Memory of Lost Local Homelands

What is it about?

In the literature we can find theories of social memory focused on ongoing social transmission (e.g. works of Aleida and Jan Assmann) and theories concerning memory marked with trauma, periods of latency and broken intergenerational transmission (e.g. concept of “postmemory” of Marianne Hirsch). The case of resettlement from Kresy and memory of lost local homelands show that these two kinds of memory can operate simultaneously but in the different social contexts. On the territories where people from Kresy have formed strong, coherent community the social transmission of memory have not be broken. But in other regions of Poland it was blocked by the attitude of local people to the refugees from the East. There were also individual differences. Some people thought that telling the story of tragic events from Kresy is their moral obligation. Some have not tell even their own children about them. Postmemory together with identities it shapes is interwoven with continuous intergenerational memory and different kinds of identities produced by it. With the change of social and political situation in Poland different layers of memory were activated, and groups and individuals with different identities have interacted. This interaction, in turn, has caused the transformation of the image of the lost local homelands in Kresy into “the mythical land” and the reservoir of values for next generations

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