Polticized memory in Poland: anti-communism and the Holocaust

ABSTRACT

In this article, I trace how political and intellectual elites in contemporary Poland weave the stories of the recent past, paying particular attention to narratives of Polish-Jewish relations and imbrications with communism. I first outline the three main narrations of the past and identify their divergent themes; I then specify their consonant and similar motifs. I demonstrate that despite differences, all major political actors conflate communism with Jewishness and circulate the myth of Żydokomuna. In so doing, they discursively establish the symmetry of suffering between the groups, and they affect the way contemporary Poles remember the Holocaust.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective memory
• political parties
• post-communist transition
• myth of Żydokomuna

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Kate Korycki is a Peacock Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University, in Kingston Canada. Her broad research agenda concerns the articulation of identities, collective memories and group imaginaries. She is currently preparing a manuscript on the Politics of Memory, concentrating on Poland and post-transition societies. She is also researching her new project on the Politics of Amnesia, concentrating on Canada and liberal democracies writ large.

Notes

1. Koźmińska-Frejlak and Krzemiński, “Stosunek społeczeństwa,” 98.

2. Gross, “Tangled Web,” 57.

3. Roguska, “Postrzeganie Żydów.”

4. For a small sample of Polish scholarship on the topic, see Engelking, “Jest taki piękny słoneczny dzień … ;” Grabowski, “Rescue for Money,” and Hunt for the Jews; Grabowski and Engelking, “Żydowskich przestępców należy karać śmiercią!”; Grabowski and Libionka, Klucze i Kasa; Gross, Sąsiedzi, “A Tangled Web,” Fear, “Sprawcy, ofiary i inni”; Janicka, “Pamięć przyswojona,” “‘To nie była Ameryka’”; Machcewicz and Persak, Wokół Jedwabnego; and Żbikowski, “‘Night Guard’.” I list scholarship emerging from Poland, as it is more likely to affect historical understandings of Polish elites.

5. Korycki, “Memory, Party Politics”; Szczerbiak, “Poland (Mainly) Chooses Stability.”

6. Nalepa, Skeletons in the Closet; Nedelsky, “Divergent Responces”; Stan, Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe; and “If I Could Turn Back Time”; Welsh, “Dealing with the Communist Past”; and Williams, Fowler and Szczerbiak, “Explaining Lustration in Central Europe.”

7. Bernhard and Kubik, “Roundtable Discord”; Kubik and Bernhard, “A Theory of the Politics of Memory”; Lebow, “The Memory of Politics” Rév, Retroactive Justice; and Verdery, The political lives.

8. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory; Olick, “Collective Memory: The Two Cultures,” and “Foreword”; Schwartz, “Rethinking the Concept”; and Somers, “Narrative, Identity, and Social Action.” Note, Somers does not write on collective memory directly. However, she explores the analytical force of narratives and their connection to interests and identities. See note 36 for more.

9. Chmielewska, “Hydra pamiątek”; Eyoh, “Conflicting Narratives”; Gillis, “Introduction. Memory and Identity”; Hobsbawm, “The Social Function of the Past”; Hodgkin and Radstone, Memory, History, Nation; Kubik, “Cultural Legacies”; Le Goff, History and Memory; Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country - Revisited; Margalit, The Ethics of Memory; Martin, “The Choices of Identity”; Neumayer and Mink, History, Memory and Politics; Nora, “Between Memory and History”; Novick, The Holocaust in American Life; Simon and Rosenberg, “Beyond the Logic of Emblemization”; and Zerubavel, “The Historic, the Legendary, and the Incredible.”

10. Olick, “Collective Memory: The Two Cultures” and “Foreword.”

11. Schwartz “Rethinking the Concept.”

12. Ibid.

13. In this work I rely on the term ‘communism’ to analyze the work of a symbolic trope of contemporary political speech. This trope is sometimes replaced by ‘real socialism,’ or ‘Polish People's Republic’ (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa - PRL), or ‘Polish United Workers’ Party’ (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza - PZPR). I fold all these terms into ‘communism.’

14. Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” and Practical Reason.

15. Komitet Obywatelski (KO). June 4, 1989 election was semi-free as only 35% of Parliamentary seats were contested. 65% of seats remained reserved for PZPR.

16. Porozumienie Centrum (PC), Kongres Liberalno-Demokratyczny (KLD), Unia Demokratyczna (UD). The later two parties differed slightly in terms of programs, but they belonged together according to my typology.

17. Unia Wolności (UW).

18. Socjaldemokracja Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej (SdRP), Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność (AWS).

19. Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS), Platforma Obywatelska (PO). A small and now defunct Democratic Party (Partia Demokratyczna, PD), closely aligned with the former UD, also emerged from the 2001 split.

20. Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej (SLD).

21. Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL), Razem (R).

22. With the exception of 2015 electoral victor the PiS, all governments were formed in coalition with smaller parties.

23. PiS Program 2014. The transition winner one adopted similar strategies before: first in the repeated lustration campaigns, second, in the calls to end the reign of the 3rd Republic (RP). 3rd RP is a strategic trope, which combines the rule of the PO and the SLD into one, hostile to Poland, period. For more on these strategies, see Szczerbiak, “Dealing with the Communist Past,” “The Birth of a Bipolar Party System,” and “Poland (mainly) chooses stability.”

24. Korycki, “Memory, Party Politics.”

25. Rather than saying, ‘we are building roads because citizens need them,’ they were saying, ‘we are catching up from backwardness,’ for instance. Roads would have been the point of both remarks, but the justification of action moves from the present need to past-created problem.

26. PO Program 2015. For more on the representation of the past as a justification of rule, see, Hobsbawm, “The Social Function of the Past”; Lebow, “The Memory of Politics in Postwar Europe”; Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited; and Vrdery, The Political Lives.

27. Niezbędnik Historyczny Lewicy has no identified author. All translations of it are mine.

28. Kubik, “Cultural Legacies.”

29. Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN). I rely on the English version of It All Began in Poland. When referring to it, I use the names of the contributing authors. The volume has no identified editor or translator(s).

30. For the exploration of the changing personal and social connections between the PiS and its milieu, see Friszke, “Pisanie historii” and Szeligowska, “Patriotism in Mourning.”

31. Kuroń and Żakowski, PRL dla początkujących.

32. Bloński, “The Poor Poles.” The article first appeared in 1987 in Tygodnik Powszechny.

33. Lipski, “Dwie ojczyzny.”

34. Michnik, “Poland and the Jews” and “The Kielce Pogrom.”

35. I follow Somers’ “Narrative, Identity, and Social Action,” in which she identified four features of narratives as analytics: instrumental appropriations designate that which is selected from history, relationality of parts establishes their identities, causal emplotments speak to ways in which narrative elements are arranged, and in what temporal and special sequences they have been placed. I supplement Somers’ elements with sustained attention to emerging judgments.

36. Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944).”

37. Ibid., 25. Poland lost its statehood between 1772–1918 when its territory was divided by Russia, Prussia and Austro-Hungary. The loss of statehood happened in three stages, referred to as partitions.

38. “In the final analysis, the result of the campaign [defense of independence in September 1939] was decided by the Soviet invasion” (Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944),” 25).

39. Ibid, 2009, 59 and Żaryn, “Communism Polish Style (1944–1956),” 67.

40. Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944),” 63.

41. Ibid., 32–3.

42. Ibid., 33.

43. Ibid., 43.

44. Ibid., 59.

45. Ibid., 63.

46. Ibid., 24.

47. Ibid., 32, 49, 62.

48. Ibid., 49; and Żaryn, “Communism Polish Style (1944–1956),” 67.

49. Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944),” 35.

50. Note that Germans were blamed for planning to exterminate Poles, and Soviets were blamed for actually doing it. This judgment is unaffected by the losses listed in the narrative: over 5 million dead by Germans and over 1.2 million dead by Soviets (Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944),” 63).

51. Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944),” 35.

52. Ibid., 41.

53. Ibid., 56.

54. Ibid., 43.

55. Which they were, if Poles are understood in civic, rather than ethnic, terms. For the exploration of the distinction, see Brubaker, Citizenship and nationhood.

56. Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944),” 44. Jedwabne is the town in which Polish inhabitants murdered their Jewish neighbors in 1941. They were unaided by Germans. For more on the events, see Gross, Sąsiedzi and Machcewicz and Persak, Wokół Jedwabnego.

57. Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944),” 44. For a repudiation of this view, see Gross, Fear.

58. Wieczorkiewicz, “Between Two Foes (1939–1944)” 45–6.

59. Ibid., 45.

60. Ibid., 45.

61. Ibid., 46.

62. Ibid., 46.

63. Ibid., 46 and 63.

64. Żaryn, “Communism Polish Style (1944–1956), 78.

65. Ibid., 79.

66. Ibid., 79.

67. Ibid., 81.

68. Ibid., 81–2. NKVD – People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Soviet secret political police), AK – Home Army (Armia Krajowa), CKZP - Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce, PPP – Polish Underground State (Polskie Państwo Podziemne), UB – Polish Security Police (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa). For more on the Kielce pogrom, see Gross, Fear; Kersten, Polacy, Żydzi, Komunizm and Szaynok, Pogrom Żydów w Kielcach. The event was significant enough to merit a mention in Judt's history (Postwar, 43; “The Past is Another Country,” 311 & 321, note 28).

69. For more on the maneuver which ontologizes political affiliation, see Korycki, “Memory, Party Politics.”

70. For more on Żydokomuna see Gross, Fear; Śpiewak, Żydokomuna; and critical of Śpiewak, Zawadzka, “Żydokomuna” and “Zdzieranie masek.”

71. For more on the ambiguity of those identifications, see Kersten's Polacy, Żydzi, Komunizm – an account, which is especially attentive to the issue of self-identification. See also, Torańska, “Them” and Zawadzka “Żydokomuna” and “Zdzieranie masek.” Torańska and Zawadzka demonstrate how many communists renounced national, ethnic or religious belonging in favor of internationalism of communism. To have them now assigned to a category “Jew” or “Pole” is a retroactive invention at best, or a normative elevation of blood-based belonging, at worst. Epistemologically, if one assumes the right of individuals to self-identify, then all speculation about the numbers of the so-called Jews in the post-war security apparatus is mute, as the sources of that knowledge are no longer able to declare it.

72. For more on the establishment of powerful authorities to sort humanity, see Foucault, The History of Sexuality, The Order of Things and Discipline and Punish.

73. Żaryn called himself a Catholic Pole in our interview on 7 February 2013, in Warsaw.

74. As per note 29, I relied on an English version of the document.

75. Kuroń and Żakowski, PRL dla początkujących, 5.

76. Ibid., 5–99.

77. Ibid., 28, 43–45, 66–70.

78. Ibid., 13, 31–40, 45–51.

79. Ibid., 42.

80. Ibid., 39–40.

81. Ibid., 17–9.

82. Ibid., 42, 47, 65, 116, 137.

83. Ibid., 71–86. Polska Droga do Socjalizmu – 1956 Party's slogan.

84. Ibid., 199–207.

85. Ibid., 207–33.

86. Ibid., 261–77.

87. PO Program 2015.

88. Kuroń and Żakowski, PRL dla początkujących, 91–2.

89. Ibid., 133.

90. Ibid., 36.

91. Ibid., 36.

92. Ibid., 36.

93. Ibid., 37. For explanation of the source of the misunderstanding, see note 96, below.

94. Ibid., 37–38. Polska Partia Robotnicza (PPR) refers to the ruling party at the time. PPR became PZPR in 1948.

95. Ibid., 35. Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (PKWN).

96. The operation of this myth was alluded to in the story of Kuroń little brother walking with his grandfather and being accosted by an angry mob (Kuroń and Żakowski, PRL dla początkujących, 36).

97. Kuroń and Żakowski, PRL dla początkujących, 37.

98. Ibid., 37.

99. Ibid., 37–8.

100. The structure is replicated in Błoński, “The Poor Poles”; Lipski, “Speech Delivered in 1983” and “Dwie ojczyzny;” and in Michnik's, “Poland and the Jews.” I indicate their additions and specifications in the notes to follow.

101. Engelking, Jest taki piękny słoneczny dzień and Gross, Fear.

102. Lipski, “Dwie ojczyzny,” 63. All references to the ‘most numerous in the world,’ will have this competitive bent. For more on the state's competition for ethical capital, using the actions of its heroic few, see Judt's writing on France (“The Past is Another Country”). The commonality of competition should not obscure its instrumentality. In Polish narratives it is doubly productive, for if one were to recalculate the ratio of those who were saved to the numbers of minority population, Poland would not top the charts. Note that Błoński's “The Poor Poles” and Lipski's “Dwie ojczyzny” are explicitly motivated by a wish to correct the alleged “bad” opinion of Poles in the West, even if Błoński claims to write against such a trend. Both, therefore, place Polish-Jewish story in a comparative, if not competitive, setting. For critical exploration of competitive commemorative practices see Janicka, Festung Warschau; and Zubrzycki, “History and National Sensorium,” “Polish Mythology” and “Narrative Shock.”

103. Błoński “The Poor Poles” 45 and Lipski “Dwie ojczyzny,” 62.

104. For an example of how the myths are produced, see Błoński “The Poor” and Lipski “Dwie ojczyzny.” For a challenge to the myth, see Gross, “Tangled Web;” Janicka, “Pamięć przyswojona” and “To nie była Ameryka;” Tokarska-Bakir, “Sprawiedliwi niesprawiedliwi,” and “Incognito, Ergo Sum”; and Żukowski, “Obrzeża Zagłady.” In brief, Gross challenged the ‘bystander’ category on two fronts: its translation to Polish as ‘witness’ is inaccurate, and its applicability, in the context of ultimate violence of the Holocaust, is oxymoronic: the supposed inaction is a form of action and has consequences. He argued away the practice of contextualizing Polish actions against Jews, which he showed as serving to disguise Poles’ saturating and general hostility. Janicka went further and repudiated the myth explicitly. She demonstrated that Poles were not indifferent to the Holocaust, but holding virulently stereotypical views, were its active or ideational supporters. Violence, and the desirability of violence against Jews, she claimed, was not a matter of exception but of cultural norm (Janicka, “Pamięć przyswojona,” 156 and “To nie była Ameryka”).

105. It is like saying ‘he drove the car into a tree, but no, he had not been seen drinking before.’ In the absence of any hypothetical explanation, one is left either suspecting or concluding that drinking was the cause of the crash.

106. There were over 3mln self-identified Jews in the pre-War Poland (Porter-Szücs, Poland in the Modern World) and there were fewer that 20,000 members in the Communist Party of Poland prior to 1936 (Trembicka, “The Communist Party”). Even if all Polish communists self-identified as Jews, which was unlikely, this would still result in fewer than 1‰ (1 in a 1000) of the so-called Jews being communists.

107. In one exception to this trend, in 2007, the Party implemented its own version of the lustration policy to prevent a harsher policy being adopted by others (Nalepa, Skeletons in the Closet). For more on the mildness of the repudiation of the post-communist successor parties, see Grzymała-Busse, Redeeming the communist past.

108. Sejm – lower chamber of the Polish Parliament.

109. Niezbędnik Historyczny Lewicy, 2 (emphasis added). Miller uses the term 3rd Republic (RP) to designate post 1989 Poland.

110. Ibid., 9 (emphasis added).

111. Ibid., 13. PPS – Polska Partia Socjalistyczna.

112. Ibid., 11.

113. Ibid., 14 & 16. KPP – Komunistyczna Partia Polski.

114. Ibid., 22 and 17.

115. Ibid., 26.

116. Ibid., 24.

117. Ibid., 25.

118. Ibid., 30.

119. Ibid., 32–3.

120. Ibid., 31.

121. Ibid., 36. Stalinism ended in 1956 even though Stalin died in 1953. The end of the eponymous era coincides with the 1956 20th Party Congress in USSR, where Khrushchev delivered his ‘secret speech’ on the erroneous cult of the personality. For more see Judt, Postwar, 309–10.

122. Ibid., 36–7.

123. Ibid., 38.

124. Ibid., 39.

125. Ibid., 41. Agriculture, which in Poland was privatized, was unique in the Soviet bloc.

126. Ibid., 40–44.

127. Ibid., 45.

128. Ibid., 46.

129. Ibid., 48.

130. Ibid., 49.

131. Ibid., 51. In the interest of space the list and exploration of positives is abbreviated. I also leave out Solidarity and the Martial Law, as they are not pertinent to my overall argument.

132. Ibid., 19 & 30.

133. Ibid., 20.

134. Ibid., 39.

135. I do not address all omissions but only on those that relate to the issue of Polish, Jewish and communist entanglement. I do not analyze the absence of an admission that PPS did not consent to the merger in 1948, or the absence of references to communist violence (with the exception of Martial Law the topic was not covered).

136. Schwartz in “Rethinking the Concept” called them redundant (13).

137. For more see Janicka, “Holokaustyzacja” and Zawadzka, “Zdzieranie masek.”

138. Michnik, “The Kielce Pogrom,” 173.

139. Błoński, “The Poor Poles,” 44.

140. It is beyond the scope of this work to explore the issue of anti-Polonism, a charge that is levied by both Lipski (“Speech delivered in 1983”) and Michnik (“Poland and the Jews”). The charge equalizes Jewish alleged antipathy towards Poles, to anti-Semitism. That the first is not threatening to Polish survival but only its self-image, while the other had existential consequences, escapes the presentation. Even Błoński who claimed to have deplored the “haggling” over moral responsibility, still placed his call for reflection in the context of a conversation with non-Poles (“The Poor Poles,” 44).

141. This is explicitly stated in Machalica quote above (note 110).

142. Tokarska-Bakir, “Obsesja niewinności,” 16. Other accounts of course exist – the most obvious examples are those offered by Jan Tomasz Gross. As this analysis has shown however, his way of presenting the story is not replicated in the elite accounts.