apotheosis of a Silesian miner

Director Kazimierz Kutz’s third instalment of the legendary Silesian Trilogy, The Beads of One Rosary, chronicles the destruction not only of the historic architecture of Giszowiec (Katowice), but also the tragic downfall of the film’s protagonist, a retired coal miner and socialist labour hero, Karol Habryka. The following article examines his status as a non-mythical but not pure scapegoat figure and thus as a victim of the successful collective persecution carried out by the Communist regime in Poland. When studied in tandem with the Girardian theory of victimization, in particular, as applied to the biblical story of Job, Habryka’s death restores peace to a community fraught with discord, leading in turn to his deification by the persecutors, a mechanistic process favoured by totalitarian systems in times of crisis.