{"id":36763,"date":"2016-02-24T18:05:43","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T16:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=36763"},"modified":"2016-02-24T15:27:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T13:27:30","slug":"36763","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=36763","title":{"rendered":"Poland turns history into diplomatic weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Poland turns history into diplomatic weapon<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Jo Harper<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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A Polish-Jewish historian comes under fire for questioning Poland\u2019s historical record.<\/strong><\/span>
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\nJan Gross is a U.S.-Polish Holocaust historian | Janek Skarzynski\/AFP\/Getty<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

WARSAW \u2014 In a campaign to give a better gloss to Poland\u2019s history, President Andrzej Duda launched what he calls an \u201coffensive,\u201d and the first target is U.S.-Polish Holocaust historian Jan Gross.<\/span><\/p>\n

Duda is mulling whether to strip Gross of one of Poland\u2019s highest honors for suggesting that during World War II Poles killed more Jews than they killed Germans. The assertion, which Gross backed up with numbers in an interview with POLITICO, strikes at the heart of Poland\u2019s national narrative \u2014 that it is a nation uniquely harmed by history and for that reason should have a louder voice on the world stage.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a key component of the worldview of the country\u2019s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) ruling party.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHistorical politics should be conducted by the Polish state as an element of the construction of our international position,\u201d Duda said at a recent conference dedicated to the country\u2019s revision of history.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe majority of Poles grew up on the myths of Polish knighthood, conspiracy and struggle and this majority is unwilling and unlikely to change its mind\u201d \u2014 Jan Mu\u015b, an academic from Lublin.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Duda\u2019s efforts are part of a broader campaign by Law and Justice to use the wrongs of the past to fend off criticism of the present.<\/span><\/p>\n

Death camps<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The party has come under international censure for recent steps undermining the functioning of the constitutional court, politicizing the civil service, combining the offices of justice minister and prosecutor general, and putting state media under tighter government control. Officials like Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro have been especially sensitive to any disapproval from German politicians, quickly bringing up Germany\u2019s bloody wartime occupation of Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ziobro is also behind a push to punish publications that refer to \u201cPolish death camps\u201d in reference to wartime Nazi concentration camps on Polish soil. The previous center-right government would send angry diplomatic letters to newspapers and magazines which slighted Poland in that way, but Ziobro wants miscreants to serve jail time for the suggestion.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be a project that meets the expectations of Poles, who are blasphemed in the world, in Europe, even in Germany, that they are the Holocaust perpetrators, that in Poland there were Polish concentration camps, Polish gas chambers. Enough with this lie. There has to be responsibility,\u201d Ziobro said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The government isn\u2019t just focusing on World War II.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wa\u0142\u0119sa\u2019s past<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the central narratives of Law and Justice, strongly promoted by its leader Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski, is that the end of communist rule in 1989 was in large measure a trick that allowed communist elites to enrich themselves with the help of corrupt leaders of the pro-democracy Solidarity labor movement. That means Poland\u2019s independence over the last quarter century has been a sham.<\/span><\/p>\n

A central part of that account is that Lech Wa\u0142\u0119sa, the Solidarity leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Polish president, was in fact a communist agent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Duda’s efforts are part of a broader campaign <\/em><\/span>
\nby Law and Justice | Emmanuel Dunand\/AFP\/Getty<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Duda'sThis week fresh allegations arose that he worked for the communist secret services in the 1970s. He was cleared some years ago by the Institute of National Remembrance, a body that investigates Nazi and communist crimes, but documents seized this week from the house of recently deceased General Czes\u0142aw Kiszczak, a communist-era interior minister, suggest Wa\u0142\u0119sa had been issued with the a codename \u2018Bolek.\u2019 Wa\u0142\u0119sa has admitted to an \u201cincident\u201d with the secret police in the early 1970s, but has adamantly denied being an informant.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou aren\u2019t able to change the real facts with lies,\u201d he wrote on his blog.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the view of S\u0142awomir Cenckiewicz, an anti-Wa\u0142\u0119sa historian, who issued a statement that Wa\u0142\u0119sa\u2019s past \u201chad a crucial meaning\u201d in the way he ran Solidarity and \u201con the shape of reforms after 1989.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mateusz Morawiecki, deputy prime minister and development minister, told Poland\u2019s TVN television that it was \u201cobvious\u201d that Wa\u0142\u0119sa was a communist-era agent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more:<\/span> Poland turns history into diplomatic weapon<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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twoje uwagi, linki, wlasne artykuly, lub wiadomosci przeslij do: webmaster@reunion68.com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poland turns history into diplomatic weapon Jo Harper A Polish-Jewish historian comes under fire for questioning Poland\u2019s historical record. Jan Gross is a U.S.-Polish Holocaust historian | Janek Skarzynski\/AFP\/Getty WARSAW \u2014 In a campaign to give a better gloss to Poland\u2019s history, President Andrzej Duda launched what he calls an \u201coffensive,\u201d and the first target […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36763"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36770,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36763\/revisions\/36770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}