Mass grave exhumations as patriotic retreat

Sacralisation and militarisation in the remembrance of the ‘cursed soldiers

Bibliographic Data

ID4531389
AuthorsMarije Hristova (0000-0002-7509-4844, Radboud University Nijmegen), Monika Żychlińska (0000-0003-3585-1422, Radboud University Nijmegen)
Year2020
Volume6
Issue2
Pages42-60
Publication date2020-11-24
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHuman Remains and Violence An Interdisciplinary Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2054-2240 • E-ISSN: 2054-2240
PublisherManchester University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.7227/hrv.6.2.4
OpenAlexW3108643588
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited6

Between 2012 and 2017, at the Ł-section of Warsaw's Powązki Military Cemetery, or 'Łączka', the Polish Institute of National Remembrance exhumed a mass grave containing the remains of post-war anti-communist resistance fighters. Being referred to as the 'cursed soldiers', these fighters have become key figures in post-2015 Polish memory politics. In this article we focus on the role of the volunteers at these exhumations in the production of the 'cursed soldiers' memory. Following the idea of community archaeology as a civil society-building practice, the observed processes of sacralisation and militarisation show how the exhumations create a community of memory that promotes the core values of the currently governing national-conservative PiS party. We found that tropes related to forensic research and typically identified with cosmopolitan memory paradigms are used within a generally nationalist and antagonistic memory framework

Archaeology · Communism · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies

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