Facing up to history
Poland led the way three decades ago in bringing down the Soviet empire and restoring freedom to half of Europe. Who can forget the historic role played by the Solidarity labour movement in discrediting communist rule there and across eastern Europe?
Which makes it all the more disheartening that Poland is now firmly part of the growing trend away from liberal democracy in Europe. Under a government led by the country’s Law and Justice party, it has been turning toward nationalism, Polish pride and its own conservative brand of identity politics.
Topping all this off is a new law that would make it a criminal offence punishable by up to three years in prison to suggest that “the Polish nation or the Polish state” was in any way complicit in the extermination of Jews during the Second World War.
At best, this would put a major chill on independent historical research into the tragic, tangled events surrounding the Holocaust and the various roles that Poles played in it — both as fighters against the German invaders and, as has also been well documented, as participants in the persecution of Jews.
At worst, it could amount to a form of Holocaust denial, as some outraged Jews, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are arguing. The law has already put a major strain on relations between Poland and Israel, and recent remarks by Poland’s prime minister have just made that worse.
In answering a question from an Israeli journalist, Mateusz Morawiecki made the inflammatory suggestion that Jews themselves had a role in committing the atrocities against their own people. “There were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian . . . not only German,” he said.
Morawiecki has been justly condemned for drawing an equivalence between a tiny number of Jewish collaborators with the Nazis and the many others of almost all nationalities — including Poles, Russians and Ukrainians — who facilitated the work of the German killing squads.
But aside from his clumsy rhetoric, the new law itself is the issue. It amounts to an attempt to criminalize legitimate historical inquiry in an area that is by its nature fraught with controversy. Only a very brave researcher will venture into these archives with the threat of official condemnation and possibly even a jail sentence hanging over his or her head.
It’s entirely understandable why the subject is so difficult for Poles, as it is for many other countries caught up in the maelstrom of the Second World War. Aside from Jews themselves, Poles suffered as much as anyone from Nazism.
Three of the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust died in Poland and about three million other Poles were killed as well. The Polish state was erased in 1939 when Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and divided its territory between them. It was a national catastrophe, only to be followed immediately after the war by decades of communist rule.
How various parts of Polish society conducted themselves during the years of Nazi occupation has long been a matter of historical contention. Unlike, for example, France, Poles had no collaborationist government to put an official stamp on any co-operation with their German occupiers.
But there’s no denying that anti-Semitism was widespread in Poland (as it was in many parts of Europe) and no shortage of examples of Poles who persecuted Jews, killed them outright or betrayed them to the Nazis. The Canadian-Polish historian Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa, for one, estimates that Poles were responsible for the death of some 200,000 Jews during the war.
At the same time, Poles waged fierce resistance against their occupiers and there were many examples of Catholic Poles who came to the aid of their Jewish neighbours. Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust, recognizes 6,706 Poles as being “righteous among the nations” — those who sheltered or aided Jews. That’s more than any other country, and Yad Vashem says that “considering the harsh punishment that threatened rescuers, this is a most impressive number.”
No wonder, then, that Poles bitterly resent any suggestion that as a nation they were generally complicit in Nazi atrocities. The new law, among other things, bans use of the expression “Polish death camps” — rather than something along the lines of “Nazi death camps on Polish territory.” (The Star, along with many other news organizations, does not use that expression either after complaints from Polish organizations.)
This is a debate that can have no end; as more information becomes available and successive generations process the traumas of the past, historians will continue to produce new interpretations of old events.
Or at least that’s how it should work. Instead, the new Polish law is bound to have the effect of curtailing explorations into areas that are particularly touchy for nationalists (including those who dominate the current government in Warsaw) who are concerned that revelations about collaboration with Nazis will feed what they regard as a “politics of shame” imposed on their country by foreign critics.
This shouldn’t be allowed in any sensitive areas of research, especially such a highly charged subject as the Holocaust. Cutting off debate or intimidating independent historians who may venture into uncomfortable areas will only feed suspicion that there is something to hide.
Far better to encourage free intellectual inquiry and deal with whatever consequences flow from that. Every nation must eventually face up to the complicated realities of its own history. Trying to stop that from happening will only make the process longer and more difficult. For Poland, that means abandoning its ill-conceived attempt to criminalize historical inquiry.
Every nation must eventually face up to the complicated realities of its own history