Paper short abstract:

What is contemporary status of old funeral spaces in postmigrant territories of Poland? What meanings are attached to them? Sacred or secular? What values prewar cemeteries represent and what practices they evoke nowadays?

Paper long abstract:

In the presentation the results of qualitative field research in the postmigrant territories of Poland are discussed. The context of broken social continuity caused by mass, forced migrations and shifts in national borders after the WW II, and the heritage practices taken by the third generation after the migrations, show the temporality of values attached to the cemeteries of "the others".

The cemeteries that have been destructed and forgotten for around fifty years, since 1990's are the subjects of restoration and commemoration practices. These practices include religious rituals as well. What is interesting the rituals are not of religion of the deceased and buried ones but of religion of the ones who manage the spaces currently. Sometimes it is the combination of both, while ecumenical prayer meetings, with the catholic priest and evangelical pastor participating. After over fifty years of being secular spaces - the researched cemeteries regained their religious meanings, however, among many other, secular as well, resulting in a complex new set of meanings.

In the presentation I focus on questions of symbolic domination, and cultural and religious apropriation that are part of the heritage process taking place with reference to the cemeteries nowadays.