Bøker av Joanna Wawrzyniak

Eastern European museums represent traumatic events of World War II, such as the Siege of Leningrad, the Warsaw Uprisings, and the Bombardment of Dresden, in ways that depict the enemy in particular ways. This image results from the interweaving of historical representations, cultural stereotypes and beliefs, political discourses, and the dynamics of exhibition narratives. This book presents a useful methodology for examining museum images and provides a critical analysis of the role historical museums play in the contemporary world. As the catastrophes of World War II still exert an enormous influence on the national identities of Russians, Poles, and Germans, museum exhibits can thus play an important role in this process.

In the vast literature on how the Second World War has been remembered in Europe, research into what happened in Poland, a country most affected by the war, is surprisingly scarce. This book fills this gap by explaining how the post-war institutionalization of veterans' and victims' movements took place in the People's Republic of Poland.