Pamięć i trauma dziedziczona w Krajobrazie z dzieckiem Romana Grena, Oskarżam Auschwitz Mikołaja Grynberga oraz Pensjonacie Piotra Pazińskiego

Abstract

The Memory and Inherited Trauma in The Landscape with a Child by Roman Gren, I Accuse Auschwitz by Mikołaj Grynberg and The Guesthouse by Piotr Paziński

On the basis of three literary texts quoted in the title of the article, the author analyses and interprets the categories of postmemory and inherited trauma. Roman Gren and Piotr Paziński create fictious nostalgic prose, whereas Mikołaj Grynberg uses a feature genre, i.e. recorded conversations with the Auschwitz survivors’ children. The focal idea and a starting point of the discourse is Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory. The authors of the selected texts attempt to face those experiences. Though differently emotionally and artistically loaded, the texts focus on searching for the traces of ancestors and reconstructing family stories, frequently shrouded in a veil of mystery. Recalling childhood memories, the characters reveal family secrets (Jewish ancestry, the Holocaust experience and repercussions) and gradually begin to understand vague and problematic family relations. All three texts aim at reconstructing the identity of the descendants of the salvaged from Extermination, which allows them to recognize themselves in social, psychological and historical dimensions.