NEWS Poland, Dealing with Remembrance
By Sandro De Bernardin*
On February 6, the Polish President Andrzej Duda signed the law that amends the previous act on the Institute of National Remembrance and provides for the detention for up to three years of anyone “who, in public and against the facts, ascribes to the Polish Nation or to the Polish State, responsibility or co-responsibility for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich” or for “other crimes against peace, humanity or war crimes”. Penalties will not be imposed on “cultural and artistic activities”.
The President was aware of the heated international debate during the progress of the measure. Nevertheless, he announced its submission to the Constitutional court to verify if it violates freedom of expression and if it is clear enough what forms of expression must be sanctioned.
In fact, several academics and even the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) strongly criticised the new provisions because in Article 55a the criminal act is mentioned in vague terms. The Article does not specify which authority and which content will establish if a statement or a historical re-enactment are punishable. Moreover, it is not clear how it will be determined if the deed is committed as part of an artistic or scientific activity. Or what would constitute a malicious defamation of Poland: a research, a statement, the memoir of a survivor or of a witness, the story of a tour guide?
It’s not easy for any country to deal with its history, especially when it comes to the Holocaust. As evident also from the discussion encouraged by the 80th anniversary of the promulgation of the racial laws in Italy, Nazi atrocities could count on the complicity and connivance of people, groups, and institutions in the occupied countries. The difficulty is even bigger in Central and Eastern European countries, burdened by two legacies from the past. One of them is a creeping anti-Semitic feeling that has often resulted in wicked outbreaks of violence, also in a not so distant past. The other is the subjection, until 1989, to communist regimes that were not interested in a detailed analysis of the atrocities committed during the war, to which Soviets also contributed (an example is the Katyn massacre).
Western countries started to keep alive the memory and to analyse the Holocaust events in the 1960s. In the late 1990s, they acknowledged the need of a systematic international cooperation in order to develop historical research, preserve testimonies and sites, and pass on to new generations the knowledge of what happened, so that history does not repeat itself. That’s why, on the basis of a Declaration adopted in Stockholm in 2000, the IHRA, which has now 31 member states including Poland, was constituted. The mission of the IHRA, whose Chairmanship this year will be held by Italy as from 6 March, is to encourage quality studies, promote good teaching and museum practice, as well as monitor the member states’ situations.
The text of the new Polish law explains two points, but the polemics have been revolving around a third one, not openly named, but actually pivotal.
The first point is about banishing the use of terms such as “Polish concentration camps / death camps”. It is a legitimate request. Auschwitz camp, as well as all the other facilities where the Shoah took place, was wanted and managed by the Nazis in a moment when the Polish State didn’t formally exist anymore. No less, its first victims were Polish political prisoners. The phrases Poland condemns are the misguided result of a rough approximation and they must be corrected (speaking of “concentration camps in Poland” instead). The IHRA itself decidedly expressed this opinion in a document approved by its plenary Assembly last November.
The second point concerns the criminalization of anyone who attributes to the Polish nation or state the responsibility of crimes committed in the Polish land during the war. This rises perplexity because it is obvious that there could be no act of the Polish State whatsoever in the period it didn’t exist anymore and the country was occupied and terrified by a foreign power.
Here comes the fear of many scholars that the matter has been brought in to disguise the third – and crucial – point, the one about the relationship between Jews and Polish during the war. Poland paid a tremendous tribute to the double tragedy of war and Holocaust. But not even Poland can claim to limit the revising of its past to the valorisation of the most noble aspects. Among the Gentiles of the nations recognized by Yad Vashem memorial, Polish people represent the biggest group: 6.700 people who are believed to have saved 30.000 Jews. But the perpetrators of the pogroms in Jedwabne in 1941 and 1942 (and in Kielce in 1946) were Polish as well. And, also among Polish, there were whistle-blowers and collaborationists.
The worries risen by the new law are made clear also looking at the harsh internal debate about the history of the Holocaust which has recently popped up in Poland. Speaking of freedom of speech, many Polish scholars are already at each other’s throat with their government. The approximation of the new legislative text is making many people worried that its actuation may discourage any discussion, any research and any release of works not sympathising with the popular self-acquitting point of view. More meaningful aspects in this context are, on one side, the repeated accusations that the Polish government has invalidated the autonomy of the judiciary system and, on the other, the recent request of the European Commission to start a prosecution against Poland because of the violation of Art 7 of the EU Treaty.
In conclusion, the international community is expecting a solid demonstration from Warsaw authorities that their purpose to protect the “public good” of the good reputation of Poland is not inconsistent with protecting the “public good” – of a much more general interest – represented by the historical truth.
*Sandro De Bernardin is an ambassador and the Head of the Italian Delegation at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. On March 6 he became the chair of IHRA for 2018. The article was originally published in the Magazine of Treccani, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana and was translated by Sara Volpe and Rachele Ferin, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of Trieste University, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.