Akcja „Wisła” w narracjach przedstawicieli łemkowskiej wspólnoty pamięci

Abstract

OPERATION ‘VISTULA’ IN NARRATIVES OF REPRESENTATIVES LEMKO COMMUNITY OF MEMORY

The article is devoted to the image of the Operation ‘Vistula’ that emerges from the narratives of members of the Lemko community of memory. The analysis is based on interviews that I have conducted as part of my longterm research conducted among representatives of the Lemko community. The collected stories are part of the ‘history of minorities’, or ‘subordinate history’, which in post-war Poland was subordinated to the official vision of the national past, doomed to marginalization and ‘forgetting’. The change was brought about by the year 1989, which started the period of democratization of memory and ‘reclaiming the past’ by marginalized minorities. The analysis of interviews allows indicating the main and recurring motives, but also the dynamics of changing the way of telling about this important event. What is characteristic of all collected narratives is the special importance of Operation ‘Vistula’, which appears in every story, often spontaneously and often performing different functions in these narratives. It is an event that structures the group’s history. It constitutes a distinct turning point, dividing the group’s history into the good ‘time before’ displacement and bad ‘time after’ displacement; it allows upholding relationships between the past, present and future.