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Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland
University Of Chicago Press
September 2006
On Sale: September 1, 2006
280 pages
ISBN: 0226993043
EAN: 9780226993041
Paperback
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Non-Fiction Religion
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.
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