Aleksander Kwasniewski, former Polish president: Discussing crimes committed by members of one’s own nation is never easy. Israeli universities are honoring two outstanding Poles who explore Polish crimes against Jews in WWII. Learning the truth would strengthen Poland, too
By Aleksander KWASNIEWSKI
Two outstanding Polish women, Barbara Engelking, a Holocaust scholar and Olga Tokarczuk, a Nobel Prize laureate, both esteemed and courageous contributors to their fields are being awarded honorary doctorates by Tel Aviv University Thursday. This act of recognition from Israel contrasts the responses their work has received in their home country, and sometimes even by the government itself.
In Poland, history has long been treated as the bond of Polish identity and the foundation of our national tradition. It served as “The Ark of the Covenant between the old and the new years,” as renowned Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz wrote at a time when the Poles did not have their own state, when they were a national and religious minority, scattered among neighboring foreign empires.
Then, at the turn of the 20th century, two conflicting visions for and approaches to Polish national history emerged. One aimed to retell history in order to “to uplift hearts”; this was exemplified most prominently by the Polish writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature Henryk Sienkiewicz. His works not only showcase the Poles’ past glory, but also work to create a national mythology, even at the expense of historical truth.
A different approach was proposed by an equally prominent writer, Stefan Żeromski. He believed that it was fundamental to recall the dark moments and despicable facts of Polish history. In his opinion, it was necessary for national “wounds to be scratched, so that they do not scar with a film of meanness.”
Professor Barbara Engelking, who is also being honored at both Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, holds a special position in the public dialogue on the Holocaust in Poland and globally, on the political and moral responsibility of individuals and nations and on the attitude of individuals and communities towards World War II-era crimes against Jews.
Drawing on irrefutable evidence gathered in the course of academic research, Engelking’s output also bears witness to the truth about Polish-Jewish relations in times that were exceptionally tragic for both our peoples. This painful search for truth is admired by some and disparaged by others.
“Uplifting hearts,” as one would assume, has always been more popular than “scratching wounds.” It is therefore unsurprising that Engelking’s books and statements have stirred a heated, ongoing debate in the Polish media. They arouse more opposition than acceptance. It’s obvious her work might be controversial especially in a country with such a complex and painful modern history.
But this controversy stretches beyond the media. The reality is far bleaker when unpleasant truths are questioned by the prime minister and ministers of the Polish government; when attempts to reinterpret history come official “historical policy” enforced by such state institutions as the Institute of National Remembrance; when the education minister of who oversees the Institute of Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the institution that employs Engelking, threatens to cut its grants and refuse to fund any scientific institutions “whose representatives insult Poles.” These actions and statements are contrary to the basic principles of freedom of academic research and constitutional equality in the eyes of the law.
Discussing crimes committed by members of one’s own nation is never easy. When I served as president of Poland, I was confronted with this challenge when public opinion was stirred by the disclosure of the local Polish community’s involvement in the Jedwabne crime, in which some 340 Polish Jews were rounded up by their gentile neighbors and burned to death in a barn. I offered a public apology at the time for this terrible crime.
Difficult as it is, striving to learn the truth is necessary, and it strengthens, rather than weakens, Polish society. After all, there are no criminal nations, there are only criminals of a given nationality. Revealing the truth about the dark aspects of history clears our conscience and honors those who behaved decently, or even heroically, in the times of widespread wickedness and contempt in Europe.
I am convinced that Engelking’s publications bring Poles closer to understanding the complexity of their own history and strengthen us as a nation and as members of an international community based on dialogue, respect and reconciliation.
The other recipient of an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University is Olga Tokarczuk, the Nobel Prize-winning writer who describes and recalls a world that was irretrievably destroyed by Nazi Germany, the memory of our Jewish neighbors who are still present in Poland in unforgettable melodies, cuisine and literature.
Tokarczuk’s “The Books of Jacob” is not only a novel about Jacob Levkovich Frank, the self-proclaimed Messiah of Podolia. It is a metaphorical attempt to salvage an incredibly diverse and unbelievably colorful world of former Central and Eastern Europe that was vanquished by 20th-century nationalist movements.
“We have to face our own history and try to write it anew, without hiding all the terrible things we did, as colonists, as a national majority that suppressed a minority, as slave owners or murderers of Jews,” Tokarczuk said as she received the 2015 Nike Literary Award for “The Books of Jacob.”
As Barbara Engelking and Olga Tokarczuk have helped show us, we have no choice other than to acknowledge hard truths – we emerge only the stronger for it as a nation. We should be grateful for work like theirs that sounds a warning against indifference and desensitization. After all, as we have seen in the most painful of ways, indifference and silence allows evil to flourish.
Aleksander Kwasniewski served as president of Poland from 1995 to 2005. He is a member of the Atlantic Council and sits on the supervisory board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.
