Paper short abstract:

The paper tries to show the ambiguity of Polish folk narratives about the Holocaust. The analysis is concentrated on the problem why this narratives were only told in special circumstances to selected listeners and what that way of performing can tell us about social relations in rural communities.

Paper long abstract:

Narratives about the Holocaust are of special significance to the Polish society mainly because of ongoing discussions about the participation of Poles in the extermination of Jews. Both what people say and what they do not say depends not only on propagated political ideas and changing media discourses. Even more important are the direct relations between members of small local communities in which former persecutors of Jews still live next to people who tried to help them. Such a situation is the reason of the emergence of hidden narratives, told only in the circle of family and close friends. In these narratives we can find not only interpretations of facts from the past but also an assessment of the attitudes of individual members of the community, which sets them a specific social position.

Based on the analysis of the folk narratives and field notes collected during ethnographic research conducted by Dionizjusz Czubala in the 70's and 80's of the twentieth century, this paper wants to show how we can use such materials to better understand the dynamics of social relations, that arise in situations of radical violation of existing norms and values.