unable to make an automatic association between the Nazis and the Germans. One had to be more explicit, argued the Polish parliamentarians. Point taken. More importantly, concentration camps, however horrible, were no match – in memorial terms – for the death camps. In the new memorial reality of the European Union, however, the death camps could not be dismissed altogether, as happened in the past. The new commemoration was intended to fill this gap, and deliberately confuse concentration and extermination camps, elevating Polish suffering to the “desired” level of the Holocaust.

The date of the celebration commemorates the first transport of ethnic Poles, political prisoners for the most part, who arrived at Auschwitz I on 14 June 1940. With this transport, Auschwitz finally had the desired stamp of Polish suffering and Polish ethnic and national association. What followed the establishment of the new National Remembrance Day was not difficult to predict. On 14 June 2023, I stood in front of an enormous screen, strategically placed at the Warsaw Central Railway Station, one of the busiest spots in the Polish capital. On the screen were emaciated figures clad in the characteristic striped clothing of concentration camp prisoners. The signs on the screen read: “KL Auschwitz was created to exterminate Poles”. The same film was shown over and over, in many other Polish cities. Public spaces and bus shelters were covered with huge posters featuring Auschwitz

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