Vernacular memory and implicated communities

Abstract

Abandoned sites of trauma in Poland appear to be forgotten, but their removal from social and cultural circles is only superficial. Frequently, these sites are inscribed into the local culture of memory and members of the local Polish communities can usually locate them and share stories about them. However, as they are not commemorated, there is an ambivalent aura around them. In 2017 two foundations (Zapomniane Foundation, The Matzevah Foundation) carried out an intervention into the landscape of Poland by marking thirty burial sites of Jewish victims of the Holocaust with simple wooden markers. The effects of that intervention shed light on the vernacular local memory of the Holocaust and the folk-traditional roots of the practices and behaviors related to these sites.