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No. Nr (13), Oral History - Emotions 2019
No. (12), Public History 2018
No. (11), Cultural History of Knowledge 2017
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No. 1 (6), Semiotics of History No. 2 (7), History and Gender 2013
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ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2018, No. (11), Cultural History of Knowledge

Maria Ferenc Piotrowska
‘All those rumors occupy people's thoughts...’. On the relationship between rumors and knowledge about the Holocaust in the Warsaw ghetto

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Keywords: rumor, knowledge, Holocaust, Warsaw ghetto, cultural history

Abstract:
This article analyzes the relationship between rumors about the Holocaust and the process of the formation of knowledge about the Shoah among ordinary residents and public opinion in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. Rumor is defined here as a specific medium, encumbered with a high risk of distortion, but still sometimes carrying true information. I analyzed war-time personal documents and testimonies of survivors. I focused in particular on rumors regarding the extermination of Jews in other towns and letters that were supposedlyreaching the Warsaw ghetto from residents deported purportedly to the East, but who wereactually murdered in the Treblinka death camp. To interpret this phenomenon, I used theoretical approaches from the social sciences (awareness context theory and symbolic interactionism theory). I stressed the impact of the existential experience of Shoah victims on their ability to accept the news of mass murder. Special attention was paid to the process of pushing aside thoughts about the possibility of one’s own death.

About Author:
MARIA FERENC PIOTROWSKA – a PhD candidate at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Warsaw, she is also working in the Research Department of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. E-mail: m.ferenc@is.uw.edu.pl. ORCID number: 0000-0002-4937-9563.
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