Gustaw Herling-Grudziński and the Blood Libel Legend

Abstract

The Jewish origin of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, one of the greatest modern Polish writers, has remained a taboo in Poland for years. The Jewish thread was never significantly thematised in his work. The strength of dismissal of this matter from his consciousness as a writer—together with the panic caused within the Polish literary milieu by the confirmation of rumours about his “foreign origin”—speaks for itself and indirectly illustrates the attitude to otherness that still prevails in mainstream Polish literature. In this article, I would like to explore the author’s literary/biographical strategy, which is outlined in two stories set in the Late Middle Ages. Both of them are based on the so-called blood libel in its early variant, which consisted of accusing Jews of desecrating the host.