The Crosses of Auschwitz

Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland

Geneviève Zubrzycki

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780226993041
  9780226993034
• eBook ISBN:
  9780226993058
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Social Sciences

In the summer and fall of 1998, ultranationalist Polish Catholics erected hundreds of crosses outside Auschwitz, setting off a fierce debate that pitted Catholics and Jews against one another. While this controversy had ramifications that extended well beyond Poland's borders, Geneviève Zubrzycki sees it as a particularly crucial moment in the development of post-Communist Poland's statehood and its changing relationship to Catholicism.

In The Crosses of Auschwitz, Zubrzycki skillfully demonstrates how this episode crystallized latent social conflicts regarding the significance of Catholicism in defining "Polishness" and the role of anti-Semitism in the construction of a new Polish identity. Since the fall of Communism, the binding that has held Polish identity and Catholicism together has begun to erode, creating unease among ultranationalists. Within their construction of Polish identity also exists pride in the Polish people's long history of suffering. For the ultranationalists, then, the crosses at Auschwitz were not only symbols of their ethno-Catholic vision, but also an attempt to lay claim to what they perceived was a Jewish monopoly over martyrdom.

This gripping account of the emotional and aesthetic aspects of the scene of the crosses at Auschwitz offers profound insights into what Polishness is today and what it may become.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Pronunciation Key
• Introduction and Theoretical Orientations
• 1 Genealogy of Polish Nationalism
• 2 “We, the Polish Nation”: Redefining the Nation in Post-Communist Poland
• 3 "Oświęcim"/"Auschwitz”: Archaeology of a Contested Site and Symbol
• 4 The Aesthetics of the War of the Crosses: Mobilizing “the Nation”
• 5 Debating Poland by Debating the Cross
• Conclusion: Nationalism and Religion Reexamined
• Appendix A: Periodicals Consulted
• Appendix B: Official Translation of the Preamble, Constitution of the Third Republic of Poland
• Appendix C: Historical Cues
• References
• Index