Wysiedleni [The Displaced]

The main character, Kazia Łobodziec, lives in Gródek Jagielloński near the city of Lviv. The very young Pole watches the changes in her immediate environment which result from the outbreak the Second World War. Particularly, she notices transformations in the relationships between various ethnic and religious groups which used to live side by side peacefully until that point (such as Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and Germans). When the war has ended, Kazia, her family and their neighbours are displaced onto the so-called Recovered Territories (which make up today’s Western Poland). They must build their life from the ground up in the Lower Silesian village of Żarek.

The Displaced is based on the life story of Kazimiera Mirosławska (née Łobodziec). Although it focuses largely on the situation of Polish people forced to resettle in the Recovered Territories, the characters also include the Jewish residents of Gródek. Their holidays, such as Hannukah, Purim or Shabbat, are mentioned, and so is the fact that the town’s merchants are almost exclusively Jewish. The book depicts the Holocaust in isolated scenes (the establishment of the ghetto, Polish people sheltering the persecuted Jews, further extermination), sometimes enigmatically (“Jewish neighbours were vanishing” [19]), sometimes literally (“All of them … disappeared in the camp in Bełżec or were shot … when the Germans destroyed the ghetto” [21]).

Bibliography:

• Kwiatkowska, A., Motyw szycia i haftu w najnowszej polskiej literaturze dla dzieci dotyczącej Zagłady, „Polonistyka. Innowacje”, no. 13, 2021, pp. 55–65 (pp. 56–57);
• Rybak, K., Stosunki polsko-żydowskie i Zagłada w polskiej literaturze dziecięcej XXI wieku, [in:] Stosunki polsko-żydowskie, vol. 2, Kultura. Literatura, sztuka i nauka w XX wieku, ed. Z. Trębacz, Warszawa 2020, pp. 171–187 (p. 174, fn. 7);
• Rybak, K., Zagłada i ideologia w polskiej literaturze dziecięcej XXI wieku, „Narracje o Zagładzie”, no. 1(7), 2021, pp. 155–173 (p. 159, fn. 20; 166, fn. 47);
• Rybak, K., „Zupełnie inne miasto”. Obrazy warszawskiego getta w polskiej literaturze dziecięcej XXI wieku, „Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura”, no. 3(1), 2021, pp. 67–84 (p. 69, fn. 6);
• Rybak, K., Obrazowanie Zagłady. Narracje holokaustowe w polskiej literaturze XXI wieku dla dzieci i młodzieży, Warszawa 2023 (s. 117);
• Wawer, K., Lekcje (polskiego) z wielokulturowości. Praca z serią Wojny dorosłych – historie dzieci w szkole podstawowej na wybranych przykładach, „Polonistyka. Innowacje”, no. 13, 2021, pp. 145–161 (pp. 146–147).