Cultures of History Forum (Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena)
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Images of refugees being trapped at the eastern Polish border have evoked memories of another time: in 1939, Polish Jews fleeing from Nazi occupied Poland eastwards were denied entry to the Soviet Union and were stuck right at the same place as people today, along the river Bug. Reflecting on the historical analogies that have been drawn in this context in Polish public debate, the article discusses their validity and usefulness in understanding similarities and difference of both past and present refugee crises.
The recent verdict against two Holocaust researchers in a Polish civil law court raised much concern about the increasing juridification of history in Poland. The Cultures of History Forum asked the legal scholar and civil rights lawyer Dr. Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias about the legal and political background of this lawsuit, as well as about antisemitism and the role of the judiciary in the Polish government's 'historical policy'.
The recent past is frequently the subject of heightened public debates in Poland. Historians receive considerable media attention, their publications and statements draw comments from journalists and politicians. These disputes invariably revolve round three fundamental issues: Polish–Jewish relations, opinions about the Warsaw Uprising, and settling scores with communism. The article provides a critical review of the themes and arguments in each of these disputed areas.
Teaching about the Holocaust in Poland has become more difficult. Based on interactions with Polish teachers and on a review of the field of Holocaust education in Poland as it evolved over the past decades, the article discusses and comments on the current situation where teachers are faced with curriculum changes, public campaigns against a "pedagogy of shame" and multiple pressures to teach a more ‘patriotic’ history at school.
One year after the Polish parliament adopted an amendment that would criminalize certain statements about Polish involvement in the Holocaust, this article revisits both the original amendment and the political developments since. It argues that allthough the law was eventually changed to calm down concerns about freedom of speech, sanctions still exist and their longer-term effects on Polish society and public discourse are daunting.
The latest temporary exhibition by the Museum Polin in Warsaw entitled 'Estranged. March ’68 and its Aftermath' has been controversially discussed in the Polish public. The article gives a brief review of the exhibition to then analyse the subsequent debates as they provide an insight into contemporary Polish culture of remembrance and into the particularly sensitive issue of Poland's postwar Jewish-Polish relations.
What happens when the Church engages in public negotiations of history by hosting and funding a museum? “The Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko Museum in Warsaw” poses this question as it is located in a church and presents the life of Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest who fought against the communist regime and was murdered in 1984. Today he is perceived both as a national hero and a Catholic martyr. The article critically reviews the current exhibition and how it combines questions of history and religion.
When Local Memory Confronts State Historical Policy: Staging Edward Gierek’s Life in Sosnowiec
(2018)
Since 2015 when the Law and Justice (PiS) party returned to power, ‘history policy’ has become an important part of the political agenda in Poland. Its main targets are museums and public education more broadly. The article reviews a recent temporary exhibition about former Polish Communist Party leader Edward Gierek in the small town of Sosnowiec and places it in the wider discourses on de-communization and on regional-vs-centralized historical narratives of the recent past.
The recent past is frequently the subject of heightened public debates in Poland. Historians receive considerable media attention, their publications and statements draw comments from journalists and politicians. These disputes invariably revolve round three fundamental issues: Polish–Jewish relations, opinions about the Warsaw Uprising, and settling scores with communism. The article provides a critical review of the themes and arguments in each of these disputed areas.
The 'Lex CEU' and the heavy anti-EU and anti-Soros campaigns that accompanied this legislative move against the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest in the spring of 2017 caused a major stir among both academics and European politicians. But what were its reverberations in the region? This special issue (FOCUS) of the state of academic freedom, civil society and liberal values in the countries that came out of communist dictatorships more than 25 years ago and to place the Hungarian ‘Lex CEU’ in a broader regional, historical and conceptual context. The present article reflects on the state of academic freedom in Poland.
An Engaged Narrative: the Permanent Exhibition of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk
(2017)
In recent years, no other museum exhibition in Poland has been disputed to a similar extent as the one in the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. The dispute seemingly concerned the main storyline of the exhibition but, in fact, it had little to do with history and more with current Polish politics. The article takes a sober look at the exhibition and analyses the extent to which it goes beyond merely presenting a selection of historical issues and allows visitors to experience history in different ways.
The partial opening of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk in January 2017 has become an occasion to reflect on the political struggles and rhetoric surrounding this museum. Reconstructing and discussing the most recent administrative and pseudo-academic attempts by the PiS government to prevent the museum from opening its doors, the article shows how this fight is part of a broader, still ongoing government policy to re-orient Polish ‘history politics’ along nationalist lines.
A small but state-of-the-art museum in the countryside of Poland’s southeast opened its doors in 2016 to commemorate Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, who shielded two Jewish families in their cottage. The twofold dedication of this museum, both to the Ulma family and to "Poles Saving Jews in World War II" opens up a window to understand 'big history' in the framework of the small. However, this approach also carries some risks.
After bringing the constitutional court to a standstill and cleansing public television to make it conform to party-political criteria, the Polish government that dominated by the PiS party has shifted its attention to the politics of memory. The article gives a critical review of recent steps taken by the government and parliament to stir the public representation of contemporary history in a national conservative, “patriotic” direction. This "historical policy" not only comes at the expensive of pluralism, but it has also already resulted in public unrest.
The European Solidarity Center, which opened its doors in Gdańsk in August 2014, is one of several new museum projects in recent Poland. Maybe this is why the museum’s founders emphasize the distinguishing characteristics of their institution. The center has two ambitious aims: to present exhibits on the history of Poland’s Solidarity movement as well as on the present-day meaning of solidarity as a social value. Does it achieve its own aims?
The article puts a spotlight on recently discovered files about Lech Wałęsa’s collaboration with the state security forces in 1970 and the political debates that followed from this discovery. Showing how the right-wing PiS party seized this opportunity to bolster its narrative of the “treacherous” roundtable talks and of the post-1989 transition as engineered by the communist authorities, the article makes the point that once again, history is being instrumentalized by the party in power.
The Past as a Source of Evil: The Controversy Over History and Historical Policy in Poland, 2016
(2016)
History plays a huge role in Polish public debates, politics, and the ideology of the ruling PiS party. "Historical policy" is now officially on the agenda of the government and its agencies. Doctrine regarding the układ and all-pervading communist agents is now the official version of history. This article examines the way history has been used under the PiS government in Poland since November 2015.
While the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk was still awaiting the opening of its final location, its staff prepared an exhibition that in 45 artefacts tells the story (or perhaps, stories) of the difficult process of transitioning out of war. The artefacts not only speak to us about the chaos and destruction that defined post-war life, but also about the daily practices that helped people create the intervals of peace necessary to maintain their sanity in the midst of destruction.
The new exhibition at Wrocław’s Contemporary Museum collected around thirty works centred on the formation of a Vratislavian identity following World War II. According to the organisers, the exhibition's title - The Germans Did Not Come - reflects the fear among the population of Wrocław at the time that the city might fall back into German hands - a fear that also provides a read line throughout this exhibition.
This article examines recent efforts by the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB) to preserve the memory of the Polish Home Army, an underground organisation of the Second World War, which also operated in areas that had been incorporated into the USSR in September 1939 and therefore belong to today’s Belarus. Particular emphasis is placed on analysing how the current political regime in Belarus has influenced the activists’ situation and efforts on the ground.
The situation in Ukraine is the subject of an intense discussion in the public sphere and the media across Europe. But what do we know about how our neighbouring countries are reflecting on the crisis, its historical background and its meaning for the relationship between our countries, Ukraine, Russia and the European Union? During 2014 and 2015 the Cultures of History Forum asked historians and sociologists from more than 15 European countries, the US, Israel and Turkey to reflect on the media coverage and public debates regarding the Ukrainian crisis in their countries. This article focuses on Poland.
The three-part German miniseries "Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter" (Generation War) gave rise to a heated German-Polish debate that focused on the depiction of members of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) as anti-Semitic. The article reconstructs this debate, demonstrating the widespread German ignorance about recent Polish history. It also concludes that the way the controversy was jointly moderated by both German and Polish actors was positive.