Enforcing the lies

From the beginning of this century the politics of memory started to play a prominent role in Poland. This phenomenon was, in part, due to the expectations of the European Union, which pressured its future members to align their understanding of the Shoah with what Western democracies considered the dominant narrative. A narrative which recognised that the Holocaust was not only a German project, that all European nations were also, to some extent, responsible for the Jewish catastrophe. Equally important was the long-­pending desire for prospective EU nations to take stock of their own national pasts, which until recently had been obfuscated, distorted or simply removed from the curriculum by communist authorities. Finally, nationalisms began to grow across Eastern Europe. The Holocaust was, early on, at the centre of Polish memorial policies because it was the only part of Polish history with a universal meaning. Though few people outside of Poland knew anything about Polish history, almost all had heard of Auschwitz. The Holocaust was, therefore, the only part of Polish history that the Polish authorities had no control over. To gain control over the Holocaust narrative has become the main objective of the “history policy ” of the Polish state.

In Poland, the pressures of identity politics resulted in the creation of several institutions charged with the development

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the jewish quarterly