The Ethics of Witnessing: The Holocaust in Polish Writers’ Diaries from Warsaw, 1939-1945

The Ethics of Witnessing investigates the reactions of five important Polish diarists writers Jaros?aw Iwaszkiewicz, Maria D?browska, Aurelia Wyle?y?ska, Zofia Na?kowska, and Stanis?aw Rembek during the period when the Nazis persecuted and murdered Warsaw’s Jewish population. The responses to the Holocaust of these prominent pre-war authors extended from insistence on empathic interaction with victims to resentful detachment from Jewish suffering.

Whereas some defied the dehumanisation of the Jews and endeavoured to maintain inter-subjective relationships with the victims they attempted to rescue, others self deceptively evaded the Jewish plight. The Ethics of Witnessing examines the extent to which ideologies of humanism and nationalism informed the diarists’ perceptions, proposing that the reality of the Final Solution exposed the limits of both orientations and ultimately destroyed the ethical landscape shaped by the Enlightenment tradition, which promised the equality and fellowship of all human beings.