The word “history” comes from the old Greek word istorein which means to look for knowledge, to learn, and its meaning is close to seeing, being a witness. This book refers to the history of the Holocaust represented in collective memory, the educational environment and attitudes of youth towards Jews in Poland, where the history of the Holocaust is still a taboo topic and a source of severe conflicts.

The Holocaust was the unprecedented mass murder of Jews in the heart of Europe and Western civilization, which erased vibrant, assimilated and religious communities and their culture. The mass killing, profoundly rejecting the values of the Enlightenment, was predominantly, but not exclusively, industrial. Altogether two-thirds of the Jews, treated by the Nazi Germans and their collaborators as racially inferior subhumans, were killed. The term “Holocaust” does not have one standard definition, but there is an agreement that it refers to a specific genocide in the 20th century involving the systematic murder of six million Jews and the destruction of their communities. There were other groups of people who were victims of Nazi Germany and the terror of their collaborators: the Roma and Sinti, approximately 2 million ethnic Poles, 200,000 disabled people, almost 3 million Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, political dissidents targeted for destruction on the basis of racial, ethnic, national, religious or political reasons. In most definitions these groups of victims are not incorporated within the scope of definition of the term “Holocaust.” The main institutions guarding the memory of the Holocaust: Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, the Imperial War Museum in London, the Holocaust Centre Beth Shalom, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) use slightly different definitions of the term.

We (humans) are haunted by the historical fact called the Holocaust because several generations have tried to comprehend what really happened during World War II. Despite numerous studies we are still desperately looking for the answer to so many questions because knowing historical facts is not equal to understanding many of their causes and consequences.