The Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre held this talk with Agnieszka Dobkiewicz, author of the “Post-Jewish: Uncomfortable Memory”.
About the author
Agnieszka Dobkiewicz is an author, essayist, and journalist.
She has written two powerful books about the Gross-Rosen concentration camp: "Little Nuremberg: The Stories of Gross-Rosen Executioners" and "The Girls of Gross-Rosen: Forgotten Stories of Camp Hell." Both have become bestsellers, with the first translated and published in the Czech Republic, and work is underway to publish the second there as well. "Little Nuremberg" is a collection of reports on the camp's executioners, written through the lens of the tragedies they inflicted on their victims-depicting senseless brutality and the pervasive hatred of man for man.
About the book
Post-Jewish: Uncomfortable Memory
Twelve Jewish months and twelve stories that compel reflection on how deeply Jewish roots extend into Polish identity. Dobkiewicz takes us on a journey through 80 years of complex Polish-Jewish relations in postwar Poland. From the fairy-tale illustrations of Jan Marcin Szancer and an unknown side of Lem, to Kalisz's shirley dolls, kosher gingerbread from Toruń, the unknown history of the Vilnius ghetto nightingale, and the tragedy of little Henio's letters-these are stories that often tear the soul apart.
Dobkiewicz visits various regions of Poland, uncovering what is forgotten, unknown, unwanted, and uncomfortable. She argues that Polish identity is continuously woven, with Jewishness as one of its threads.