Kłopotliwa (nie)pamięć o Zagładzie: wymazywanie żydowskości w recepcji i ekranizacji Weisera Dawidka Pawła Huellego

In my text I analyse Weiser Dawidek – a novel written in the mid-1980s by Paweł Huelle (who was a novice author at the time) and its film version Weiser, adapted and directed by Wojciech Marczewski in 2001. I focus on reception of both of the works. The story, which was recognized as one of the most important literary phenomenon in the late 1980s, begins with a “primal scene” of an anti-Semitic harassment and assault performed by Catholic male adolescents on their schoolmate Dawidek. Nevertheless, the Jewish aspect of the novel and its apparent reference to the Holocaust was not perceived by most of the reviewers and literary critics. I draw upon various theoretical contexts (e.g. Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, memory and trauma studies) as I attempt to discuss the complex problem of the legacy of the Holocaust in Poland.