Bloody Christmas Eve in Ochotnica Dolna. Remembrance Practices of the Pacification of Ochotnica Dolna, Poland, on 23 December 1944 from an Anthropological Perspective

Abstract

This paper concerns the contemporary practices held in the village of Ochotnica Dolna, Poland, to commemorate the pacification that took place on 23 December 1944. Both the accounts provided by the residents of the village and their practices of sharing the memory of the pacification with the next generation show the strong presence of contemporary imaginings of the Second World War. An interpretation of these imaginings from the perspective of memory studies and anthropology indicates the influence of images related to this dramatic event. The emotional load of some of these accounts and their threads lends itself to sharing and copying. The fluent boundaries between the witness accounts, historical and amateur analyses and the places of memory in Ochotnica Dolna create a complex and multithreaded set of imaginings of the past. At the same time, this difficult memory of the pacification is part of the village residents’ identity, as well as being part of the local concept of the “Little Motherland.”