Postcatastrophic Re-Reading of Tadeusz Hołuj’s Puste pole

This article deals with the re-interpretation of Tadeusz Hołuj’s drama Puste pole (1963; The Empty Field) and its theatrical staging by Józef Szajna in 1965. Based on the drama I want to demonstrate how the artists – who were both survivors of the concentration camp in Auschwitz – managed re-presenting the Holocaust despite the political situation and the accompanying anti-Semitic government campaign in Poland in the 1960s. The reception of the drama of then and nowadays shows how that re-presentation was once interpreted due to the political circumstances, which made the issue of the Holocaust and the Jews bannend from public life, language, and memory. Finally I explore how Hołuj’s drama can be read today when we approach it via postcatastophic re-reading determined by after-knowledge, retrospection, and retroactivity.