The Holocaust Object in Polish and Polish-Jewish Culture

In stark contrast to the widespread preoccupation with the wartime looting of priceless works of art, Bozena Shallcross focuses on the meaning of ordinary objects—pots, eyeglasses, shoes, clothing, kitchen utensils—tangible vestiges of a once-lived reality, which she reads here as cultural texts. Shallcross delineates the ways in which Holocaust objects are represented in Polish and Polish-Jewish texts written during or shortly after World War II. These representational strategies are distilled from the writings of Zuzanna Ginczanka, Wladyslaw Szlengel, Zofia Nalkowska, Czeslaw Milosz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Tadeusz Borowski. Combining close readings of selected texts with critical interrogations of a wide range of philosophical and theoretical approaches to the nature of matter, Shallcross's study broadens the current discourse on the Holocaust by embracing humble and overlooked material objects as they were perceived by writers of that time.