“Gentlemen! Why Are You About to Kill Us Off?” The Volhynia Memories of the Family Krzyżanowski as Reported by Jerzy Ficowski
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31261/NoZ.2020.06.09Keywords:
The Roma, Shoah, Volhynia, testimony, oral historyAbstract
The article presents wartime memories of the families Krzyżanowski (after the war: Dębicki), Wajs, and Siwiak that were written down by Jerzy Ficowski in the late 1940s and early
1950s, and subsequently reprinted in consecutive versions of his monographs on Polish Romani people (Cyganie polscy. Szkice historyczno-obyczajowe and Cyganie na polskich drogach) and in his memoirs entitled Demony cudzego strachu. Wspominki cygańskie [The Demons of Other People’s Fears. The Gypsy Reminiscences]. The discussed narratives relate to experiences from Volhynia of the years 1942–1945. The article’s aim is to indicate the type and scope of alternations that Ficowski made while editing the memoirs in consecutive publications. A handwritten copy kept in archive is treated by the author of the article as the base version. The differences between the successive versions were divided into four groups: stylizations, fictionalizations, erasures and additions, ethnographical issues. What results from the conclusions of the presented analysis is the memoirs published by Ficowski no longer enjoying its status as a historical source relating to/pertaining to the wartime events in Volhynia. To the contrary, they are a testimony to the selfcensorship mechanisms implemented by Ficowski, who kept in mind the specificity of majoritydominated society members being the primary readership of his books on the Romani people.
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