Rouvrir les charniers dans la Pologne d’après-guerre : Influences subversives sur les cultures de la mémoire dans le camp de la mort de Sobibór et dans la forêt de Krępiecki

Résumé 0

This article analyzes the material history of “body disposal pits” containing the remains of WWII victims. The authors focus on two specific locations of mass killings that occurred during the Holocaust, namely the site of the former death camp in Sobibór and Krępiecki Forest, an area near the ghetto and camp in rural Lublin where people were killed and buried. Both sites are located in forested areas near small villages in eastern Poland. Though these sites were treated similarly in the immediate post-war period, their histories diverged significantly in later years. Through this comparative study, the authors present these sites and “disposal pits” as agents that have influenced memory cultures through action. Victims are represented not only through their corporeal remains but also through the place that contains or once contained them. This refers to their performative potential, not only as physical evidence, but also as agents of memory. Former scenes of genocide, which were often covered and abandoned by perpetrators, were repeatedly excavated for various purposes. How these remains are mediated and “re-used,” however, has been affected by social, cultural, and political aspects since the end of the war. In considering the sites and the memory agents as a kind of mnemonic network, the authors outline the common connections between the actions surrounding body disposal pits, site structure, and the human memories of each place. They also emphasize the moments in which the lines separating the status of our individual research subjects became blurred, bearing the definition of non-site of memory rather than of a memoryscape.