The notion of “pogrom” and anti-Roma violence in Poland

Abstract

The article describes the results of the author’s research about the notion of “pogrom” as well as results of his inquiries on anti-Roma violence in Oświęcim in 1981. The author focuses on critique of dominating hypotheses and theories that deal with the events in Oświęcim and describes those events as pogrom in character. The main thesis of the article is theoretically based on the report by Anna Giza-Poleszczuk and Jan Poleszczuk on the Mława violence in 1991 and their theoretical framework which they derived from the works of Polish sociologist Stanisław Ossowski, and his theory of the stereotype in particular. The second crucial point of the author’s argument is a reference to the article by Piotr Forecki, who revived the category of pogrom to the studies of the anti-Semitic campaign in March 1968 in Poland, as well as the definition of a pogrom by Lech Nijakowski.