Memorial policies: "Government lies fuel anti-Semitism in Poland"
The Museum of the Memory of the Inhabitants of the Oswiecim Lands will be inaugurated in 2022 opposite the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp (photo).
AFP - JANEK SKARZYNSKI
Text by: Sarah Bakaloglou Follow
6 mins
Last month, the appointment of former Prime Minister Beata Szydlo to the advisory board of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum drew much criticism, with the government frequently accused of interventionism in the historical field.
For the Jewish journalist and commentator Konstantin Gebert, the Polish authorities are indeed seeking to rewrite the past by exaggeratingly glorifying the attitude of the Poles during the Second World War.
Publicity
Read more
RFI:
How would you describe the memorial policy of the Law and Justice party (PiS)?
Konstantin Gebert:
This is a major attempt to rewrite the past that goes far beyond the bounds of an acceptable debate about what really happened. We know today that the participation of Poles on an individual basis [the Polish state did not take part in the Holocaust, note] in certain Nazi crimes was much greater than we knew about 15 years ago. . It is quite legitimate to debate to see to what extent this participation is representative of the attitude that Poles in general had during the war. But when the Prime Minister declares that the 300,000 Polish Jews who survived got away with meeting Poles, he is making an obscene misunderstanding. First, the vast majority of these Jews, who survived,survived in the Soviet Union. Second, meeting Poles could mean exposing oneself to the risk of blackmail, denunciation or even murder.
I find that it is not the role of the government to conduct a historic policy, but it is a bias that can be debated. But I think it is not possible to argue that the government has more right to lie than anyone else. However, the government systematically lies about what happened during World War II. These lies are fueling a rise in anti-Semitism in Poland that runs counter to the long historical process we have seen since the fall of communism. For fifteen years, anti-Semitism was in free fall. And then, around 2010, there was a trend reversal: it precedes the PiS takeover, and this is probably one of the factors that fueled this takeover.
Why does the government want to glorify the attitude of the Poles during the war and highlight those who helped the Jews?
In the first place, this responds to a deep psychological need.
The founding national myth of Poland is: "
we are the innocent victim
". A victim cannot be guilty, it is wrong. Except that the victims are also guilty. Acknowledging one's own crimes, even if it is difficult, in no way diminishes the moral value of martyrdom, on the contrary, it allows for a more honest confrontation with one's own history. But it's difficult, it hurts. A political party that promises to protect us from all of this automatically is building electoral support. The overwhelming majority of Poles don't really know what exactly happened in their families during the war, and they don't want to know because they are afraid to learn something they would not like. But for the majority, this is not the case! The vast majority of Poles were too preoccupied with trying to survive to hurt others.But since you can't tell until you open the cabinet, whoever promises the cabinet will never be opened already gets support. And the Law and Justice party has no hope of finding new voters in the center, it can only try to convince right-wing voters.
Is the Museum of the memory of the inhabitants of the lands of Oswiecim, dedicated to the aid given to the prisoners of Auschwitz by the inhabitants of the surroundings and which will be inaugurated in 2022, part of the continuity of the memorial policy of the government ?
This is a typical case of this government's initiatives. The idea is excellent: to do research on how to coexist with horror. But in view of the political background, there is no reason to believe that this museum will be dedicated to an objective research and analysis of the facts, but rather that it will still be a work of propaganda like the Museum, for example. of the Ulma family in the city of Markowa (southwestern Poland): the Ulma [a Polish family murdered by the Germans for having taken in Jews, editor's note] are real heroes, they deserve a place in the collective memory by as an example of what can be done under the most heinous of circumstances. What we do not learn in the museum is that they have been denounced by their neighbors.The museum also ignores the fact that after the family massacre, more than 30 Jews were murdered by peasants in Markowa and surrounding villages.
In a museum of the Righteous, this should be a fundamental part of the story, to show the breadth of the choices to be made, but it is transformed into a propaganda speech that insults the memory of the Righteous.
I have no reason to believe that the future museum in Oswiecim will be any different: instead of talking about this real existential nightmare - that is, how do we manage to coexist with horror - it will give us a reality in black and white, flattering national pride and forbidding any debate.
A museum that leaves people perplexed does its job, not one that imposes a point of view.
■ This subject can be found in
the program Accents d'Europe on 25 May 2021
, devoted to asylum policies in Europe.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Poland
Second World War