Overview

Journey to Poland addresses crucial issues of memory and history in relation to the Holocaust as it unfolded in the territories of the Second Polish Republic. Aiming to understand the ways past events inform present-day landscapes, and the way in which we engage with memory, witnessing and representation, the book creates a coherent cinematic map of this landscape through the study of previously neglected film and TV documentaries that focus on survivors and bystanders, as well as on members of the post-war generation. Applying a spatial and geographical approach to a debate previously organised around other frameworks of analysis, Journey to Poland uncovers vital new perspectives on the Holocaust.

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9781474403573

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Reviews

Maurizio Cinquegrani’s book is a highly illuminating and entirely engrossing account of little-known documentary films about the aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland. He provides excellent close readings of his chosen films, and explores them in relation to what he aptly calls the ‘cinematic topography’ of genocidal events. Cinquegrani analyses the market-places, attics and courtyards which appear as emblems of pre-war life, and as the sites of wartime atrocities, for survivors returning to the villages and cities of their birth, as well as the filmed terrain of the extermination camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. By this means, Cinquegrani’s outstanding book reveals the persistence of the past in the present through his arguing for the profoundly geographical nature of Holocaust memory. -- Professor Sue Vice, University of Sheffield

Maurizio Cinquegrani's book is a highly illuminating and entirely engrossing account of little-known documentary films about the aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland. He provides excellent close readings of his chosen films, and explores them in relation to what he aptly calls the 'cinematic topography' of genocidal events. Cinquegrani analyses the market-places, attics and courtyards which appear as emblems of pre-war life, and as the sites of wartime atrocities, for survivors returning to the villages and cities of their birth, as well as the filmed terrain of the extermination camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. By this means, Cinquegrani's outstanding book reveals the persistence of the past in the present through his arguing for the profoundly geographical nature of Holocaust memory.--Professor Sue Vice, University of Sheffield

Author Information

Maurizio Cinquegrani is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Kent and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has written widely about film, memory, history and place and his work includes the monographs Of Empire and the City: Remapping Early British Cinema (2014) and Journey to Poland: Documentary Landscapes of the Holocaust (2018).

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