Estera Flieger: The populist rewriting of Polish history is a warning to us all

By Dilip -
Populists treat the past like fast food: they go straight for what’s tasty and comforting for them, leaving aside the bits that might be healthier and more nutritious for all. But the honest study of history is not about making you feel good. Take the case of the second world war and how, 80 years after the invasion of Poland, a dispute in Gdańsk over a museum about the war is playing out.

The populists in Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party have meddled so much in redrafting the narrative conveyed both by the museum and its main exhibition that four Polish historians involved with the institution’s creation and launch have been left with little choice but to go to court.
The courts are hardly the best place to adjudicate on the lessons of history. Universities, academies, libraries and museums are surely more suited to such debates. So let me explain how things got to this point.

The Gdańsk Museum of the Second World War opened in 2017 to some fanfare; its distinguishing and unconventional features were to be its special focus both on the global context of the war and on the fate of civilians in the bloody conflict. The main exhibition took eight years to put together. The American historian Timothy Snyder called the project a “civilisational achievement” and “perhaps the most ambitious museum devoted to the second world war in any country”... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/17/populist-rewriting-polish-history-museum-poland-gdansk

 see also

Robert Fisk: In the cases of two separate holocausts, Israel & Poland find it difficult to acknowledge the facts of history // Andre Liebich: Righteous indignation: On the Polish Holocaust law debate

Poland’s nationalists are burying their antisemitic past – this is dangerous. By Przemyslaw Wielgosz

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