Contemporary Auschwitz/Oswiecim

This book presents an innovative theoretical and empirical approach to the present attributions of meaning to the past. Based on the author's fieldwork in the contemporary Polish town of Oswiecim - Auschwitz, in German - it observes the manner in which residents remember and narrate the past of their town, drawing on interactional perspectives from the work of figures such as George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman to shed light on the shaping of memories in everyday interactions, both face-to-face and online. With attention to narratives concerning pre-war Catholic-Jewish coexistence, wartime Nazi Occupation, the Holocaust and post-war Communist Poland, the author explores the complementary, fluid and contradictory nature of meaning-making processes in various contemporary interactional contexts. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in memory studies, the Holocaust and interactional sociology.