1Life as a series of sensations and scandals – this is how the symbolic exchange is played out on the literary scene, especially online. The participants are all the actors in the drama – writers, publishers, editors, translators, critics, reviewers, researchers, jurors, promotors, observers, self-promoting “book lovers,” and finally “non-professional” readers, sometimes known as “normies.” It would scarcely be an exaggeration to claim that social media sites are the appropriate space for this exchange, and the media, publishing houses, universities, foundations and judging panels in this respect are merely collateral suppliers of “content.” And practically everything that counts for discussion on the literary scene is played out today in the Facebook culture – in streams or their recordings, through posts and comments. Even if a discussion exists previously in the non-virtual sphere, soon it will move to social media. It seems not to occur to any of the participants in this dynamic exchange that it might be possible to separate this intertwining of the aesthetic, economic, political, identity-based and emotional.

3So why, one might therefore ask, play with authenticity like this? And why Auschwitz? Since the bestsellers’ authors attach so little importance to the camp’s factuality and materiality, what is their reason for referring to a real space, thereby opening themselves to accusations of inaccuracy? And what is the point of the tortuous playing with other people’s emotions and expectations, operating on the soft tissue of community remembrance and opening the wounds of those who lived through the camps or found themselves in close proximity to the experience?

4A seeming side effect is undoubtedly one of the strategy’s objectives: the publication of such books as Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz tends to result in heated discussions, mass criticism, polarized opinions, and calls for boycotts, censorship, legal action and so on. Controversy, suitably whipped up and harnessed for marketing goals, becomes part of the promotion campaign, and of course results in healthy sales. The choice is not accidental – ever since the 1940s, Auschwitz has functioned in the public consciousness as the epicenter of the violence of the Second World War, and for many years it has been the place, more than any other, that has captured the attention of scholars, historians, politicians, survivors and their families, authors of memoirs, people of culture, film makers, journalists, bodies funding conservation work and subsidizing support for survivors, popularizers, tourists, vandals, but also conspiracy theorists and thieves stealing post-camp property. A snowball effect took place: the camp acquired new meanings, references, citations and uses. Auschwitz became a brand in its own right and its celebrity began to endure: first as a starting point for philosophical, ethical and legal discussions, a place of worship and memory and a material foundation for archaeological research and commemorative practices, and finally as a tourist heritage museum, a literary and visual protagonist, a film star or an important cultural reference point. For many, by force of habit, Auschwitz – the symbol and cliché – began to operate as the foundation of the lucrative Holocaust factory.

5That this remains a seductive potential is no surprise. Contemporary authors of popular stories employ symbolic and visual connotations to offer products imitating Auschwitz, which are easily recognized and classified by the relevant consumer groups. The immediacy and ease of association – for example of the motif of striped uniforms, watchtowers and barracks, ramps, gates, and the sign – guarantees a quick profit. Auschwitz pays – not only for the sharks of the publishing world.

8They are also accused – rightly – of deluding readers with facile consolation and underplaying fundamental experiences; furthermore, they are formally simplistic, predictable, using trite models of emotional behaviors, distorting historical reality, impersonating actual, historical figures and borrowing their fate and memories, with distribution and promotion methods so intrusive that they only cement their status as trash literature.

10The way the latest Auschwitz bestseller – or the Auschwitz gang, as we might call them – is presented is based on an analogous mechanism of training consumers to be loyal to the convention and to participate in a community of people up to speed with the latest developments “at Auschwitz.” The pretext for publication of these books is supposedly historical education, raising awareness of the consequences of ideology, keeping the memory of the victims alive, shaping readers’ imagination and empathy, and ensuring narrative continuity. In practice, however, it is about making the books’ consumers open to a given format and instantly able to recognize cultural clichés. The will to take on board further impressions “from the series” results in demand, wide circulation, and repeated profits – loyal readers are hungry for the next installments of stories from the camp.

11Some readers develop a condition resembling addiction: they expect the book to replicate the template of a camp story, yet satisfaction does not come solely from a return to what they know; what they need is a return with a shift, including in the reading experiences elements of difference, change, novelty, and surprise. Fans of Biedronka’s Goodness Gang set themselves the objective of collecting all its characters: Rafael the Radish, Piers the Pea, Billy the Blueberry, and so on. But even securing the whole collection did not guarantee satisfaction: apart from the stuffed toys, one could also amass special stickers depicting the fresh heroes and watch short films and cartoons, and in the next installments of the campaign acquire the “new members of the gang” – Christmas specials, juniors, and then other spin-offs.

12Readers of the novels on the “striped” production line also collect the latest books – adventures, intrigues, motifs, and protagonists – and above all collect reading experiences, which they then review on websites with red or yellow stars. For it is not actually about the formal, aesthetic or ethical aspects of this literature, but about its effect on readers, experiences replicating everyday life that can be shared with others. And so communities are formed of those who found The Tattooist of Auschwitz “unputdownable,” for whom The Sadist of Auschwitz “plucked at the heartstrings,” and who were “soothed” by Auschwitz Lullaby. Those who have completed the “full set” of bestselling titles become pickier and more demanding, expecting further titles to move different registers of emotions, demonstrate thematic innovation, and introduce them to an “unknown” Auschwitz, an “unseen” one “forgotten by history.”

16The second level of reception is the pleasure that results from controlled uncertainty: the reader engages in the reality of the novel, but is unsure which elements are authentic, and which fictional. This brings a desire to “check” the authors, tracking and comparing the plotlines and historical facts. Detective readers, searching for distortions, changes, and errors, gain a sense of controlling not only their own emotional experience (of engaged reading), but also the depicted world, which they associate with a sense of “controlling” Auschwitz as a set of data.

17This mechanism, incidentally, is not confined to Auschwitz novels – an analogous pact linking publishers, authors and readers also applies to other historical events and novels “inspired” by the Warsaw Uprising or everyday life in occupied Poland. One might consider to what extent the demand for these books results from a need to work through past wrongdoings to the Polish community or a return to stories past down in families. Equally popular, however, are novels set in the Jagiellonian era, at the time of Viking conquests, or in Ancient Rome. It appears that historical backdrops are just one of the elements needed to create a bestseller effect. Another important factor is the possibility of recognizing in stories from tough times more universal, recurring patterns in the functioning of a community. The combination of these components, together with an implied authenticity of the message – “this really happened” – results in maximum engagement from readers.

19The pressure of popularization, along with its simplifications, distortions, errors, abuses, and commercialization of the past, is something from which guardians of memory attempt to protect Auschwitz. The criticism and pressure that apply in other service sectors and force producers to react have no major impact on publishing decisions and readers’ preferences. With “Auschwitz of Auschwitz” books, critical discussions go on among people connected with literature – the titles change, but the arguments, though substantively justified, are repetitive. Indeed, they demonstrate not only the professional distance of critics and researchers. The guardians of commemorative and factual decorum seem not to believe it possible to use arguments to influence writers or readers. They assume that these novels are socially harmful and should not exist at all. The public sphere is replete with calls to defend Auschwitz from bad art or imitations of art, from publishers’ cynical motives as well as authors’ self-aggrandizing and economic incentives. They are usually accused of breaking several fundamental rules, above all disturbing the truth and verifiability of facts and banal presentation of the Holocaust as a peculiar event, but one that can be represented, narrated, and depicted in a few dozen sentences. Yet the criticisms of authors, pressure on publishers and vigorous discussions do not necessarily result in tangible changes to market and reading trends. They probably have a larger influence on the profiling of literary criticism and research practices, as publishers follow profit margins, authors remain unmoved by rebukes, and readers stick to the tried and tested track. Any measurable impact is more likely to be consolidating the divisions between professional readers and the rest of the reading public, between more ambitious publishers and those specializing in “Auschwitz of Auschwitz” novels, and between self-respecting, creative cover designers and those with designs featuring watchtowers or striped uniforms to their name.

20It makes little sense now to ask whether the trends can be reversed and popular writers can be taught to respect The Event, or whether the avalanche of bestsellers thematizing traumatic experiences can simply be stopped. The answer is certainly no, as demonstrated by the latest “fashions” for novels about the Balkan conflict or war in Ukraine. The question arises, however, about the reasons for the continuing demand for wartime and camp motifs and stories, the causes of the growing divisions between various types of readers, as well as the impact of these divisions on social issues, including the nature of commemorative practices. Contrary to appearances, both guardians of memory and fans of the Auschwitz gang and dark tourism work as a system of communicating vessels, like it or not jointly creating a common emotional community and remaining dependent on one another.

21One must ask who represents these groups. It seems easy to classify them and divide them into those who have a problem with the Holocaust, because it is difficult, painful and important for them, those who seem to have no such problems, and those capable of benefiting from the problems of others. Discussions on the legacy of the Holocaust – concerning identity, intervention and diagnosis – are therefore based on the belief in the existence of an “us” who care about protecting Auschwitz’s heritage, and “them,” who have not mastered the rules of rhetoric, aesthetics and ethnics, are harmful to the Holocaust and its victims, and ruin the effects of “our” decades-long efforts.

22Undoubtedly, this is the last moment for meetings in the public sphere of such diverse voices and perspectives of people with diverse experiences. They are the victims – people who survived the Holocaust – and their families, the subsequent generations along with their post-memory relationship; perpetrators – their children and grandchildren; witnesses, bystanders and their descendants – including very delayed ones; beneficiaries of companies participating in the results of the Holocaust, often based on wartime capital even today; those who wrote that history, those who rewrite it and those who question it; managers of historical policy; groups researching the Holocaust, its direct and far-reaching consequences, teach about it, popularize it, guard its material remnants, conserve them and share them with others; finally, those who constructively and reconstructively intermediate Holocaust stories, who process the Holocaust artistically, present it or distance themselves from it, who use it objectively, or to promote themselves, or live off it, build capital on it, and appropriate it.

23The thing is, however, that the division into “them” and “us,” into completely separate, isolated interest groups – those who have a problem with the Holocaust: defenders of Auschwitz and guardians of memory in one, and those who make money from it, by cynically seizing on others’ symbols, property, identity and memory – is fundamentally false. It is evident, after all, that all the actors figure together in the social circulation, competing for influence, status, memory, interpretations and profits, clashing in competencies, emotionally and politically, but often also – even despite themselves and unintentionally – acting for each other’s benefit, generating a dynamic that helps them mutually.

24The field of references of Holocaust culture is characterized by intertwining trends that cannot be considered separately. Probably the most dominant functions at present are symbolic-memory, research, therapeutic, identity (and self-creation), mercantile, parasitical and that based on the principle of commensalism. However, even a cursory distinction of the types of action strategies of people (and groups) engaged in the heritage of the Holocaust makes it clear that each party is implementing more than one strategy, and this is inevitable. For example, theoretically the least embroiled group seems to be those researching the legacy of the war. Yet even they are not immune to political and institutional concerns. Meanwhile, “grassroots” fans of stories “of Auschwitz” who see researchers as a hermetic milieu writing and speaking in an alien code, do not necessarily view Holocaust research as somebody else’s mission; they perceive it as a profession – one of many offering the chance to obtain a position, receive a salary, apply for additional funding, grants, scholarships and fellowships, and seek to win distinctions and awards. They treat research as work that is not only an ethical commitment, but also an ambitious initiative, a field of development and advancement, a factor affecting symbolic status, influencing identity, defining the research community and marking their position in life.

26And it is in this sphere that the field of exchange between experts and publishers, popular writers or readers should be opened or reinforced. Exchange, meaning dialogue crossing the line of division and going beyond hermetic rhetoric, superior attitudes, the instinct to mark of one’s “own” field and patronizing gestures, in fact on both sides of the barricade. Just as Holocaust researchers, historians and institutional memory practitioners can be snobbish, so too can bestselling authors and their readers.

27Moreover, all the sides are dependent on each other – some of the people visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum are viewers of Schindler’s List or readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and the like, inspired by such cultural texts to come and see “how it really was.” Seemingly conflicting interests and antagonistic or mutually exclusive outlooks often have a common denominator and are complementary, or at least increase each other’s chances of success. Cutting off the branch of popular culture thematizing the war would affect the canon, destroy the flow of data, but also disrupt the circulation of social affects. In short, memories and narratives about the past would be petrified. Popular culture is not a threat; on the contrary, it guarantees the continuity of affective and memory exchange. Besides which, contrary to the intentions of guardians of memory, it is not possible to silence or censor the popular reactions to genocide. The Holocaust is not just a set of dates, numbers, and locations that can be contained once and for all, but a living tissue of cultural feeling and thinking. It is therefore also a perverse capital, a space of aberration and profanation. And the post-Holocaust and (post)post-memory stage – like all the others – has its own rules.

29Against the background of these practices and their difficult perception, Auschwitz bestsellers are neither an extreme nor an exceptional phenomenon. On the map and intensity scale of Holocaust “profanations,” they play rather a mediocre role, despite having an undoubted wide reach and frequently being quoted. The Auschwitz gang books and experimental works differ in their degree of formal complication and are addressed to varying target groups, but what they have in common is their emergence “as a reaction” – not in a vacuum, but for someone and against something. They oppose Auschwitz conceived as a canon of knowledge and aesthetics, strictly defined ethical obligations that are untenable for future generations. They do not always represent a search for alternative means of expression, but usually find ways of freshening up the existing order of testimony, narrative, and representation. These might involve controversy, dissension, stoking of emotions and provoking – some people at least – to confront facts and material remnants. And undoubtedly, the higher the tower of The Event is raised, the greater will be the venting of emotions sought by those who are burdened by rules and conventions set by others, feeling and remembering according to the canon. Who has the right to Auschwitz today remains an open question – and the longer it remains open, the better for Auschwitz. As one reader of Escape from Auschwitz put it, “history smacks of private stories, but still, we’re damn well in this crap together.”