20 for 20. “Kocia muzyka” – a meeting with Prof. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, author of the book

Led by: Jacek Stawiski

This book is a time machine. By entering it, you are transferred to one single, post-war Saturday. The author leads us through the streets of Krakow, on which a pogrom takes place: one of the three largest pogroms which were organized by Poles against Jews right after the Shoah. We are in the middle of these events and we look at them the way they were perceived by victims, perpetrators, and investigators. Taking a close look at history in its making becomes – as it usually is with time machines – almost an adventure of initiation. It forces us to verify the known, safe categories which we had been using and to understand the past of others and our own present. In this engaging and authoritative yet innovative work, terms such as “robbers”, “family”, “subtenant”, “bond”, or “myths” – which seem to come from some other time and other world – allow us to look at the world once again in a completely different manner, and through that: to look differently at ourselves. “Kocia muzyka” is a book about the past which becomes the future.

“Historians ask, “Was it really a pogrom? If only one person died… (She was 56 and had a tattoo from Auschwitz. Rachele, as her husband, Jozef Berger used to call her).
Whether or not it was a pogrom is not clear. But there is a report. A huge, historic work. The kind in which after reading, the reader becomes, or at least should become, wiser and better.” – Hanna Krall

In Polish. Free admission.

This event is part of the project “20 for 20. A Series of Meetings with 20 Authors for the Galicia Jewish Museum 20th Anniversary”. The project was financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Fund for Promoting Culture.