Z Muzeum II Wojny Światowej znikają niesłuszni partyzanci

Estera Flieger

Dyrektor muzeum Paweł Machcewicz podczas konferencji prasowej poprzedzajacej uroczyste otwarcie wystawy stałej muzeum (Fot. Jan Rusek / Agencja Gazeta)

Demolka w Muzeum II Wojny Światowej: dziury w ścianie i wygumkowani partyzanci. Odwołany dyrektor Paweł Machcewicz idzie po sprawiedliwość do Europejskiego Trybunału Praw Człowieka.

Obsadzony przez ministra kultury Piotra Glińskiego dyrektor Muzeum II Wojny Światowej w Gdańsku dr Karol Nawrocki pochwalił się kolejnymi zmianami w ekspozycji. Wystawa główna powiększyła się o opowieść o rodzinie Ulmów zamordowanej przez nazistów w 1944 roku za ukrywanie Żydów. – Dodanie Ulmów jest reakcją na zamieszanie wywołane przez wprowadzenie bubla prawnego, jakim jest nowelizacja ustawy o IPN. To działania ratunkowe, które mają pokryć straty wizerunkowe wywołane przez nieodpowiedzialne działanie PiS-u – komentuje dr Janusz Marszalec, który razem z odwołanym dyrektorem prof. Pawłem Machcewiczem stworzył wystawę główną.

To nie koniec zmian przeprowadzanych przez Nawrockiego.

– Naniósł do tej pory cztery z dwunastu zapowiadanych poprawek, w tym tę dotyczącą represji wobec Polaków w Wolnym Mieście Gdańsku, która jako jedyna została zrealizowana według naszych wytycznych – wyjaśnia Marszalec. Inne zmiany nowy dyrektor wprowadza po cichu oraz bez zgody i wiedzy twórców wystawy głównej.

“Dobra zmiana” burzy mury

W ostatnich dniach w sekcji muzeum poświęconej Polskiemu Państwu Podziemnemu wybito dwie dziury w ścianie, przez które ma być teraz widać Irenę Sendlerową i Władysława Bartoszewskiego. Obu postaciom pierwotnie poświęcono osobną część ekspozycji. Machcewicz: – Niszczenie scenografii to zwykły wandalizm i nie pomogą tu żadne pseudopatriotyczne frazesy. Godzi to też w sens naszej opowieści o Sendlerowej i Żegocie. Ona sama mówiła niejednokrotnie, że jej działalność musiała być „konspiracją w konspiracji”, jeszcze bardziej tajną niż inne działania Polskiego Państwa Podziemnego.

Inne są również opisy w części muzeum poświęconej historii partyzantów. „Wygumkowano” liczbę żołnierzy, którzy przewinęli się przez szeregi partyzantki radzieckiej. To około 400-500 tys. osób. Podobnie z tekstu poświęconego podziemiu jugosłowiańskiemu usunięto dane liczbowe pokazujące wielkość armii partyzanckich czetników i komunistów. A były to oddziały partyzanckie o wiele silniejsze od polskich. – Ocenzurowanie liczby partyzantów sowieckich jest manipulacją wynikającą z potrzeby umniejszenia skali komunistycznego ruchu partyzanckiego. PiS buduje swoją tożsamość na antykomunizmie i jak widać, nie zawahało się przed żonglowaniem liczbami. To również przejaw megalomanii – podsumowuje Janusz Marszalec.

Twórcy wystawy głównej złożyli już pozew o naruszenie praw autorskich. Domagają się przywrócenia pierwotnego kształtu ekspozycji. Paweł Machcewicz dodatkowo zaskarżył do Naczelnego Sądu Administracyjnego decyzję Glińskiego o połączeniu Muzeum II Wojny Światowej z utworzonym przez „dobrą zmianę” Muzeum Westerplatte, na mocy której usunięto go ze stanowiska. NSA uznał, że akt ministerialny w tym kształcie nie leży w jego jurysdykcji, dlatego Machcewicz nie ma szans na rozstrzygnięcie sprawy w Polsce. W związku z tym złożył skargę do Europejskiego Trybunału Praw Człowieka.

Według Machcewicza naruszony został art. 6 (pozbawienie możliwości zakwestionowania decyzji państwa na drodze sądowej) i art. 10 (wolność słowa) Europejskiej Konwencji o Ochronie Praw Człowieka i Podstawowych Wolności.

Jak orzeknie Trybunał?

Mecenas Agata Bzdyń, która reprezentuje byłego dyrektora, podkreśla, że gdyby minister usunął jej klienta ze stanowiska, stawiając mu konkretne zarzuty, a nie łącząc dwa muzea, ten miałby szanse przed polskim sądem. Glińskiemu zależało jednak na czasie i m.in. z tego powodu wybrał łatwiejszą drogę. – To sprawa o wolność badań i dopuszczenie różnych głosów w debacie. Zdaniem skarżącego państwo polskie złamało podstawowe prawa człowieka do stawiania pytań, dociekania i wyrażania własnych poglądów na historię. Muzea, teatry oraz inne instytucje kultury urzeczywistniają wolność ekspresji. Jeśli dopuści się do tego, że rządzący z jakiejkolwiek partii będą mieli wyłączny i niczym nieograniczony wpływ na tworzenie i funkcjonowanie instytucji kultury, de facto dopuści się stosowanie cenzury – uzasadnia skargę mecenas Bzdyń.

Przypomina też o wyrokach w podobnych sprawach: – Trybunał w swoim dotychczasowym orzecznictwie wskazywał, że „każde państwo musi zapewnić, aby dyskusja nad jego historią toczyła się otwarcie i bezstronnie” oraz że „integralną częścią wolności wypowiedzi, chronionej na mocy art. 10 konwencji, jest dążenie do pokazania prawdy historycznej, która jest przedmiotem debaty pomiędzy historykami, mającej na celu ukształtowanie opinii odnośnie do przeszłych zdarzeń i ich oceny. Liczymy, że w przedmiotowej skardze ta linia orzecznicza zostanie podtrzymana.

TALK WILL REVISIT POLAND’S MARCH 1968 PROTESTS

Jodie Shupac

Irena Grudzinska Gross will speak at an event commemorating 50 years since the last exodus of Polish Jews.

Now an academic and public intellectual, in the spring of 1968, Irena Grudzinska Gross was a University of Warsaw student of Jewish descent who was persecuted by the Communist government for her political dissidence.

On March 26, Grudzinska Gross will speak at an event held at the University of Toronto to commemorate 50 years since the so-called March events in Poland, when student protests against the Communist government’s suppression of free speech were violently quashed and the Jewish community was blamed for the unrest.

This led to a wave of Jews being dismissed from their professional and academic posts and to Jewish students being kicked out of universities. The result was a mass emigration of Polish Jews, many of whom were Holocaust survivors who had spent the previous 25 years rebuilding their lives in the country.

The March 26 event, titled “March 1968: The Last Exodus of Polish Jews? Fifty Years Later,” will take place at U of T’s George Ignatieff Theatre.

It is co-hosted by the Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish History at U of T and the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada. Attendees will see parts of Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz’s 2008 film, The Ordinary March, a documentary about the March 1968 protests, which followed the government’s censorship of a play at the National Theatre. The film also explores the head of the Polish Communist party’s subsequent speech, in which he effectively endorsed anti-Semitism under the cover, some say, of anti-Zionism.
When audiences in 1968 saw the 19th century play, Forefather’s Eve, which is about Poland’s loss of independence to Russia in the 1800s, they cheered at moments that were deemed by the leaders of the day to be politically inappropriate. Their enthusiasm for the play’s anti-czarist sentiment was interpreted as being anti-Soviet and the production was abruptly shut down.

Students at the University of Warsaw, including Grudzinska Gross and her friends, a group of intellectuals known for pursuing democratic ideas, responded with protests calling for freedom of speech. The government sent in the riot police to stop the protests, which resulted in severe beatings and numerous arrests.

The government blamed Jews for the protests, accusing them of conspiring against the national interests of Poland and its citizens.

Peter Jassem is chair of the Toronto chapter of the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, an organization that aims to promote better understanding between Polish Christians and Jews, and to educate people about the history and culture of Polish Jewry.

Jassem said the events of March 1968 made life unbearable for Jews in Poland.
About 15,000 Jews that left Poland in 1968 and 1969.
– Peter Jassem

“In the same (Polish-Jewish) family, both parents could’ve lost
their jobs and their kids could’ve been kicked out of university,” he said.

He noted that the March events came just months after the Six-Day War. The Soviet Union had severed ties with Israel and supported the Arab countries. The ensuing suppression of Jewish rights in Soviet bloc countries triggered a wave of emigration to countries like Denmark, Sweden, France, the United States, Canada and Israel.

“Altogether, it was about 15,000 Jews that
left Poland in 1968 and 1969,” Jassem said.

Grudzinska Gross was among those who left. She moved to Italy, where she resumed her studies, and later to New York, where she received her PhD from Columbia University. She now teaches eastern European literature and history, and is a research scholar at Princeton University and a professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies at Warsaw’s Polish Academy of Sciences.

She has published numerous books and essays, her latest being Poland and Polin: New Interpretations in Polish-Jewish Studies.

“March 1968: The Last Exodus of Polish Jews? Fifty Years Later” will take place on March 26 at 7:30 p.m. at 15 Devonshire Pl. Admission is free.

Senior Adviser to Polish Prime Minister Under Fire From Top Jewish Leaders for ‘Antisemitic’ Online Campaign

Ben Cohen

Prof. Rafal Pankowski (far left) with fellow panelists at the Global Forum on Antisemitism in Jerusalem. Photo: NCSEJ.

Jewish leaders in the US and Europe have risen to the defense of a leading Polish expert on antisemitism, after he recently became the target of an “antisemitic” online campaign led by an official adviser to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Rafal Pankowski — a Warsaw-based professor who leads the anti-racist “Never Again” Association — was described as a “Polish-speaking Jewish mongrel dog” and threatened with violence by extremists on social media following a speech he delivered to the Global Forum Against Antisemitism in Jerusalem on March 21.

In that presentation, Pankowski highlighted the upsurge of antisemitic rhetoric that has accompanied the recent passage of controversial Holocaust commemoration legislation in Poland. The bill — signed into law by President Andrzej Duda on Feb. 6 — criminalizes public discussion of Polish antisemitism and collusion with the Nazi authorities during the German occupation of 1939-45, with potential violators facing a maximum sentence of three years in prison. (Pankowski, a critic of the legislation, is frequently quoted on this matter and related issues by The Algemeiner and several other international news outlets.)

Among those in the audience for Pankowski’s speech was Polish Ambassador to Israel Jaceck Chodorowicz. Attending with the ambassador was Andrzej Pawluszek — a government adviser promoted on March 2 to the official post of secretary to the prime minister – who took exception to the speech’s content. While Pawluszek did not challenge the remarks during the panel, his furious disagreement with Pankowski’s claim that antisemitism was widespread among certain Polish politicians and media outlets was revealed in a subsequent series of tweets, in which he joined with the deputy leader of Poland’s far-right National Movement in denouncing Pankowski’s assessment of Polish antisemitism as a “scandal.”

The tweets were approvingly shared by other well-known figures in Poland – including Sebastian Kaleta, a high-level official at the Ministry of Justice, Krzysztof Ziemiec, the presenter of Polish state TV’s evening news program, and Adam Bielan, a deputy speaker of the Polish Senate — setting off a volley of online abuse in Pankowski’s direction.

“A Jewish mongrel…” – some of the antisemitic tweets directed at Polish anti-racism campaigner Rafal Pankowski following his speech in Jerusalem. Image: Screenshot

One respondent accused Pankowksi of having gone to Israel “to earn his Judas shekels,” while another urged Pawluszek to “punch him in the face on our behalf.” Another participant in the exchange declared his desire “to put TNT in the ass of this Pankowski.”

Polish far right activists — 60,000 of whom turned out for a menacing show of force in Warsaw in November 2017 — carry a long-established reputation for violence at soccer matches and political demonstrations, as well as a reported average of ten assaults each week on immigrants living in the country.

Some of the Jewish leaders who rushed to Pankowski’s defense on Monday expressed dismay that the originator of the social media campaign was a government official who had been present at the annual antisemitism forum in Jerusalem, hosted by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry representative clarified that Pawluszek “wasn’t invited by us, and did not play an official role.”

“The conference was open to all,” the Israeli official explained to The Algemeiner on Monday, emphasizing at the same time that “the behavior cited by Rafal Pankowski is disturbing and troubling, and we will look into this.”

Mark Levin — CEO of the Washington, DC-based National Council Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ) — was among the speakers who shared the platform with Pankowski in Jerusalem. “Rafal was an important part of the panel, and the information he shared was well received,” Levin said.

“It’s unfortunate that the Polish prime minister’s adviser interpreted the information in a negative way,” Levin told The Algemeiner. “The purpose of the session was to outline the recent, significant increase in antisemitic rhetoric, and some incidents as well.”

Levin continued, “We were trying to create an inclusive atmosphere, and these tweets unfortunately don’t help with that.”

Sharon Nazarian — director of international affairs for the Anti-Defamation League — demanded an immediate end to the outburst of online vitriol against Pankowski.

“The campaign of online antisemitic harassment against our longtime partners at the Never Again Association is deeply disturbing and needs to stop now,” Nazarian told The Algemeiner in an email.

“This incident is another example of how far-right extremists can abuse social media platforms to troll their perceived enemies,” Nazarian — who also spoke at the Jerusalem meeting — commented. “We stand in solidarity with Rafal Pankowski and all those who stand up against hate in Poland.”

Responding to an email query from The Algemeiner, Pawluszek stressed that he had “always been against antisemitism, which I consider to be a serious problem.”

Arguing that antisemitism was more pronounced in Western Europe, the Polish prime minister’s adviser added, “I do not disregard it in Poland, and I regularly ban antisemites on my Twitter profile.”

“Again — I will never accept any antisemitic statements on my profile,”Pawluszek said.

Asked why he had not challenged Pankowski during the panel, Pawluszek answered, “I did not have to confront him, because (Polish Chief Rabbi) Michael Schudrich did this after his speech.”

Rabbi Schudrich had “pointed that also anti-Polish statements are a real problem in the current debate,” Pawluszek said.

However, Pankowski told The Algemeiner on Monday that he had been heartened “by the numerous messages of solidarity and support I received in the last days, not least from the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, and many other friends and allies of the ‘Never Again’ Association.”

“What is surprising and disappointing is that the nasty online campaign was started by the prime minister’s adviser specifically tasked with solving the Polish-Israeli-US crisis,” Pankowski continued. “Such behavior is unworthy of a public official.”

Other Jewish leaders echoed the same concern. “In his talk, Pankowski expressed concern about the recent Polish legislative initiative regarding the Holocaust,” Betty Ehrenberg, executive director of World Jewish Congress North America, told The Algemeiner in an email. “In reaction, Pankowski  was vilified and denounced by some Polish officials in a public social media campaign that was shocking in its use of hateful language and imagery.”

Ehrenberg said the WJC had been “deeply saddened by these unfortunate expressions on the part of the officials and calls for an immediate return to respectful and  civil discourse.”

Meanwhile, Shimon Samuels — international affairs director for the Simon Wiesenthal Center — called for Pawluszek’s dismissal from his role in Morawiecki’s office.

“For a Polish government official to attend and abuse an Israeli government-organized Forum on Antisemitism, to deliberately launch a hate campaign against Rafal, demands an immediate condemnation from his boss, Prime Minister Morawiecki, and the dismissal of Pawluszek from all government functions,” Samuels said.

“The repercussions of Pawluszek’s libel have already included threats of violence against Rafal — threats in which the prime minister and his adviser are complicit,” Samuels charged.