Śmierć w bunkrze – opowieść Martina Pollacka o ojcu (z mapami i fotografiami w tle)

Abstract

The article interprets The Dead Man in the Bunker – an example of geo-biography of the SS officer Gerhard Bast, as it is reconstructed by his son, Martin Pollack. The book by the Austrian author is at the same time a narrative about the whole generation of Nazis raised in the blood and soil ideology, a post memory narrative in its own way. It is at the same time the story of the author himself, growing up surrounded by silence, myths, and the ominous rhetoric of previous generation. Pollack endeavors to confront and reconstruct those experiences. The Dead Man in the Bunker is also a story of European adventure with maps – of how fallible and incongruous they are in the context of ethnic, cultural, or language experience. Finally, we must realize that the history of the Bast family takes place in the world that is no longer depicted on political maps of the region.