Forests,Families,and Films

Abstract

Taking theoretical cues from the respective works of Jan and Aleida Assmann and Dan Diner, this article has two fundamentally linked goals: to historicize Polish cultural memory of Katyń, emplotting it within a narrative arc encompassing the seven decades separating 1943 from 2015; and to identify individual and collective agency within the history of Polish memory of Katyń. Certainly, the word “Katyń” exists variously as toponym, as metonym, as rallying cry. Yet the historical narratives anchored in that word are the outcomes of actions taken by concrete actors—individuals, states, social movements, international institutions. Although this article takes seriously the many theoretical frameworks undergirding the academic study of collective memory, its principal focus is the balance of historical contingency and structure that has constituted discrete, identifiable episodes of both commemorating and forgetting.