Among autobiographical accounts by Kraków Holocaust survivors, Jadwiga Maurer’s (1932-2012) short stories on Kraków are unique in their portrayal of the occupation. Firstly, Maurer constructs a chronotope of Kraków that transforms the city - an inanimate object - into a compassionate being that suffers alongside the victims of the Holocaust, while other people’s behavior remains beyond comprehension for the protagonist of the stories. Secondly, Maurer employs temporal layering that sees the era of Marshal Piłsudski depicted as a time of Polish-Jewish cooperation within an overarching narrative questioning what or who represents “the ideal Poland.” Finally, Maurer develops a narrator who, because of her experience of having been “torn from common death at random” during the war, remains mentally tied to the Nazi German occupation of Kraków, both temporally and spatially, and living there despite emigrating to the US.
