POLS426, Controversies
Uses of the past:
• Elite narratives
• The past as the ‘symbolic currency’
• Used in the present politics
• Helps to foster political identities
• ‘Elite’ narratives are:
- Revealing
- Normative /authoritative
- Narratives provide frames for understanding and interpreting the past.
- To remember our past, we need a scheme that will organize and give the
past meaning
- A language in which it can be expressed
-
A narrative is a concept, a scheme that organise individual’s personal and family
recollections, gives them a meaning and a language of expression.
Disruption in the non-Jewish Poles’ interpretation of the Holocaust - reasons:
- the nature of the events
- the Poles’ position
- the lack of a discourse
Poland’s recent past:
• 1939-1945: Second World War and the Holocaust
• Occupied by Nazi Germany
• Destroyed largest pre-war Jew population
• Largest concentration of Jews lived in Poland
• 1945-1989: communist period (dominance of the Soviet Union [USSR])
• Poland was liberated
• Poland in the zone of political dominance of the Soviet Union/ USSR
• 1989 to present: post-communist period
1939-1945: The Nazi German occupation in Poland had destroyed the largest pre-War
Jewish population in the world. Six extermination camps were placed in occupied Polish
territory.
1945-1989 and 1989-now: Poland is a major site of Holocaust memory and
commemoration, entangled with politics (communist and post-communist, respectively)
Memory politics in Poland: background
• Early 2018: the Polish ruling party (Law and Justice), the ‘anti-defamation law’
• Claims that ‘the Polish Nation’ was complicit in Nazi war crimes:
- first, a criminal offence (up to three years imprisonment)
- Protests and changes
• Later in 2018: the law was modified and ‘defamation’ is a civil offence
• Controversies continue
Memory politics in Poland
Politics of memory is the organisation of collective memory by political agents;
the political means by which events are remembered and recorded or
discarded. ... Memories are also influenced by cultural forces, e.g. popular culture,
as well as social norms. It has also been connected with the construction of
identity
• Effective
• Large groups of Poles: appeased by Law and Justice
• A mixture of xenophobic nationalism and populist economic programmes
• Tool of legitimacy
• Ensures political longevity
• BUT! There are others – competing – memory practices
Non-governmental practices:
- Commemoration
- Intellectual work
- Artistic interventions
- Reformed education
Outcomes:
- split of cultural frames of memory
- gap between discourses: non-official and popular (endorsed by the current government)
This has contributed to the political divide and polarisation currently seen in Poland.
Question:
Why the official memory politics is so effective?
Source reading:
Zuzanna Ginczanka (Zuzanna Polina Gincburg), 1917-1941: Non omnis moriar
Schupo: police officer
Chomin:
