Muranów czyli karczowanie. O książce „Festung Warschau” Elżbiety Janickiej

• Main Author: Irena Grudzińska-Gross
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences 2012-12-01
• Series: Studia Litteraria et Historica
• Subjects: „Festung Warschau”; Elżbieta Janicka; city; Warsaw; Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; Warsaw Uprising; ruins; commemoration; monument; historical politics
• Online Access: https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/slh/article/view/20

Muranów, or about land clearing  The article is a review of “Festung Warschau” by Elżbieta Janicka which maps the clash between the recently built monuments celebrating Jewish or Polish places of martyrdom from the times of Second World War. Janicka walks through the streets of the former Jewish neighbourhoods of Warsaw; she photographs and discusses the new plaques, crosses, monuments, and other forms of public marking of history on the buildings, squares and streets. She convincingly shows that the new historical commemorative signs of Polish martyrdom are often placed in the sites that were marked by Jewish resistance or suffering, and that the marks of Polish suffering are rarely linked materially to the site. The new monuments obstruct and hide the past presence of Warsaw Jews and, by submerging their past, create a new vision of ethnically cleansed history of Warsaw, especially in its relation to Second World War. The review applauds the book and rejects some of the criticism against it.