A Triumphant Gate of the Polish Narrative: The Symbolic Reconstruction of the Bridge over Chłodna Street in Warsaw vis-à-vis the Crisis of the Dominant Polish Holocaust Narrative ; Brama triumfalna polskiej opowieści. Symboliczna rekonstrukcja mostu nad Chłodną wobec kryzysu dominującej polskiej narracji o Zagładzie

This is the corrected version of the retracted article under the same title, which was published with the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.11649/slh.1517 The article is a study of the symbolic topography of Warsaw’s Chłodna Street. In 1940–1942, Chłodna Street was an “Aryan” border strip, dividing the small and large ghettos. For the past quarter-century, the symbolic dominance of this space has been made manifest by the subsequent commemorations of the ghetto’s wooden footbridge that existed here between January and August 1942. These commemorative artefacts evolved from a counter commemoration (1996), into a commemoration through the use of painting (2007) and photography (2008), into a symbolic reconstruction of the bridge (2011). The analysis of this dynamic, from representation of an object to its materialization, is complemented by a reconstruction of the patterns and stakes of narratives that make up the subsequent layers of the Chłodna Street narrative palimpsest. An important context for the analysis, apart from the history of the site, is the fact that today, the means of control over the space of the former ghetto are in the exclusive possession of the non-Jewish majority. A turning point in the commemoration process was Roman Polański’s film The Pianist (2002). The bridge over Chłodna was reconstructed “one to one” – in Warsaw but outside the space of the former Warsaw ghetto. The film was shot in the midst of a nationwide debate taking place in Poland about Jan Tomasz Gross’ book Neighbors (2000). The debate concerned the Poles’ participation in the Holocaust and the socio-cultural determinants of their attitudes and behavior. Within Polish dominant culture, the narrative shock was so immense that a return to the old Polish tale of heroism and martyrdom seemed impossible. Meanwhile, the mainstream journalistic discourse cast Gross and Polański on two sides of a narrative opposition. The former supposedly represented subjectivism and rash generalizations, while the latter was supposed to embody ...