agitated people congregating around the entrance. On my way in, I noticed hostile stares and overheard obscenities shouted in my direction. If I were a politician, or a media personality, the scene might somehow have made sense. But for a researcher, and a historian, whose publications were usually absorbed by a small circle of academic colleagues, all of this was very unusual.
The demonstrators, as I learned, had been mobilised by Robert Bąkiewicz, a right-wing extremist, a candidate for the parliament and darling of the Polish authorities, well funded by the state. In front of me, protesters (some of them with children in tow), held banners which read: “German crimes, German responsibility!”, “Poles were the victims” and “Germans murdered six million Poles”. This last poster would have come as a surprise to the 3 million murdered Polish Jews who, posthumously and unceremoniously, have been recruited to the cause of Polish martyrdom with which they had little, or nothing, to do. It echoed the recently revealed email exchange between the then Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki and his friend, right-wing publicist Bronisław Wildstein, in which Wildstein suggested, that “Polish martyrdom should be promoted with the help of Jewish martyrdom – and it ’s possible”. The protesters were proof that, indeed, it was possible.
Some of the banners and posters were in German, as if to reveal the face of the enemy lurking inside the building. Across
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