Proza Henryka Grynberga (Literatura żydowskiej pamięci)

Abstract

The literary output of Henryk Grynberg, who is one of the most outstanding contemporary Polish writers of Jewish origin, centres on the theme of Holocaust, its origin and impact for future generations. The Holocaust was brought about by the centuries old anti- Semitism with its inherent murderous ingredient. In his texts the author appeals to his own experience - childhood spent with ‘Aryan documents’ and post-war youth devoted to the search for his Jewish roots. In Grynberg’s writings there are several topics, which determine the specificity of his prose: • The author’s biography who grew up in the strongly anti-Semitic environment in the Polish society before and after the war, an attempt to depict the neighbourhood of Poles and Jews full of prejudice and hostility of the ‘Aryan party’ towards the ‘Semitic one’; • Thoughts about the mission of literature and writer-survivor, who in order to complete his task should become the guardian of memory, with full awareness that he is the ‘writer of the dead’; thoughts about the new language of Holocaust literature, devoid of metaphor which evolves in the direction of documentation; • Anti-Semitism whose direct consequence was Holocaust, still alive and present in the mentality of post-war generations in spite of extermination conducted on the Jewish nation • Analyses of the civilisation and the impact of the pace and directions of its progress on the formation of fascist ideology and murderous nazi plans. Zygmunt Bauman, philosopher and sociologist, is the main opponent of Henryk Grynberg who puts forward against him some accusations of the attempts at universalisation, pla- titudinisation and ‘démocratisation’ of the Holocaust, the intention to transform it into a universally-human, symbolic and almost abstract tragedy. Grynberg defends the Jewish parameter of the Holocaust in a consistent way, not looking for its causes, like Bauman does, in the development of civilisation and the primacy of its two constituents, that is science and progress, which are devoid of moral principles and humanistic values, but in irrational, ancient anti-Semitic attitudes enhanced by ‘religious competition’ of two major theological systems, namely Judaism and Christianity.