Niepamiętane historie miasta. Żydowska przeszłość Białegostoku i Lublina w (nie)pamięci obecnych mieszkańców

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of social memory in the two main cities of Eastern Poland: Bialystok and Lublin. The author’s major thesis is based on the psychoanalytical concept of dissociation, here used in the context of Jewish history. According to a survey conducted in Bialystok and Lublin, the history of Jews in the two cities is generally accessible but erased from people’s memory. The survey findings lead the author to the hypothesis that this state of forgetting is currently changing, for nearly 20% of respondents in each city declared that the places and objects related to the Jewish local history, which had been neglected, were worth being preserved and protected.