Cover -- Table of Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Preface -- Chapter 1: Communism, Myth and Memory -- Collective Memory, Memory Groups and Myths of War under Communism -- Agents: Veterans, Victims and the Nation State -- Structures: Organizations in the Communist System -- Sources Consulted -- Chapter 2: The Communist Post-war: Organizing Life and Memory -- Challenges of Demobilization -- Communist Legislation and the ex-Combatants and Prisoners, 1945-48: A View From Above -- Memory Groups: A View from Below -- Commemoration: 'I can still smell that putrid stench' -- Assistive activities and group interests -- 'The Soil Has Been Tilled': Towards the Unification of Memory Groups -- Chapter 3: The Myth of Victory over Fascism (1949-55) -- Setting the Stage -- The Unification Congress -- Fighters for peace -- In the ranks of the national front -- Sites of Memory and the Myth of Victory -- Concentration camps -- Fields of battle -- The forest and the urban resistance -- Behind the Scenes: Organization as Illusion -- Unity and exclusion -- 'We have been unable to plough this fallow field' -- The withdrawal of patronage and awards -- Chapter 4: The Myth of Unity (1956-59) -- Memory Unbound -- Changes -- 'They gather almost every day and muck-rake in the past' -- Against the monopoly of memory -- ZBoWiD in the provinces: the case of Lublin region -- The Myth of Unity: Formation -- The 'family of combatants' and criteria for verification -- 'Let's do patriotism' -- Anti-German attitudes -- The Second ZBoWiD Congress -- Chapter 5: The Myth of Innocence (1960-69) -- Clientelism: 'We Have Been Able to Arrange It' -- The Partisans -- 'Only ZBoWiD can speak in the name of the Home Army tradition' -- Partisan culture -- Rival Martyrologies -- Wartime martyrdom -- Anti-Semitism.

The innocent Poles and the ungrateful Jews -- Afterword: The Long Shadow of the Communist Politics of Memory -- Polish War Memory in Comparative Context -- Communist Narratives: between Persistence and Change -- Bibliography -- Index.