and enforcement of an official, state-approved version of national history. Foremost among them was the Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, or IPN), established by parliament in 1998. Initially, the mandate of the institution was to look at twentieth-century crimes committed against the Polish nation and to prosecute people involved with the communist system during the 1944–1989 period. With time, the mandate has been expanded, and now includes the care of enormous archival holdings transferred into the custody of the institute, and educational activities beefed up with a massive research portfolio. The IPN soon went on a shopping spree, hiring hundreds of professional historians; it became the largest producer of historiography in Poland. Nowadays, the IPN, weaponised by the Polish state with a generous budget, and with more than 2500 employees (including 300 with doctoral and professorial titles) has become the major player on the “memorial” field worldwide. It has also become a clear and present threat to the memory of the Holocaust.
The IPN, from the very beginning, had a distinctly right-wing tilt (“defending the good name of the nation”) and, not surprisingly, became a refuge for nationalists of various hues. One IPN employee, Wojciech Muszyński, has openly praised the National Radical Camp, or ONR, one of the most militant, rabidly antisemitic organisations of pre-war Poland.
whitewash
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