How Towns Remember: Jews in Dzierżoniów, Germans in Racibórz after 1945

This highly engaging work explores the dynamics of social memory in two small Silesian towns – Dzierżoniów and Racibórz – which became part of the Polish state after the Second World War. The authors examine how different trajectories of postwar migration shaped local collective memory about the towns’ former inhabitants: Jews and Germans. (…)

The comprehensive perspective, integrating both sociological and historical approaches, makes it possible to explain why the traces of Dzierżoniów’s once-vibrant Jewish community have largely faded from contemporary public consciousness, whereas in Racibórz – despite many contradictions—the physical and symbolic presence of German heritage is actively maintained and remains relatively vivid.

Tomasz Rawski, University of Warsaw

The book is an interesting – and successful – attempt to analyse the construction and modification of local memory. The two cities – Racibórz and Dzierżoniów – serve as suggestive examples of how individual memories are engaged in the process of collective remembering and forgetting.

Krzysztof Wasilewski, Koszalin University of Technology