Once again the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was an chance to compromise many commentators and politicians.
Not at all, or only semi-dozen names were mentioned for liberators. all average individual wonders what the Red Army and its heroes (most frequently young soldiers) of 1945 have in common with today's war in Ukraine? Why can we not pay tribute to them for their heroism and their sacrifice?
These primitive associations, imposed in public space, do not let people to remember who saved another people's lives at the cost of their lives. It is good that, although fewer survivors inactive alive are not completely manipulated and call things by name. In light of today's fashion, if the Americans had liberated the death camp, there would be no end to the tributes.
In the present, we scope more into memory than history. Memory refers to the regular experience by surviving people of times experienced personally, privately. It is nurtured and transmitted (intermediated) between the generations. erstwhile individual manipulates them, they can last in sleep, contrary to censorship or social denial. He besides has the right to amnesia and forget. He can resurrect from non-existence, improve and update.
Memory, even selective and mythological, is something very important, timely, full of symbolism and passion. History, on the another hand, is simply a cool presentation of the past utilizing rational reconstruction, analysis and critical reasoning tools. Therefore, what people remember from their own experience and experience, past treats as foggy material, subjective, requiring verification and relativisation. past is never full, but always problematic. If there are no sources and the memory has faded, there are “white spots”. Just as an example of the beginnings of the Polish statehood. Memory of these gaps fills with mythology, fabrication, confabulation.
Memory can be consciously selective. He cites 1 side of events, forgetting those uncomfortable or shy. It is rich in reminders, summons and authoreflexion. It grows into rituals and symbols. He's institutionalized. organization memory helps to strengthen the culture of organization, consolidate heritage, make traditions. “Museums, archives, cemeteries and collections, holidays, anniversaries, treatises, reports, monuments, shrines and associations are the last witnesses of past centuries and make an illusion of eternity. Hence the nostalgic aspect of these projects, full of godly and cool pathos" (P. Nora, Between Memory and History, Gdańsk 2022, p. 103).
The matrimony of politics and history...
leads to various cognitive aberrations. Recalling the historian’s opinion Pierre Nora, 1 of the most crucial figures in French and European intellectual life, it is worth recalling that "no political power can regulation on historical truth". And yet it does. fewer people care how past manipulation helps to realize the challenges that the future brings. However, they surely have a negative impact on today's interpretations of "here and now".
In Poland, the knowing of the latest past was given under the dictatorship of political power, which put ideological and political goals before investigation and education, and little cognitive and clarifying. The establishment of the Institute of National Memory in 1999 (for the governments of the Electoral Action Solidarity, which included, among others, the Agreement of the Centre of Kaczyński Brothers, but besides with the participation of specified twelve defences of the regulation of law as Andrzej Rzeplinski).
The name itself of this controversial institution indicated that Polish past is to melt down all individual and collective memories and to submit them to the authoritative interpretation, decreed by the authority. In memory of people of different, frequently opposed ideas, a corset of "national memory" was imposed, glorifying Polish ethnicity, Catholicism, uniqueness, missionaryity. alternatively of the Institute of the past of the Nation and the Polish State, a unit was established, fulfilling investigative and judging functions, commissioned by the current rulers. Collective, unified memory is intended to form a patriotic nation and decide its heroic-martyrological identity. There is no place in it for any shameful cards of collaboration, extortion, chauvinism or clericalism. It is besides intended to give a fresh rank to historical research, which takes on the character of "politically active science".
The foundation of the IPN was a false belief in the harmfulness of the “large line” policy, which was proclaimed by the first non-communist Prime Minister of Poland Tadeusz Mazowiecki. As a result, the power apparatus was to be soaked in by a poperel agent. The mirrors of public officials and the prosecution of communist crimes have become guidelines not so much to survey and popularize past as a tool for practicing obsessive "historical policy", full of manipulation, mistrust, prejudice, simplification and cynical retaliation. It was besides essential to contrast the past times with the fresh era of “freedom, democracy and capitalism”. The worse the times of "real socialism" were shown, the more convincing were the merits of the solidarity elite in the systemic reconstruction. So, absolutely unprepared to regulation the state. In addition, they've been handmaiden from the very beginning to abroad stakeholders.
If the investigation institution serves only the objectives of propaganda of the ruling camp, it compromises it in the eyes of the recipients of today's and subsequent generations. Ideological qualification of what deserves designation in Polish past and what is condemned is simply a substance of uncritical propaganda service. Instrumentation of past and the fight against the alleged education of shame always ends in disaster. Or myths that have nothing to do with reality are multiplying (see monuments and apologetization) Lech Kaczyński), or the suppression of people with propaganda takes on specified a level that any criticism in the knowing of fresh past disappears. Fake past keeps us in the false assessments of present (Józef Szujski: “false past is the master of incorrect politics).
IPN balance sheet
In the ongoing debate on the future destiny of the IPN, the voices of an in-depth critical analysis of its achievements should prevail. Their account clearly points to a negative consequence – the ideology of past and the division of the nation according to arbitrarily accepted assessments of the past. The environment of political officers, professing past researchers and formatting national memory is contaminated with propaganda and compromised. Today's school and historical education crisis is due to the methodical delegitization of truth. besides the consequence of the primitiveization of the message, the pretendation of the "moral signpost" and of being "a hammer on mind". Therefore, the ruling should not deficiency the courage and determination to remove this "pronounced lie" from public life.
The future needs to be prepared on the basis of well - recognized past mistakes and taking into account the sensitivity of memory about the harm and harm caused. Meanwhile, Poland threatens to fall into further illusions about large achievements, heroism and historical mission, the construction of monuments to pseudoheroes and pseudopatriotic upbringing of young people (there are various historical reconstructions, especially tragic insurgent fights). This is why we must request that the immense financial expenditure on this institution be stopped. The current rulers should explain why they fulfil the wishes of the president of the IPN to increase its backing compared to the erstwhile year (from PLN 540 million to over PLN 580 million).
Power can rapidly lose public assurance and credibility if, in many vital cases, it starts to key and pretend that the compromised institutions should proceed to service the "good of the Republic". The Institute of National Memory as 1 of the first should be assessed unequivocally so as not to hesitate about its future. His harmful activity, which poisons the minds of Poles, should be completed as shortly as possible. This is 1 of the tests of the origin of the fresh power and its reliable reassessment of the policy of the last 8 years of the feeling of Poles.
Polish society is as diverse as any other. It consists of citizens of different pedigree, different worldview affiliations and careers. any were born before the war (unfortunately, less and fewer), others are children of war, and the remainder have PRL pedigree (grandparents and parents), or boasts of late age birth. Already this age differentiation, deciding on a different "systemic origin" should prompt a realistic presumption that, regardless of their choices and will, everyone served (and served) 1 country, as it was then. Later generations, and especially ruling ones, have no moral right to account for them from the service of their country. All the more reason, they cannot be punished for their faults, which they did not commit under the law and their own conscience.
Someone may object to relativism. But this is the case with the memory of people who, while serving 1 thought or another, are able to justify their actions free choice, necessity, coercion or fear. A political broadcast historian will never guess what truly was at the root of various motivations, even the most shameful acts. Nor does he have the right to act as a prosecutor and to offer judgments. Only an impartial investigator can approach the truth, but he can never be a judge, much little a prosecutor. That's what justice is for.
Human memory is multiforme and diverse. It touches individual, specific, unique and unique things. The story, on the another hand, is curious in processes of continuity and volatility during collective entities, i.e. nation, society or state. It has no place for spontaneous experiences or individual experiences with a advanced degree of affectivity. past tries to master memories, deform them, transforms them, and does them its own way, frequently according to an ideological matrix and binding political correctness.
Memory transformed by past loses its direct character. It becomes an archivist memory. Its origin is all registrations of "objects and facts", even the most suspicious and unreliable. The obsession with taking over and collecting archives in Poland, including those from communist times, led to various cognitive aberrations. It was not possible to separate the papers prepared from the real ones. Many “forgeries” have broken human life. any strange, almost spiritual desire to gather relics and witness to what was. In their view, everything that would be recorded in the databases would service as “no 1 knows what evidence before it is known what court of history”.
With a heated political conflict in many countries, there is simply a mania of collecting and archiving the smallest traces of political activity of opponents. This is served by modern tools for recording, listening or recording. The catalogue of things worth perpetuating continues to grow, and the "memory institutions" are increasing stronger. Since today’s politicians find it hard to free themselves from obsession and persecution, who knows if this is the kind of reasoning that is active in saving IPN?
Original Sin
Polish solidarity elites are equally paralyzed by “the first sin of their conception”. The function of an external origin in creating a fresh reality has never been explained, though literature is already available in the West. Searching everywhere for traces of Russian agentry consciously diverts attention from the influence of Western services. Patriotic blackmail is excellent in Poland. So it may be worth writing books not only about Putin's "fions" (Kacper Plażyński, All Putin's pawns. Russian lobbying, Poznań 2023), but besides about the “folks” of Washington, Berlin, London, Tel Aviv or Kiev on “Polish chessboard”?
Memory in many national perspectives is treated as a subject of historical research. Meanwhile, in Poland, authoritative past destroys individual and collective memory. It is adequate to mention an example of the attitude towards the Polish People's Republic as a state of large social promotions and dynamic overcoming of improvement distances. Contrary to the memory of these achievements, the society is imposed on one-sided image of a "bloody dictatorship", and the statehood of the People's Poland itself is treated as a "black hole". All hope is that future generations will be curious in discovering the actual face of that period. Similarly, as happens with the vulnerability of sanitational authoritarianism of the Second Republic.
Direct, personal, private, but mediated memory plays a peculiar function in the construction of individual identities. It allows us to answer the question: who we are and where we come from. Being Polish, like being German or Finn, is mostly based on remembering that you are Polish. It is memory and its intellectual internalization that gives people a sense of their retrospective continuity and kinship with generations of ancestors.
Perhaps not all humans have the request to realize who and to whom they owe the form of present existence. But I think there's a desire in almost all human being to look for what constitutes it. It is not for no reason that various fashions are born to discover their social roots (boys, servants, cham and master, bastards of the serfs, ravens, etc., are just any of the words that happen as titles of fresh books), tracking traces of the family's past, and even restoring the household tree.
Personally, I love visiting old cemeteries while traveling to abroad countries. Anyone who was erstwhile in Vilnius or Lviv will agree that the pronunciation of tomb inscriptions on Ross or Łychczak speaks more about the resources of Polish memory there than many scholars of stories. And the Chicago cemetery erstwhile made me realize where and under what conditions any of my ancestors found their emigration marina.
Meaning of Memory
Memory is materialized in stopping time, protecting from oblivion, in immortalizing characters, things, events. Each of us, performing in various social roles, builds his "peas of memory". The richer he is, the greater our identity potential. For example, my relationships with the University of Warsaw, which lasts more than half a century, form the basis of pride and knowledge, intellectual adventure and colorful historical story. erstwhile I scope into the university's genesis and show it to flourish since the 1920s, it seems to me that thanks to my memory recognition I am becoming an authentic associate of all the large events that have taken place here. I can even see the imagination of young Frederick Chopin erstwhile in the Auditory Building (School of Fine Arts) he is preparing for a musical performance in the Church of Visits to celebrate the feast of God's Body.
At the end of each of the countrymen, including politicians, I would advise you to conduct a average memorial exercise, as much as his own cognition and identity is influenced by the authoritative memory, only by the true, top-down decreed memory, not to say pathetic and spectacular (though ceremonial celebrations of various anniversarys, specified as the “miracle over the Vistula” or the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising), and as far as the consequence of his own search for the “sanctuaries of truth” and “pilgraging” into places not necessarily included in the canon of patriotic symbolism. If we do this for a moment, it turns out that alternatively of a dispute, or inviting present-day Russians to celebrate the liberation of Auschwitz from the barbarism of Nazism, it is more crucial to memento in ourselves about the perpetrators of destruction, whose guilt should never be forgiven and forgotten.
Looking from an global perspective, the planet present is subject to many cognitive aberrations. Selective memory rules the minds of people who, in any nations, see only autocrats and criminals, and in others only democrats and liberators. It turns out that these roles and images blend perfectly. If we cannot forget the Nazi crimes of planet War II and callback Russian crimes in Ukraine today, why are we so merciful in remembering the Vietnam War and the horrendous crimes committed by the Americans on the Indochin nations? Why do we not remember the fresh criminal expeditions to Iraq or Afghanistan? Yet, it is besides possible to callback the historical Belgian crimes in the Congo, Spanish crimes in America, nipponese crimes in China and Korea, etc. What about Israel's criminal policy towards Palestine? Does a government - dictated explanation always take precedence over objectivity and fair judgment? How, then, can memory be avoided by authoritative history?
Prof. Stanisław Bielen
Think Poland, No. 7-8 (11-18.02.2024)