Auschwitz i Holocaust. Przyczynek do genealogii pojęć

Abstrakt

The starting point of the article “Holocaust trauma” is the conviction that the last 60 years have brought about a change in the approach to the problem of the Holocaust. Undoubtedly, the nature of the event itself is had the greatest impact on the timbre of the discussion at various points of time. During the first 25 years after the Second World War, the prevalent reaction to the event was silence. This initial reaction is particularly interesting in the light of the abundance of discussions on the topic today, as evidenced by the studies and publications pertaining to the Holocaust. The problem of silence turns out to be part of a more general problem of the limits of language that a witness, artist, or scholar must encounter in the face of Auschwitz. This is shown on a variety of planes: literary, historical-political, and social. The insurmountable difficulty faced by the attempts at creating an adequate description of this event implies a reformulation of the traditional categories of research in sociological and historical sciences.