Soothing Affirmation of Homeliness in Polish Bestsellers "from Auschwitz"

The article analyzes some of the most widely read Polish bestsellers "from Auschwitz" by Nina Majewska-Brown. Using the formula of melodrama and the mechanism of narrative fetishism, Majewska-Brown petrifies the notions that have been built into the Polish imagination for decades and now form the foundation of state historical policy. Majewska-Brown consistently foregrounds the Polish nation's suffering and heroism, brushing aside the Holocaust, only mentioning it to introduce the theme of Poles helping Jews. In Majewska-Brown's novels, Poland is - in the rustic version - a land of homeliness, inhabited by hard-working, modest, gentle, and religious people, while in the urban version - by people with a strong ideological consciousness, involved in the resistance, and in the name of national-Catholic values, following the mythologized Polish trail from Aleja Szucha through the Pawiak Prison to a concentration camp.