Perverse Memory and the Holocaust; A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Polish Bystanders, by Jan Borowicz
(For psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists and interested adults.) Perverse Memory and the Holocaust: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Polish Bystanders by Jan Borowicz is a book based on his doctoral dissertation and presents the thesis that the entire Polish nation is guilty of participating in the Holocaust in one way or another.
The author starts by briefly acknowledging historical works and documents that discuss cases of Poles who collaborated with German occupiers by identifying Jews and effectively condemning them to death or extorting money as a price for not betraying them.
Available historical documents demonstrate that these acts were universally condemned by Poles during the German occupation. They also show that the Polish underground issued and carried out death sentences for denouncing Jews to the Germans. They further show that the Polish underground’s Zegota organization was the only state institution in German-occupied Europe dedicated solely to rescuing Jews from extermination. After the war, those found guilty of collaborating with the Germans in any capacity, including betraying Jews to German authorities, were also brought to justice. These facts are well known, and the roles of a victim and a perpetrator are clearly defined and well-documented.
No serious historian denies the conditions of the Second World War in Poland. The country was divided between the German and Russian occupiers, their vicious laws targeted an entire population, social order collapsed as lawlessness prevailed, and the death penalty was enforced for anyone and immediate family who was found helping a Jew. This created the conditions in which criminal, morally compromised, and unprincipled individuals would take an opportunity to profit from the plight of Jews in Poland.
However, the main interest of the author lies elsewhere. Borowicz identifies a new group of participants in the “space of past Holocaust events: bystanders, who partook in the events and benefited from the extermination of the Jews.” It becomes clear that it is not merely those who benefited from the extermination of the Jews, and as such can be reasonably counted among opportunists who gained from a Jewish tragedy and are deemed guilty of participation in the Holocaust. Bystanders are all who witnessed violence directed at Jews by German tormenters and were thus tainted by this experience because, as the author implies, they carry in themselves a secret pleasure of witnessing such violence that they don’t fully understand. How does the author know that all of those who witnessed the German crimes derived a perverse pleasure from this experience? Largely by assumption. Generationally, Borowicz has no way to have a personal experience that would link him directly to what was taking place in Poland during the Second World War. Thus, he relies on information and convictions gained outside the narrative of this book. And it is these convictions of Polish complacency and perverse pleasure that seem to direct his evidence gathering.
He starts with an old photograph. It is the only one included in the book and it is indeed a harrowing one. The photograph, the caption informs us, was taken in Lublin in September 1939 and it depicts a German soldier cutting off the beard of an elderly Jewish man with other German soldiers watching and smiling. But this is not what draws the author’s primary attention. Farther in the background, indeed blurred and out of focus, are two figures, one of a poorly dressed Polish woman and the other a young girl. Their features are blurred enough so that it is impossible to say anything at all about these women other than they were there. The author writes: “Maybe she laughs because she is pleased with the violence – so close yet still at a distance. Or maybe it is just an overinterpretation and projection of a previously adopted thesis?” However, this moment of the author’s self-reflection does not last long. Throughout the book, he makes assumptions about the dark motives and darker emotions of those who were witness to German crimes perpetrated against Jews. The photograph itself rises to the level of a symbolic representation of bystanders: they are unaware of their cruelty, are uncivilized brutes, and surely too happy to laugh at the tragedy of others – even as virtually nothing can be gleaned from the actual photographic evidence regarding the two peasant women. For someone specializing in psychoanalysis, this photograph is a curious choice: the attempt to expose and illustrate dark undercurrents of bystanders while being blinded by his own prejudices is evident as Borowicz assigns a diverse set of evil intentions to two blurry figures and, by extension, to an entire class of individuals for whom they stand.
The framework in which this analysis of society-wide reactions to atrocities committed against Jews is a peculiar one: it is a psychoanalytic approach applied not to individuals but to classes of people: bystanders. In the eyes of Borowicz, they possess a uniform set of features and neatly conform to several well-known tropes of a psychoanalytic theory: voyeurism, fetishism, masochism, and sadism.
Borowicz further posits that the perverse memory of being a bystander shapes his/her identity, yet provides no evidence that such a process must have taken place; he instead relies on psychoanalytic dogma. With that framework in place, the author discusses the previously mentioned attitudes of bystanders, such as voyeurism, fetishism, masochism, and sadism, which are premised on psychoanalytic assumptions rather than verifiable facts or evidence. While Borowicz allows that bystanders may be experiencing feelings of horror at the sight of atrocities, he is singularly drawn to the premise that these other processes must have prevailed. It is noteworthy that he does not attempt to find historical documents in support of his theses but draws on works of art and literature to illustrate the validity of his points. The problem with this methodology is that a point of view, or a reflection on specific acts of cruelty, is elevated to become the evidence of a perverse memory of an entire group of people: bystanders.
While the author has a right to express his particular point of view, his book can hardly be treated as an examination based on historical events or even considered a serious analysis of the social complexities of a large group of people who were subjected to the horrors of German occupation.
