Egodocument as an Element of Community Collective Memory: Wspomnienia zza Buga by Zofia Pawłowska

Abstract

 This article, where memory studies are conducted from a sociolinguistic perspective, presents ego-document as an element of collective social memory. Wspomnienia zza Buga (‘Memories from beyond the Bug’) by Zofia Pawłowska, published exclusively on the internet, is a specific kind of ego-document  forming the basis of this analysis. It has become not only a work that functions in the memory of the inhabitants of Gierałtowiec in Lower Silesia, who come from Ukrainian village named Greczany, but also an exponent of so-called prosthetic memory. Unknown and often omitted in family accounts, knowledge about experiences during the Stalinist terror, the Holodomor and the Second World War is sometimes acquired and internalised through cultural transmission – in this case, the memoirs of the author, born into a Polish family in 1921.