The Remembered One: Memory Activism and the Construction of Edith Stein's Jewishness in Post-Communist Wrocław

Activists throughout Poland have been grappling with the problems of representing Poland's Jewish community since the collapse of communism in 1989. These "memory activists" choose particular objects of memory and particular pathways of memorialization. This article focuses on the remembrance of Edith Stein in the city of Wrocław. It argues that the memory activist approach of "cultural reconciliation" is, in the case of Stein, problematic in that it relies on a misreading of Stein's Jewishness. The article makes a case for an alternative "borderland" approach that acknowledges the persistent role of violence in the construction of identitites and cultures.