaptations persist even when external conditions change.

After the end of a war or the fall of a regime, people formally return to normal life, but their social functioning continues to bear the marks of those experiences. We see this, for example, in entrenched mistrust, especially towards strangers, representatives of other nations or states. Fears and anxieties arise easily and resonate strongly, especially when they concern children or women – groups that have been particularly vulnerable to violence in the past. In societies that have experienced mass child deaths, rape or other forms of large-scale violence, threats of this kind trigger very strong reactions – much stronger than in societies that have not gone through such trauma.

Although intergenerational trauma refers to the experiences of past generations, its effects can also be felt by those who did not themselves experience war, repression or persecution. How does this happen?

This is a very interesting phenomenon, which has been well described by Michael Wohl and Jay van Bavel in their research among Canadian Jews. They noticed that symptoms of transgenerational trauma also appeared in people who did not have direct victims of the Holocaust among their ancestors – their families were already living in Canada during the war. The key factor here was not family history, but the strength of identification with the community. People who strongly identified with the Jewish community showed more pronounced symptoms of transgenerational trauma.

This shows that the transmission of trauma is not limited to family relationships. Of course, there is a hypothesis of epigenetic trauma transfer – i.e. biological adaptation inherited by subsequent generations – but so far there is little hard evidence for this. Cultural or social transmission is much better documented.

Trauma can be transmitted through family stories, silence, parental behaviour, but also through education, the media, rituals of remembrance or anniversary celebrations. Cultural transmission – what is said (or not said) about the past in a given community – can shape the perception of history to the same extent as individual family experiences. It is this social dimension of trauma that causes even people with no personal connection to a past tragedy to experience it as part of their own identity and respond to it emotionally.

Can people born after 1990, who grew up in a free Europe, carry the emotional legacy of totalitarian systems? How does this manifest itself – in relationships, identity, language?

The way the younger generation of Poles functions – especially those born after 1989 – is indeed very interesting and sometimes even surprising. In the research conducted by my PhD student, Damien Stewart, an Australian who analysed the phenomenon of transgenerational trauma in Poland, an intriguing observation emerged: the highest level of transgenerational PTSD symptoms is not found among the children of people who survived the occupation, but in the third generation, i.e. the grandchildren of those who experienced the war. This surprising phenomenon shows that trauma can return with a certain delay.

This generation grew up in the reality of transformation and free Poland, but also during a period of a certain renaissance of traumatic memory, which began at the start of the new millennium with the establishment of the Warsaw Uprising Museum and later with the intensification of the narrative about the Cursed Soldiers. Memories of war and violence began to return strongly to the public sphere – in mass culture, museums and education.

How can mass culture, monuments, museum narratives and school textbooks contribute to healing or, conversely, deepening trauma?

If we look at school textbooks and reading lists, we see that young people learn about the occupation most often through the stories of Tadeusz Borowski – deeply challenging texts that depict the severely degraded reality of camp life, people who lost the will to live and became known as ‘Muslims’ in camp language or, in camp literature, ‘dojchaga’. These are individuals who are mentally and physically destroyed, on the brink of life and death.

However, while such images are accurate, they depict extreme cases. The history of the occupation also includes people who, despite everything, tried to live, function, and adapt — under extreme conditions, yet still managing to preserve their humanity. Unfortunately, education often presents this darkest fragment as the norm, which leads to a distorted image of the past.

Added to this are today's immersive techniques, which are increasingly used in education and museology. Students take on the roles of victims, participate in realistic games and VR experiences. This can be effective educationally, but it also carries the risk of psychological overload.

In my research among young people visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, I found that several percent of students showed symptoms characteristic of PTSD a month after their visit – difficulty falling asleep, hypersensitivity, recurring images and nightmares. It is precisely for these young people that we must ask ourselves: How can we ensure that contact with a memorial site is an educational experience rather than a traumatic one? Remembering the past cannot be based solely on shock – its purpose should be understanding, reflection and the ability to incorporate this knowledge into a healthy identity.

So how can we talk to children about painful aspects of history when even a visit to a museum can provoke such strong reactions? What should we convey and what should we avoid?

I don't think we should avoid difficult topics or filter historical facts – that would be dishonest. It is equally dangerous to sensationalise cruelty, to focus exclusively on the most extreme and dramatic experiences, which, although true, were not the everyday reality for most people.

It is crucial to show agency. That is, to tell the story of how even in the most extreme conditions, people tried to cope, made efforts to preserve their dignity, help others, and resist – not necessarily with weapons in their hands. Often, this resistance was silent and civil. For some, religion was a form of resistance, for others it was culture, values or family ties.

Meanwhile, our education – in schools and museums – is dominated by heroic narratives: armed resistance, uprisings, guerrilla warfare. Rarely do we hear about everyday forms of survival: about someone transporting meat from the countryside to the city, enabling them to support their family; about someone hiding books banned by the occupiers or conducting secret teaching. These are stories that often circulate within families but are not passed on because they are not considered ‘heroic’. And yet they have enormous educational potential – they show how people were able to preserve their humanity, take action and care for others despite violence and fear.

It is important to teach children not only that evil and suffering existed, but also that people had a choice, that they were capable of solidarity, that they fought for survival – and that this history is not only a history of victims, but also a history of survival and courage in everyday life. This helps to build resilience, not just fear.

Isn't it silence that shapes future generations the most? Don't we remain silent too often? I ask this question personally – I am the great-granddaughter of an officer murdered in Katyn. Little has been said about the history that shaped the fate of our family.

It is definitely worth asking questions – and it is especially important when it is done by the grandchildren, the third generation. It is much more difficult for children to talk to their parents about traumatic experiences than it is for grandchildren to talk to their grandparents. There is often more emotional space and curiosity than resistance between grandchildren and grandparents.

Just as important as the question is what we do when the answer comes. Are we truly ready to listen? Many people from the generation of victims tried to speak out, but no one wanted to listen to them. As a result, many people withdrew from these attempts. They often sought community among people with similar experiences, which led to the creation of groups such as the Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Stutthof survivors’ associations. Though these names may sound unsettling today, they represented real efforts to build spaces where people didn’t have to speak about their trauma — they could simply be with others who understood it without words.

In the case of the Katyn families, silence was virtually enforced. For many years, talking about Katyn could be not only socially isolating, but also dangerous. It was a trauma pushed into the shadows – not only personal, but also political. I know that research has been conducted on how these families functioned after the war – how memory was frozen in them, passed on indirectly, through emotions and behaviour rather than words.

It was not until the 1990s and 2000s that some kind of social recognition of this memory emerged. Films such as Wajda's Katyn appeared, giving many families the feeling that they could finally speak. And that someone was finally listening.

To what extent can art – literature, film, theatre, photography – help heal intergenerational trauma?

Art can play a very important role in the process of coming to terms with and working through trauma. Sometimes it does so in a paradoxical way. If we look at the first post-war films about the occupation, we are surprisingly often confronted with comedy. Films such as Zezowate szczęście (Bad Luck) or Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową (How I Unleashed World War II) were a way for the generation that had survived the war to come to terms with it. Ridiculing certain behaviours or situations allowed them to gain distance – and it is precisely this distance that is sometimes necessary to be able to integrate difficult experiences.

The same is true of other reactions that may seem inappropriate or even shocking to outsiders, such as laughter, jokes, or using a phone in places of remembrance, such as Auschwitz. We are studying these phenomena and finding that they often serve a defensive function. People are trying to come to terms with something that is almost unbearable.

This trend was also present in so-called Holocaust cinema. Films such as Train of Life and Life Is Beautiful attempt to talk about the crime in a way that not only conveys knowledge but also allows the viewer to alleviate the emotional burden at least a little.

However, it is important to remember that culture also has a darker side. It can also be traumatic. From research we have conducted, including among Polish Jews, as well as from analyses by Michael Wohl and Jay Van Bavel, we know that strong identification with a group carries with it a legacy of trauma. It can cause a person to experience secondary trauma. A culture that constantly reminds us of suffering and violence can reinforce feelings of threat, isolation and fear. It is therefore crucial how we talk about the past – and whether we give the audience the opportunity to enter this world while maintaining their own boundaries.

Can trauma teach us anything? Empathy, responsibility, freedom?

I think trauma can teach us something – though not necessarily what we would expect. In a sense, trauma prepares us for future crises. It leads to hypersensitivity and distrust, which may be destructive in times of peace but can be adaptive in moments of danger. This was evident, for example, after the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022. Poles did not wait for the state to act, but took grassroots action to help refugees. This is typical behaviour for a society that remembers trauma, even if it has never explicitly named it.

We see a similar mechanism at work in the context of living under constant threat, as in Israel or Ukraine. There, people learn to function in a reality of alarms, air raids and power cuts. At the same time, they are extremely distrustful of strangers. Sociologist Daniel Bar-Tal calls this the “ethos of conflict” – a daily way of life in the reality of war. It is something that may seem inhuman from the outside, but for people living in such conditions, it becomes the new norm.

And perhaps this is what allows us to better understand how the generation that lived under occupation functioned. For them, the sight of executions, ghettos and pacification was something they had to get used to in order to survive. In this sense, as Miłosz wrote, the carousel keeps turning – not because people are indifferent, but because they have to live. This is not cynicism, but a psychologically adaptive mechanism. It may outrage us, but this is how the human psyche works.

What would you like to change in the way societies relate to their future?

There is one thing that seems particularly important to me and that could change. Historically traumatised societies very often lack the ability to recognise the trauma of others. When we have experienced suffering ourselves – especially if our trauma has not been fully recognised by the world – there is a strong need to focus on our own pain. So strong that we begin to deny the trauma of others.

For me personally, writing Traumaland was a kind of exercise in empathy. I come from a family of Holocaust survivors – most of my family died in the Holocaust. I grew up in an environment where Jewish trauma was paramount – suffering of others, including the wartime experience of non-Jewish Poles, was treated as insignificant. Henryk Grynberg once wrote that in the case of Jews, decimation means that one in ten survived, while in the case of Poles, it means that one in ten died. And that these two experiences of occupation are completely incomparable. Yet losing 10% of the entire population is a huge historical wound. And it also deserves recognition.

A similar mechanism works in reverse – many Poles, focused on their own trauma, are not ready to acknowledge the pain of others: Ukrainians, Germans, Jews. People are reluctant to talk about crimes committed by Poles, whether during the Holocaust or after the war: in the camps in Świętochłowice, Łambinowice, during Operation Vistula. And yet, being a victim in the past does not absolve one from becoming a perpetrator in the future.

The history of genocide and violence clearly shows that perpetrators were very often victims themselves. This is a painful truth. Trauma, if not worked through, can lead to a readiness to traumatise others. That is why we need a psychological perspective that focuses on individual experience rather than national narratives.

Psychology, unlike history or political science, does not create narratives that justify one side's position. It gives space to everyone – because every trauma must be acknowledged in order to be healed. And this acknowledgement is, in my opinion, our greatest hope.

Why are defensive narratives so common? Is it natural that we prefer to see ourselves only as victims?

Yes, it's quite a natural psychological mechanism. In psychology, we talk about moral typecasting – we tend to see people in rigid roles: either victim or perpetrator. It is very difficult to accept that someone can be both. The stronger we build our identity on the role of victim, the harder it is to accept that we could also have been perpetrators. Only in a few cases, such as Germany after World War II or Rwanda following the 1994 genocide, has it been possible to create a space for acknowledging this difficult duality.

History and experience are not black and white. Just look at Kashubia or Pomerania, for example – before the war, people lived side by side, the borders were different. The divisions between perpetrators and victims are not clear-cut.

Exactly. And this shows the danger of national unification of historical narrative. In psychology, we see it as very harmful because it prevents individual expression and the sharing of personal experiences. This is clearly visible today in the exhibition Our Boys, which has provoked extreme reactions – often full of ignorance. Many people are unaware that hundreds of thousands of Poles were forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht – more than fought in the Home Army. And yet the fate of these people is suppressed, unwanted in the dominant narrative.

However, this is not a matter of evading responsibility. It is the result of the colonisation of Polish historical memory – first by one region, namely Central Poland, and then by one social class, the Polish intelligentsia. And it is the experience of this class, this geography, that has been extended to the whole of Poland, supplanting other histories. The history of the people of Kashubia, Pomerania and Galicia. People who could not always fit into heroic, insurrectionary narratives.

For me, as a psychologist, it is precisely these individual experiences – of people and families – that should be the starting point. Only then is it possible to truly acknowledge and work through trauma. Not through narratives imposed from above, which divide history into black and white.

Are there any countries or communities that you think have coped well with trauma and a difficult past?

Paradoxically, the more traumatised a society has been, the more difficult it is for it to deal with this trauma. I cannot name a nation that has truly come to terms with its past. For this work to be possible, there must be a starting point – acknowledgement of responsibility and calling crimes by their proper names. Germany and Rwanda are good examples. In both cases, there has been official recognition of genocide and its perpetrators, which has allowed a completely new narrative to be constructed, both educational and social.

In Germany, the Holocaust has become the absolute centre of historical memory. Research such as the MEMO-Studie by a team from the University of Bielefeld shows that most Germans know the history of their country from the moment of National Socialism onwards – earlier eras are almost absent from the collective consciousness. Teaching about the Holocaust is not questioned there – on the contrary, it is a fundamental element of civic identity.

The situation is similar in Rwanda, where tribal identities were completely abandoned after the genocide. Today, the younger generation does not know whether their families belonged to the Hutu, Tutsi or Twa. The justice system, including the Gacaca courts, not only punished the perpetrators, but also sought to reconcile local communities that had to continue living together. In this sense, one can speak of a successful internal reconstruction.

However, when we look more broadly – at Rwanda's relations with the Democratic Republic of Congo, or at the attitude of Germans in the eastern part of the country towards refugees – cracks begin to appear. Rwanda supports armed actions beyond its borders, and in Germany, the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) is growing in popularity and anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise. One might therefore ask whether this success of memory – the recognition of one's own trauma – actually translates into broader social functioning. Or perhaps something has been repressed and is now returning in a different form. Dr Fiona Kazarovytska from the University of Mainz shows that Germans who are particularly proud of how their nation has come to terms with its past tend to treat the history of National Socialism as a closed chapter – which in effect makes them more susceptible to xenophobic or racist ideologies today.

All this shows that working through trauma is not a closed process, but an ongoing task – also for future generations.

Where should we start to make future generations more aware, mature and think differently about their past?

I think the starting point should be to rethink our story about the past. Poland's historical identity is today largely based on an image of suffering and moral innocence – we see ourselves primarily as passive victims. Meanwhile, history was much more complex. We need a narrative that shows agency – even in the most difficult times. We need to remember that not everyone was passive, that there were people who acted, who resisted, but also that there were different attitudes – including those that do not fit into the convenient narrative of exclusively moral victims.

How can we talk to young people about traumatic chapters of history without provoking resistance or feelings of blame? How can we break this cycle of interlocking trauma? The key is to show the complexity of history – to avoid black-and-white narratives. We need to talk about suffering and injustice, but not only through the prism of the perpetrators and their victims. It is also worth focusing on those who survived – on their choices, decisions and ways of coping. On those who, in extreme situations, showed agency, even in the smallest ways.

Instead of presenting history to young people as a story of guilt and accusation, it is worth showing it as a space for reflection on the fate of individuals – on how people reacted in extreme conditions. Only then can we hope for true understanding, empathy – and breaking the mechanism of passing trauma from generation to generation.

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Professor Michał Bilewicz – social and political psychologist, professor at the University of Warsaw, where he heads the Centre for Research on Prejudice. He specialises in psychological mechanisms of reconciliation, collective memory, trauma and prejudice. Author of the book Traumaland. Poles in the Shadow of the Past.

23 sierpnia przypada Europejski Dzień Pamięci Ofiar Reżimów Totalitarnych – dzień, w którym oddajemy hołd tym, którzy cierpieli w wyniku przemocy systemów totalitarnych XX wieku. Systemów opartych na przemocy, represji i ideologicznym zniewoleniu. Tegoroczna kampania koncentruje się na traumie międzypokoleniowej – jednym z najbardziej złożonych aspektów dziedzictwa historycznego. Choć nie zostawia ona widocznych ran, ale jak się okazuje potrafi przenikać przez pokolenia i wpływać na całe społeczeństwa – kształtując relacje, tożsamość, sposoby myślenia i reagowania.

Do refleksji nad tym tematem zaprosiliśmy wybitnego badacza: prof. Michała Bilewicza, psychologa społecznego i autora książki Traumaland, poświęconej pamięci zbiorowej i społecznym skutkom przemocy.
Prof. Bilewicz był także gościem naszego cyklu dyskusji „Zrozumieć Pamięć” w kwietniu 2024 roku, gdzie wraz z Katarzyną Surmiak-Domańską (autorką książki Czystki) omawiał m.in. swoją książkę Traumland – nagranie dostępne jest na YouTube.

ENRS, Mariola Cyra: Czym jest trauma międzypokoleniowa?

Profesor Michał Bilewicz: W psychologii trauma międzypokoleniowa to zjawisko przekazu doświadczeń traumatycznych z jednego pokolenia na kolejne – i to nie tylko w sensie narracyjnym, ale głównie w wymiarze psychicznym, wpływającym na zdrowie psychiczne potomków. Zjawisko to zaczęto intensywnie badać w latach 70. i 80., szczególnie w Izraelu. Wówczas zauważono, że weterani powracający z wojny w Libanie, których rodzice byli ocalałymi z Holokaustu, wykazywali znacznie silniejsze objawy zespołu stresu pourazowego (PTSD) niż ci, których rodzice nie mieli takich doświadczeń. Badania prowadzone wówczas przez Solomon, Kotlera i Mikulincera pokazały, że trauma może wpływać na wrażliwość kolejnych pokoleń na stresory – sprawiając, że reagują one silniej na nowe, trudne sytuacje.

W Izraelu do dziś prowadzi się wiele systematycznych badań nad tym zjawiskiem. Istnieje tam m.in. panel badawczy, w którym uczestniczą osoby będące potomkami ocalałych z Holokaustu, a także osoby o identycznym profilu demograficznym, ale pochodzące z rodzin bez takich doświadczeń – np. tych, które w czasie wojny przebywały na terenie byłego Związku Radzieckiego czy Bliskiego Wschodu. Badani są regularnie, zarówno w codziennych warunkach, jak i w momentach kryzysów. W sytuacjach stresowych wyraźnie widać różnice – potomkowie ocalałych częściej doświadczają pogorszenia nastroju, lęku, objawów depresyjnych czy PTSD.

Jednocześnie metaanalizy profesora van IJzendoorna, pokazują, że w codziennych warunkach nie ma istotnych różnic w zdrowiu psychicznym pomiędzy potomkami ofiar traumy a osobami z rodzin bez takich doświadczeń. Różnice pojawiają się dopiero w odpowiedzi na stresory – i to właśnie ta zwiększona wrażliwość na zagrożenie jest jednym z kluczowych mechanizmów traumy międzypokoleniowej.

Oczywiście to kliniczne rozumienie zjawiska to tylko jedna z perspektyw. Mnie osobiście interesują również społeczne konsekwencje takiej traumy – takie jak wzmożona nieufność, skłonność do wierzenia w teorie spiskowe, nadwrażliwość czy lękowość. To cechy, których nie da się sprowadzić wyłącznie do zaburzeń psychicznych – są one raczej przejawem specyficznego funkcjonowania społecznego, ukształtowanego przez dziedzictwo przeszłych traum.

W jakim stopniu reżimy totalitarne odcisnęły piętno nie tylko na historii, ale i na psychice społeczeństwa? Czy możemy mówić o społeczeństwach po traumie?

Tak, zdecydowanie możemy mówić o takich społeczeństwach. W psychiatrii transkulturowej, ale też coraz częściej również w psychologii, używa się w tym kontekście pojęcia traumy historycznej, które różni się od traumy transgeneracyjnej. Ta druga odnosi się głównie do efektów psychologicznych lub psychiatrycznych przenoszonych z pokolenia na pokolenie. Natomiast trauma historyczna to szersze zjawisko, obejmujące sposoby, w jakie społeczeństwa adaptują się do skrajnych doświadczeń – wojny, okupacji, czystek etnicznych czy ludobójstwa – i jak te adaptacje utrzymują się nawet wtedy, gdy warunki zewnętrzne ulegają zmianie.

Po zakończeniu wojny czy po upadku reżimu ludzie formalnie wracają do normalnego życia, ale ich funkcjonowanie społeczne nadal nosi ślady tamtych doświadczeń. Widzimy to na przykład w utrwalonej nieufności – szczególnie wobec obcych, przedstawicieli innych narodów czy państw. Obawy i lęki pojawiają się łatwo i silnie rezonują, zwłaszcza jeśli dotyczą dzieci czy kobiet – czyli grup, które były szczególnie narażone na przemoc w przeszłości. W społeczeństwach, które doświadczyły masowej śmierci dzieci, gwałtów czy innych form przemocy na dużą skalę, zagrożenia tego typu uruchamiają bardzo silne reakcje – znacznie silniejsze niż w społeczeństwach, które nie przeszły przez tego rodzaju traumę.

Choć trauma międzypokoleniowa odnosi się do doświadczeń przeszłych pokoleń, jej skutki bywają odczuwalne także przez tych, którzy sami nie przeżyli wojny, represji czy prześladowań. Jak to się dzieje?

To bardzo ciekawe zjawisko, które dobrze opisali Michael Wohl i Jay van Bavel, prowadząc badania wśród kanadyjskich Żydów. Zauważyli oni, że objawy traumy transgeneracyjnej pojawiały się również u osób, które nie miały wśród swoich przodków bezpośrednich ofiar Holokaustu – ich rodziny mieszkały już w Kanadzie w czasie wojny. Kluczowym czynnikiem okazała się tutaj nie historia rodzinna, lecz siła identyfikacji ze wspólnotą. Osoby, które silnie utożsamiały się ze społecznością żydowską, wykazywały wyraźniejsze objawy traumy transgeneracyjnej.

To pokazuje, że przekaz traumy nie ogranicza się wyłącznie do relacji rodzinnych. Oczywiście, istnieje hipoteza o epigenetycznym transferze traumy – czyli biologicznej adaptacji dziedziczonej przez kolejne pokolenia – ale jak dotąd mamy na to niewiele twardych dowodów. Znacznie lepiej udokumentowany jest przekaz kulturowy czy społeczny.

Trauma może być przekazywana przez rodzinne opowieści, milczenie, zachowania rodziców, ale także przez edukację, media, rytuały pamięci czy obchody rocznic. Przekaz kulturowy – to, co mówi się (lub czego się nie mówi) o przeszłości w danej wspólnocie – może kształtować postrzeganie historii w takim samym stopniu, jak indywidualne doświadczenia rodzinne. To właśnie ten społeczny wymiar traumy sprawia, że nawet osoby bez osobistych związków z przeszłą tragedią mogą ją odczuwać jako część własnej tożsamości i reagować na nią emocjonalnie.

Czy osoby urodzone po 1990 roku, które dorastały w wolnej Europie, mogą nieść w sobie emocjonalne dziedzictwo systemów totalitarnych? Jak to się objawia – w relacjach, tożsamości, języku?

To, jak funkcjonuje młodsze pokolenie Polaków – zwłaszcza tych urodzonych po 1989 roku – jest rzeczywiście bardzo ciekawe i czasami wręcz zaskakujące. W badaniach mojego doktoranta, Damiena Stewarta – Australijczyka, który analizował zjawisko traumy transgeneracyjnej w Polsce – pojawiła się intrygująca obserwacja: najwyższy poziom objawów transgeneracyjnego PTSD nie występuje wśród dzieci osób, które przeżyły okupację, ale właśnie w trzecim pokoleniu, czyli u wnuków tych, którzy doświadczyli wojny. To zaskakujące zjawisko pokazuje, że trauma może wracać z pewnym opóźnieniem.

To pokolenie dorastało już w realiach transformacji i wolnej Polski, ale też w okresie pewnego renesansu pamięci traumatycznej, który rozpoczął się na początku obecnego tysiąclecia, wraz z powstaniem Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego, a później z intensyfikacją narracji o Żołnierzach Wyklętych. Pamięć o wojnie i przemocy zaczęła wtedy mocno powracać do przestrzeni publicznej – w kulturze masowej, muzeach, edukacji.

Jak kultura masowa, pomniki, narracje muzealne czy podręczniki szkolne mogą przyczynić się do uzdrawiania albo – przeciwnie – pogłębiania traumy?

Jeśli przyjrzymy się podręcznikom czy lekturom szkolnym, zobaczymy, że młodzież poznaje historię okupacji najczęściej przez opowiadania Tadeusza Borowskiego – teksty niezwykle trudne, ukazujące ekstremalnie zdegradowany świat obozów, ludzi, którzy utracili wolę życia, stali się tzw. „muzułmanami” w języku obozowym, czy – w literaturze łagrowej – dochodjaga. To są jednostki wyniszczone psychicznie i fizycznie – na granicy życia i śmierci.

Tymczasem takie obrazy, choć prawdziwe, dotyczą skrajnych przypadków. Historia okupacji to także ludzie, którzy mimo wszystko próbowali żyć, funkcjonować, przystosować się – w ekstremalnych warunkach, ale jednak zachować człowieczeństwo. Niestety, edukacja często przedstawia właśnie ten najbardziej mroczny wycinek jako normę, co prowadzi do zniekształcenia obrazu przeszłości.

Do tego dochodzą dziś techniki immersyjne – coraz częściej wykorzystywane w edukacji czy muzealnictwie. Uczniowie i uczennice wcielają się w postacie ofiar, uczestniczą w realistycznych grach, doświadczeniach VR. To może być skuteczne edukacyjnie, ale niesie też ryzyko przeciążenia psychicznego.

W badaniach, które prowadziłem wśród młodzieży odwiedzającej Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, okazało się, że kilkanaście procent uczniów wykazywało miesiąc po wizycie objawy charakterystyczne dla PTSD – trudności z zasypianiem, nadwrażliwość, powracające obrazy, koszmary. Właśnie dla tych młodych ludzi trzeba zadać sobie pytanie: Jak sprawić, by kontakt z miejscem pamięci był doświadczeniem edukacyjnym, a nie traumatyzującym? Pamięć o przeszłości nie może polegać wyłącznie na szoku – jej celem powinno być zrozumienie, refleksja i możliwość włączenia tej wiedzy w zdrową tożsamość.

Jak więc rozmawiać z dziećmi o bolesnych aspektach historii, skoro nawet wizyta w muzeum może wywoływać tak silne reakcje? Co warto przekazywać, a czego unikać?

Nie uważam, żebyśmy powinni unikać trudnych tematów czy filtrować fakty historyczne – to byłoby nieuczciwe. Równie niebezpieczne jest epatowanie okrucieństwem, koncentrowanie się wyłącznie na najbardziej skrajnych i dramatycznych doświadczeniach, które – choć prawdziwe – nie były codziennością większości ludzi.

Kluczowe jest pokazanie sprawczości. To znaczy: opowiadanie o tym, że nawet w najbardziej ekstremalnych warunkach ludzie próbowali sobie radzić, podejmowali wysiłki, by zachować godność, pomagać innym, stawiać opór – niekoniecznie z bronią w ręku. Często był to opór cichy, cywilny. Dla niektórych formą oporu była religia, dla innych kultura, wartości, więzi rodzinne.

Tymczasem w naszej edukacji – w szkołach czy muzeach – dominuje narracja heroiczna: opór zbrojny, powstania, partyzantka. Rzadko mówi się o codziennych formach przetrwania: o tym, że ktoś przewoził mięso ze wsi do miasta, dzięki czemu był w stanie utrzymać swoją rodzinę; że ktoś przechowywał książki zakazane przez okupanta albo prowadził tajne nauczanie. To są historie, które często funkcjonują w rodzinach, ale nie są przekazywane dalej, bo nie uchodzą za „bohaterskie”. A to właśnie one mają ogromny potencjał edukacyjny – pokazują, jak ludzie potrafili zachować człowieczeństwo, działać, troszczyć się o innych mimo przemocy i strachu.

Dzieciom warto przekazywać nie tylko to, że istniało zło i cierpienie, ale również, że ludzie mieli wybór, że potrafili być solidarni, że walczyli o przetrwanie – i że ta historia nie jest tylko historią ofiar, ale też historii przetrwania i odwagi w codzienności. To pomaga zbudować odporność, a nie tylko lęk.

Czy to nie milczenie najmocniej kształtuje kolejne pokolenia? Czy nie milczymy zbyt często? Pytam o to też osobiście – jestem prawnuczką oficera zamordowanego w Katyniu. O historii, która wpłynęła na losy naszej rodziny, niewiele się mówiło.

Zdecydowanie warto zadawać pytania – i szczególnie ważne jest, gdy robi to pokolenie wnuków, to trzecie pokolenie. Dzieciom znacznie trudniej rozmawiać z własnymi rodzicami o traumatycznych doświadczeniach niż wnukom z dziadkami. Między wnukami a dziadkami jest często więcej przestrzeni emocjonalnej, więcej ciekawości niż oporu.

Równie ważne jak pytanie, jest to, co zrobimy, kiedy pojawi się odpowiedź. Czy jesteśmy gotowi naprawdę wysłuchać? Wiele osób z pokolenia ofiar próbowało mówić – tylko nikt nie chciał ich słuchać. W efekcie wiele osób wycofało się z tych prób. Często szukali wspólnoty wśród ludzi z podobnym doświadczeniem – stąd powstały takie środowiska jak Kluby Auschwitz, Buchenwaldu, Stutthofu. Te nazwy mogą dziś brzmieć makabrycznie, ale to były realne próby stworzenia przestrzeni, gdzie można nie tyle mówić o traumie wprost, ile po prostu być z ludźmi, którzy rozumieją bez słów.

W przypadku rodzin katyńskich milczenie było wręcz wymuszone. Przez wiele lat mówienie o Katyniu mogło być nie tylko społecznie wykluczające, ale i niebezpieczne. To trauma zepchnięta w cień – nie tylko osobisty, ale też polityczny. Wiem, że prowadzone były badania nad tym, jak te rodziny funkcjonowały po wojnie – jak pamięć została w nich zamrożona, przekazywana pośrednio, przez emocje, zachowania, a nie słowa.

Dopiero lata 90. i 2000. przyniosły coś w rodzaju społecznego uznania dla tej pamięci. Pojawiły się filmy, takie jak Katyń Wajdy, które dały wielu rodzinom poczucie, że wreszcie można mówić. I że ktoś wreszcie słucha.

Na ile sztuka – literatura, film, teatr, fotografia – może pomóc w leczeniu traumy międzypokoleniowej?

Sztuka może pełnić bardzo istotną rolę w procesie oswajania i przepracowywania traumy. Czasem robi to w sposób paradoksalny. Jeśli przyjrzymy się pierwszym powojennym filmom dotyczącym okupacji, to zaskakująco często mamy do czynienia z komedią. Filmy takie jak Zezowate szczęście czy Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową były sposobem, w jaki pokolenie, które samo przeżyło wojnę, próbowało z nią sobie poradzić. Wyśmiewanie pewnych zachowań czy sytuacji pozwalało nabrać dystansu – i właśnie ten dystans bywa niezbędny, by móc jakoś zintegrować trudne doświadczenia.

Podobnie jest z innymi reakcjami, które z zewnątrz mogą wydawać się niestosowne czy wręcz bulwersujące – jak śmiech, żarty, korzystanie z telefonu w miejscach pamięci, na przykład w Auschwitz. Badamy te zjawiska i okazuje się, że one często pełnią funkcję obronną. Ludzie próbują oswoić coś, co jest niemal nie do zniesienia.

Taki nurt obecny był także w tzw. kinie Holokaustu. Filmy takie jak Pociąg życia czy Życie jest piękne – podejmują próbę mówienia o zbrodni w sposób, która nie tylko przekazuje wiedzę, ale też pozwala widzowi choć trochę złagodzić emocjonalne obciążenie.

Trzeba jednak pamiętać, że kultura ma też swoją ciemniejszą stronę. Może również traumatyzować. Z badań, które prowadziliśmy m.in. wśród polskich Żydów, a także z analiz Michaela Wohla i Jaya Van Bavel'a, wiemy, że bardzo silna identyfikacja z grupą niesie w sobie dziedzictwo traumy. Może sprawiać, że człowiek doświadcza traumy wtórnej. Kultura, która stale przypomina o cierpieniu i przemocy, może wzmacniać poczucie zagrożenia, izolacji, lęku. Kluczowe jest więc, jak mówimy o przeszłości – i czy dajemy odbiorcy możliwość wejścia w ten świat z zachowaniem własnych granic.

Czy trauma może nas czegoś nauczyć? Empatii, odpowiedzialności, wolności?

Myślę, że trauma może nas czegoś nauczyć – choć niekoniecznie tego, czego byśmy oczekiwali. W pewnym sensie trauma przygotowuje nas na kolejne kryzysy. Prowadzi do nadwrażliwości, nieufności, które w czasie pokoju bywają destrukcyjne, ale w sytuacjach zagrożenia okazują się adaptacyjne. Widać to było choćby po wybuchu wojny w Ukrainie w 2022 roku. Polacy nie czekali na działania państwa, tylko oddolnie ruszyli z pomocą uchodźcom. To typowe zachowanie dla społeczeństwa, które ma w pamięci traumę – nawet jeśli nigdy jej wprost nie nazwało.

Z podobnym mechanizmem mamy do czynienia w kontekście życia w stałym zagrożeniu, jak w Izraelu czy Ukrainie. Tam ludzie uczą się funkcjonować w rzeczywistości alarmów, nalotów, przerw w dostawie prądu. A jednocześnie w krańcowej nieufności wobec obcych. Socjolog Daniel Bar-Tal nazywa to „etosem konfliktu” – codziennym sposobem życia w realiach wojny. To coś, co z zewnątrz może się wydawać nieludzkie, ale dla osób żyjących w takich warunkach staje się nową normą.

I może to właśnie pozwala nam lepiej zrozumieć, jak funkcjonowało pokolenie, które żyło pod okupacją. Dla nich widok egzekucji, getta, pacyfikacji – był czymś, z czym musieli się oswoić, żeby przeżyć. W tym sensie, jak pisał Miłosz, karuzela kręci się dalej – nie dlatego, że ludzie są obojętni, ale dlatego, że muszą żyć. To nie cynizm, lecz psychologicznie adaptacyjny mechanizm. Może nas to oburzać, ale tak działa ludzka psychika.

Co chciałby Pan zmienić w tym, jak społeczeństwa odnoszą się do swojej przyszłości?

Jest jedna rzecz, która wydaje mi się szczególnie ważna i która mogłaby się zmienić. W społeczeństwach historycznie straumatyzowanych bardzo często brakuje zdolności do uznania traum innych. Kiedy sami doświadczyliśmy cierpienia – zwłaszcza jeśli nasza trauma nie została w pełni uznana przez świat – pojawia się silna potrzeba skupienia na własnym bólu. Tak silna, że zaczynamy zaprzeczać traumom innych.

Dla mnie osobiście pisanie Traumaland było pewnego rodzaju ćwiczeniem empatii. Pochodzę z rodziny ocalałych z Holokaustu – większość mojej rodziny zginęła podczas Zagłady. Dorastałem w środowisku, w którym trauma żydowska była najważniejsza – inne cierpienia, w tym wojenne doświadczenie Polaków nie będących Żydami traktowano jako mało doniosłe. Kiedyś pisał o tym Henryk Grynberg, że w wypadku Żydów zdziesiątkowanie znaczy, że co dziesiąty przeżył – zaś w wypadku Polaków, że co dziesiąty zginął. I że te dwa okupacyjne doświadczenia są zupełnie nieporównywalne. A przecież stracenie 10% całej populacji to ogromna, historyczna rana. I ona również zasługuje na uznanie.

Podobny mechanizm działa też w odwrotną stronę – wielu Polaków, skoncentrowanych na własnej traumie, nie jest gotowych uznać bólu innych: Ukraińców, Niemców, Żydów. Niechętnie mówi się o zbrodniach popełnionych przez Polaków – czy to w czasie Holokaustu, czy po wojnie: w obozach w Świętochłowicach, Łambinowicach, podczas akcji „Wisła”. A przecież bycie ofiarą w przeszłości nie wyklucza bycia sprawcą w przyszłości.

W historii ludobójstw i przemocy widać jasno: sprawcy bardzo często wcześniej byli ofiarami. To bolesna prawda. Trauma – jeśli nie zostanie przepracowana – może prowadzić do gotowości traumatyzowania innych. Dlatego potrzebujemy perspektywy psychologicznej, skoncentrowanej na indywidualnym doświadczeniu, a nie na narodowej narracji.

Psychologia, w przeciwieństwie do historii czy politologii, nie tworzy opowieści uzasadniających rację jednej strony. Ona daje przestrzeń każdemu – bo każda trauma, by mogła zostać uleczona, musi zostać uznana. I to uznanie jest, moim zdaniem, naszą największą nadzieją.

Dlaczego defensywne narracje są tak powszechne? Czy to naturalne, że wolimy widzieć siebie tylko jako ofiary?

Tak, to dość naturalny mechanizm psychologiczny. W psychologii mówimy o moral typecasting – mamy tendencję, by postrzegać ludzi w sztywnych rolach: albo ofiara, albo sprawca. Bardzo trudno jest pogodzić się z tym, że ktoś może być i jednym, i drugim. Im silniej budujemy własną tożsamość na roli ofiary, tym trudniej przyjąć, że mogliśmy również być sprawcami. Tylko w nielicznych przypadkach, takich jak Niemcy po II wojnie światowej czy Rwanda po ludobójstwie, udało się stworzyć przestrzeń do przyznania się do tej trudnej podwójności.

Historia i doświadczenia nie są czarno-białe. Wystarczy spojrzeć na przykład Kaszub czy Pomorza – przed wojną ludzie żyli obok siebie, granice były inne. Podziały na oprawców i ofiary nie są jednoznaczne.

Dokładnie tak. I to pokazuje niebezpieczeństwo narodowej unifikacji narracji historycznej. W psychologii postrzegamy ją jako bardzo szkodliwą, bo uniemożliwia indywidualną ekspresję i opowiedzenie osobistego doświadczenia. Doskonale widać to dziś przy okazji wystawy Nasi chłopcy, która wywołała skrajne reakcje – często pełne niewiedzy i ignorancji. Wiele osób nie zdaje sobie sprawy, że przymusowo do Wehrmachtu wcielono setki tysięcy Polaków – więcej, niż walczyło w Armii Krajowej. A mimo to losy tych ludzi są wypierane, niepożądane w dominującej narracji.

To nie jest jednak kwestia ucieczki od odpowiedzialności. To efekt tego, że polska pamięć historyczna została skolonizowana – najpierw przez jeden region, czyli Polskę Centralną, a potem przez jedną klasę społeczną – polską inteligencję. I to doświadczenie tej klasy, tej geografii, zostało rozciągnięte na całą Polskę, wypierając inne historie. Historię ludzi z Kaszub, z Pomorza, z Galicji. Ludzi, którzy nie zawsze mogli się wpisać w heroiczne, insurekcyjne narracje.

Dla mnie, jako psychologa, to właśnie indywidualne doświadczenia – ludzi, rodzin – powinny stać się punktem wyjścia. Tylko wtedy możliwe jest prawdziwe uznanie i przepracowanie traumy. A nie poprzez narzucane z góry narracje, które dzielą historię na czarne i białe pola.

Czy są kraje lub społeczności, które Pana zdaniem poradziły sobie z traumą, z trudną przeszłością?

Paradoksalnie – im bardziej społeczeństwo było straumatyzowane, tym trudniej mu się z tą traumą uporać. Nie potrafię wskazać narodu, który rzeczywiście w pełni „przepracował” swoją przeszłość. Żeby ta praca była możliwa, musi istnieć jakiś punkt wyjścia – uznanie sprawstwa, nazwanie zbrodni po imieniu. Dobrym przykładem są Niemcy czy Rwanda. W obu przypadkach mamy do czynienia z oficjalnym uznaniem ludobójstwa i jego sprawców, co pozwoliło zbudować zupełnie nową narrację – zarówno edukacyjną, jak i społeczną.

W Niemczech Holokaust stał się absolutnym centrum pamięci historycznej. Badania, takie jak MEMO-Studie zespołu z Uniwersytetu w Bielefeld, pokazują, że większość Niemców zna historię swojego kraju właśnie od momentu narodowego socjalizmu – wcześniejsze epoki są niemal nieobecne w zbiorowej świadomości. Nauczanie o Holokauście nie jest tam kwestionowane – wręcz przeciwnie, jest fundamentalnym elementem tożsamości obywatelskiej.

Podobnie w Rwandzie – po ludobójstwie całkowicie zerwano z tożsamościami plemiennymi. Dziś młode pokolenie nie wie, czy ich rodziny należały do Hutu, Tutsi czy Twa. System sprawiedliwości, w tym sądy Gacaca, nie tylko karał sprawców, ale też dążył do pojednania lokalnych wspólnot, które musiały nadal żyć razem. I w tym sensie można mówić o sukcesie wewnętrznej odbudowy.

Kiedy jednak spojrzymy szerzej – na relacje Rwandy z Demokratyczną Republiką Konga, czy na kwestie stosunku Niemców ze wschodniej części kraju do uchodźców – to pojawiają się rysy. Rwanda wspiera zbrojne działania poza swoimi granicami, a w Niemczech rośnie popularność AfD (niem. Alternative für Deutschland) i nastroje antyimigranckie. Można więc zadać pytanie, czy ten sukces pamięci – uznania własnej traumy – rzeczywiście przekłada się na szersze społeczne funkcjonowanie. A może coś zostało wyparte – i teraz właśnie wraca w innej formie. Dr. Fiona Kazarovytska z Uniwersytetu w Moguncji pokazuje, że Niemcy, którzy są szczególnie dumni z tego, jak ich naród rozliczył się z przeszłością, mają tendencję do traktowania historii narodowego socjalizmu jako zamkniętego rozdziału – co w efekcie czyni ich dzisiaj bardziej podatnymi na wszelkie ksenofobiczne czy rasistowskie ideologie.

To wszystko pokazuje, że przepracowanie traumy to nie zamknięty proces, tylko ciągłe zadanie – także dla przyszłych pokoleń.

Od czego zacząć zmianę, by kolejne pokolenia były bardziej świadome, dojrzałe, inaczej myślały o swojej przeszłości?

Myślę, że punktem wyjścia powinno być przeformułowanie naszej opowieści o przeszłości. Polska tożsamość historyczna jest dziś w dużej mierze oparta na obrazie cierpienia i moralnej niewinności – postrzegamy siebie przede wszystkim jako bierne ofiary. Tymczasem historia była znacznie bardziej złożona. Potrzebujemy narracji, która pokazuje sprawczość – także w najtrudniejszych czasach. Trzeba przypominać, że nie wszyscy byli bierni, że byli ludzie, którzy działali, opierali się, ale też, że różne były postawy – również takie, które wymykają się wygodnej opowieści o wyłącznie moralnych ofiarach.

Jak rozmawiać z młodymi ludźmi o traumatycznych kartach historii, by nie budzić w nich oporu ani poczucia oskarżenia? Jak przełamać to koło zazębiającej się traumy?

Kluczem jest pokazywanie złożoności historii – unikanie czarno-białych narracji. Trzeba mówić o cierpieniu i niesprawiedliwości, ale nie tylko przez pryzmat sprawców i ich ofiar. Warto kierować uwagę także na tych, którzy ocaleli – na ich wybory, decyzje, sposoby radzenia sobie. Na tych, którzy w sytuacjach granicznych wykazywali sprawczość, choćby w najdrobniejszy sposób.

Zamiast przedstawiać młodym ludziom historię jako opowieść o winie i oskarżeniu, warto ukazywać ją jako przestrzeń refleksji nad losem jednostki – nad tym, jak ludzie reagowali w skrajnych warunkach. Tylko wtedy możemy liczyć na prawdziwe zrozumienie, empatię – i przełamanie tego mechanizmu przenoszenia traumy z pokolenia na pokolenie.

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Michał Bilewicz – psycholog społeczny i polityczny, profesor Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, gdzie kieruje Centrum Badań nad Uprzedzeniami. Zajmuje się psychologicznymi mechanizmami pojednania, pamięci zbiorowej, traumy i uprzedzeń. Autor książki Traumaland. Polacy w cieniu przeszłości.