(Nie)obecność Żydów augustowskich w powieści Szymona Teżewskiego Eteromanka

Abstract

In his debut novel Eteromanka (The Etheromaniac), Szymon Teżewski evokes the interwar period of his hometown Augustów, which, in the 1930s, had a large Jewish community. Augustów, however, seems to have forgotten about its Jews, who lost their lives in mass executions or were killed in a concentration camp in Treblinka during World War II, as they are absent from the official narrative of the city's past. Therefore, Eteromanka emerges as a very intriguing attempt at restoring the suppressed historical Jewish presence and writing it back into the city’s history and space. Employing the motif of a typewriter possessed by a dybbuk, Teżewski pays a tribute to the Jewish folklore and tradition. The article aims to analyze the discussed novel in terms of collective memory, memory of the place as well as explores the notion of the city as a palimpsest.