“At Bereza, You Are Silent Like in the Grave”

This article examines the marginalization of the Polish concentration camp Bereza Kartuska (1934–1939) within Polish political and academic discourse. By incorporating previously unstudied oral testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive, along with two unpublished memoirs, the article offers a more accurate portrayal of the camp to argue that Bereza Kartuska should rightfully be classified as a “concentration camp,” a designation that has been contested in prior scholarship. This argument rests not only on records of the prisoners’ treatment, but on an examination of the glorification of Marshal Józef Piłsudski (under whose leadership the camp was founded) in both academic and political narratives, proposing that this cult of personality may have contributed to the continued mislabeling of Bereza Kartuska

Argument (complex analysis) · Cult · Personality · Politics · The Holocaust · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies · Soviet and Russian History