Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Chairman of the Law and Justice political party, during The Patriotic Meeting of Independence Day, November 11, 2017, Kracow, Poland. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.

According to a recent poll, the attitude of the Polish people towards other nationals changed dramatically over the period of just one year. Compared with 2017, Polish approval rates of many nations took a deep plunge. Sympathy towards Jews and Arabs, already low, dropped in 2018 by 13 and 6 percent, respectively. Given the persistent anti-Jewish and anti-Islamic propaganda in the Polish media, this is rather unsurprising. Approval of the Germans dropped by 16 percent, as if the difficult and protracted process of the reconciliation between Poland and its “eternal enemy” had never happened.

What is really puzzling is that Polish approval of their southern neighbours, the Czechs, took a nosedive by 15 percent; Italians, Russians, Vietnamese and Japanese by 13 percent, and the British by 8 percent. Even the Hungarians and Americans are liked less among Poles by 14 and 11 percent, respectively.

To complete the picture one should also mention that the Poles never liked each other very much. According to a recently published book, they were particularly disliked by their own political and intellectual leaders[1]. This abrupt change in Polish sentiment requires some explanation.
This abrupt change in Polish sentiment requires some explanation. Taking a longer perspective, one may say that in the past, when the Poles were cordoned off by the Iron Curtain and unable to travel, they viewed all western, nay, all other countries as lands of happiness and extended their hospitality to all rarely-seen foreigners. Nowadays, thanks to the European Union and its Schengen Treaty, the Poles move freely a lot in great numbers to all destinations. And they emigrate: according to official statistics (real numbers are likely to be higher) in 2016 there were more than 2.5 million Poles living abroad, the majority of them (2.1 million) in European Union countries. Nearly 790 thousand of them took up residence in Great Britain, almost 700 thousand in Germany, while in the Netherlands and Ireland, about 115 thousand.

No conclusive explanation can be inferred from these facts and numbers, though. First-hand acquaintance with foreigners might have helped to dispel any fears and thus potential animosities towards them. But in that case Polish sympathies towards them should be rising rather than dropping.

On the other hand, a direct acquaintance with other peoples may have dispelled the last vestiges of the past allure felt by Poles to everything foreign, with the exception of foreign currencies, that is. This would explain the sudden souring of their attitudes. Nevertheless, even if true, this still does not account for the fact that Polish approval of other nationals has swayed so dramatically within just one year. The explanation must be sought elsewhere.
 

The company of strangers

Before attempting to provide one, we should note that while the rapid change in the attitude of Poles towards other nationalities is puzzling, we – the Polish people – are not alone in this. The public attitude towards other nationals nowadays is noticeably swinging in Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, as well as in the USA and Great Britain. We – the Polish people – are not alone in this.

Abrupt changes in public mood are not confined to our post-national and multicultural condition. According to a well-researched historical example, in 1933 nearly 30 per cent of the Jewish population in Germany, 503 thousand strong, which accounted for only 0.76 percent of the German population, were in marital ties with native Germans. Niall Ferguson writes that the cities of Hamburg and Munich saw the highest rates of Jewish-German intermarriage, and that the figures were well above average in Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Leipzig, and even Breslau, the present Wrocław[2], my home town. Bearing in mind the principle that it takes two to tango, these numbers cannot but reflect at least some level of mutual Jewish-German sympathy, not just one-sided sentiment. And yet soon thereafter, with the rise of the Nazi party to power, these sentiments were rapidly reversed.
 

Mood swings

Here is another vivid example. Bertrand Russell remembered the outbreak of the First World War in the following way: “At the end of July [1914], I was at Cambridge, discussing the situation with all and sundry. I found it impossible to believe that Europe would be so mad as to plunge into war, but I was persuaded that, if there was war, England would be involved. I collected signatures of a large number of professors and Fellows to a statement in favour of neutrality which appeared in the Manchester Guardian. The day war was declared, almost all of them changed their minds. Looking back, it seems extraordinary that one did not realize more clearly what was coming. I spent the evening of August 4 walking round the streets, especially in the neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square, noticing cheering crowds, and making myself sensitive to the emotions of passers-by. During this and the following days I discovered to my amazement that average men and women were delighted at the prospect of war. I had fondly imagined, what most Pacifists contended, that wars were forced upon a reluctant population by despotic and Machiavellian governments.”[3]

Four years later he made the following observation: “The end of the war was so swift and dramatic that no one had time to adjust feelings to changed circumstances. I learned on the morning of November 11 [1918], a few hours in advance of the general public, that the armistice was coming. I went out into the street, and told a Belgian soldier, who said: ‘Tiens, c’est chic!’ I went into a tobacconist’s and told the lady who served me. ‘I am glad of that,’ she said, ‘because now we shall be able to get rid of the interned Germans.’ At eleven o’clock, when the armistice was announced, I was in Tottenham Court Road. Within two minutes, everybody in all the shops and offices had come into the street. They commandeered the buses, and made them go where they liked. I saw a man and woman, complete strangers to each other, meet in the middle of the road and kiss as they passed. The crowd rejoiced and I also rejoiced”[4].

These and numerous other examples, both historical and contemporaneous, testify to the essential volatility of public sentiment among all nations. Whatever their ethnicity and culture, people are not always kind-hearted to each other. These examples also suggest that an explanation of these phenomena will have something to do with the political mechanics.
 

Neo-nationalism and neo-authoritarianism

Since 1989, Poland has been presented as a role-model of transition from communism to liberal democracy. However, following the decisive electoral victory of the party Law and Justice in 2015, Poland has experienced not only the above-described volatility of the attitudes towards foreigners, but has also become a seedbed of more serious xenophobic phenomena.

As far as the reversal in the Polish attitudes towards their neighbours is concerned, I would like to suggest that its explanation is to be sought in the fact that, ever since the peaceful “Solidarity” revolution in 1989, Polish politics has been fuelled by the struggle over who truly takes credit for the successful overthrow of Communism. Driven by this, Polish politics became the arena for a struggle of personalities between its main actors, with ideology and political agendas playing an important, but ultimately secondary and instrumental role. Ever since the peaceful “Solidarity” revolution in 1989, Polish politics has been fuelled by the struggle over who truly takes credit for the successful overthrow of Communism.

This struggle has been going on, and continues to do so, between the champions of the idea of the open society and the advocates of a more tight, self-enclosed community. The former, among which I include centrist and liberal parties, as well as those calling themselves social democratic, successfully worked for the transformation of the Polish economy, the accession of Poland to NATO and the European Union, and, with two interruptions, have managed the country from 1989 until 2015. Donald Tusk, former Polish PM and present President of the EU, has been a leader of these liberal forces for more than a decade.

Amongst the latter are the right-wing, conservative and nationalist parties. The central figure in this nationalist part of the political spectrum is Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Law and Justice and the surviving twin brother of the former president who died in the airplane crash in Smolensk in 2010. For decades Kaczyński has led his party unchallenged, despite a number of consecutive electoral defeats.
 

Liberal arrogance

The tables were turned when in 2015 the candidate supported by Kaczyński won the presidential elections, his party soon thereafter securing for itself an overwhelming parliamentary majority. Several factors contributed to this.

On the part of the liberals, three factors played a crucial role. First of all, there was the liberal disregard for the significant social costs of the transformation. According to Eurostat, in 2008 out of 23.5 million Europeans with an income smaller than 10 euro per day, 10.5 million were Polish citizens. 44 per cent of Europeans with incomes below €5 a day, lived in Poland. No less significant was the arrogance demonstrated by members of the liberal parties. Thirdly, their past successes lulled the liberals into excessive confidence. They had come to believe that their rule would be secured indefinitely. Two examples will serve. Shortly before the presidential elections in 2015 Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of the liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, said that the liberal incumbent, Bronisław Komorowski, could only be defeated if he ran over a pregnant nun on the zebra while drunk-driving. In the run-up to the general elections in 2015, Donald Tusk quipped that there was no one he could lose the elections to. It turned out that both were hopelessly wrong – a text-book example of Arnold Toynbee’s “resting upon one’s oars”[5].
 

Politics as extermination

On the nationalist side of the spectrum, scarred by numerous past defeats, which only propelled his political ambitions, Kaczyński resorted to the populist redistributive agenda on the one hand, and on the other, to nationalist propaganda. The political efficacy of redistributionist promises in the electoral process does not need much by way of explanation. What calls for an explanation is the overwhelming success of his exclusionary agenda.

Three elements seem to have played a decisive role in this. The first may be encapsulated in the concept of voluntary servitude; the second refers to the Polish brand of inferiority complex, while the third has to do with a deep-seated Polish anti-Semitism, and more generally, exclusivism.
As for the first factor, one should say that Kaczynski has managed to secure for himself the position of an unquestioned authority by surrounding himself with faithful acolytes, mostly amateurs-turned-politicians, whose behaviour may be perfectly summed up by the ‘voluntary servitude’ diagnosed by Etienne de la Boetie[6]. They have returned his favours by a staunch and blind obedience towards him, and a ferocious, contemptuous and indeed exterminating attitude towards the political opposition. Personal subservience towards Kaczyński pushed his acolytes into scenes of mutual rivalry that have erupted into all sorts of exclusionary ideas, policies and bills which they hoped would please their party chief, prompting him in return, to reward them with more favours and stronger positionings within his neo-authoritarian party. Another way to describe the internal dynamics of the party might be found in Friedrich von Hayek’s reply to the question “why the worst get on top” in totalitarian regimes. As he wrote, an aspiring dictator will be able to obtain the support:
 

“of all the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently. It will be those whose vague and imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions and emotions are readily aroused who will thus swell the ranks of the totalitarian party”[7].

Playthings of history

As for the Polish inferiority complex; for more than two centuries, Poland has been a plaything of history, not its agent. Ever since the first partition of Poland in 1772, and especially the third one in 1795, when it ceased to exist as an independent state, the fate of the Polish territory and population was decided by its powerful neighbours, Germany, Austria and Russia.

During that period, Polish culture and language was preserved by the thin layer of intelligentsia and by the Roman Catholic Church. Re-established as a state in 1918, after barely 21 years Poland fell victim to the invasion of the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the period of 1945-1989 it existed as a crippled and inefficient state within the orbit of the Soviet Union. The Poles as a nation fully realised the efficacy of their regained collective agency only in 1980, when the “Solidarity” movement was born in the Gdańsk Shipyard, and again in 1989 when a revived “Solidarity” led the successful opposition to communist rule. Polish culture and language was preserved by the thin layer of intelligentsia and by the Roman Catholic Church.

Due to these all too rare opportunities for collectively exercised agency, there is among Poles a powerful longing for dignity, recognition and respect, both internally and internationally, coupled with an acute collective inferiority complex.

Kaczyński has found a way to satisfy this deep-felt need for recognition. He did so by breathing new life into the concept of sovereignty, and by reviving and fostering those exclusionary sentiments.

Games of altar and throne

As far as Polish anti-Semitism is concerned, over the centuries the Roman Catholic Church in Poland has worked on and consistently upheld an exclusionary stereotype of a “Pole-the-catholic”. This stereotype was also useful to the Church during Communist rule. The stereotype was especially directed, and recurrently used, against Jews living in the Polish territories, infrequently leading to violent bouts of rabid anti-Semitism.

Nowadays, the stereotype continues to function in the public consciousness. During the long pontificate of John Paul II, the bishops of the Church displayed self-assuredness and arrogance as they capitalized, personally and institutionally, on the “Polish Pope”, while neglecting and violating his teachings, most especially those regarding the Jews, “older brothers in faith”.

Nowadays a majority of the bishops are influenced by the radical nationalist ideology propagated by an enterprising Redemptorist friar, Tadeusz Rydzyk, who has built a powerful media-and-business empire, becoming a mentor to and sponsor of various of his chosen right-wing parties. Ever since the inception of his business career, he has been the main supporter of Law and Justice. It was not the bishops, but this friar, who engineered the present alliance between the Altar and the Throne in Poland.

Contagious examples

All the above, though important, still does not explain the exclusionary drive in Poland under the present regime. Searching for clues, I would like to invoke one of the maxims of Francois de la Rochefoucauld, who wrote: “Nothing is so contagious as example, and we never do very good deeds or very evil ones without producing imitations. We copy the good deeds in a spirit of emulation, and the bad ones because of the malignity of our nature – which shame used to hold under lock and key, but an example sets free”[8].

To put it concisely: shame inhibits human wickedness, while a wicked example encourages it. The example is especially powerful, both in its beneficial as well as its evil impact, when given by a figure of authority. There cannot be any doubt that the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, by virtue of their very status, are perceived in Polish society as persons of great authority. Kaczyński likewise, has been fashioned into a person of supreme political authority by his devotees and their insistent propaganda. It cannot be denied that the new wave of exclusionary attitudes in Poland, working on the old anti-Semitism and a new anti-Islamism, has been activated by the example given personally by Kaczyński as a public authority, assisted, as he was, by the authorities of the Catholic Church.

Rewriting history

Learning from past mistakes and capitalizing on liberal blunders, Kaczyński has barefacedly resorted to xenophobic rhetoric, encouraging exclusionary attitudes on a number of occasions. For example, he has legitimized the activities of football hooligan groupings by calling them genuine patriots[9]. Upon receiving such a political umbrella, they have instantly adopted the nationalist ideology of Kaczyński’s party, especially the myth of the “cursed soldiers”, and proceeded to propagate this ideology in public places, churches and even public schools, with impunity. They have been key organizers of the infamous Marches of Independence during which neo-Nazi symbols are openly displayed.

Since 2015 he has sought to strengthen his rule by exciting fears of an alien invasion and otherwise dividing Polish society by selecting various groups as objects of public hatred. Deploying the slogan “ulica i zagranica” (“the street and abroad”, ironically first uttered by a 1960’s anti-Semitic communist leader), his party faithful relentlessly try to shame and silence those who venture any public criticism of his policies.

His comprehensive rewriting of history assumes the form of renaming streets named after various figures of the communist past and pulling down monuments symbolizing people and events related to that period. He has also proposed a number of policies to deprive some citizens, especially “the communists”, of some of their public rights, and drastically reduced their pensions.

Finally, he objected to the EU programme offering shelter to refugees coming to the EU by infamously claiming: “There are already symptoms of very dangerous diseases, long unseen in Europe. Cholera on the Greek Islands, dysentery in Vienna. Different types of parasites, protozoa that are not dangerous in the bodies of these people but may be dangerous here. This does not mean we should discriminate against anyone, but we need to check it”.

Politics as personal

Ever since his liberal arch-enemy Donald Tusk became the President of the European Union, Kaczynski, never an enthusiast of the European Union, has spread and encouraged mendacious propaganda about the evils of “Brussels”, viewed with particular suspicion. He has demanded reparations from Germany, and instigated fear of an imminent Russian aggression. His anti-Russian propaganda was chiefly based upon unfounded allegations of conspiracy between Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk in bringing down the plane with his twin brother, the Polish president, and 95 other officials, headed for Katyń for a celebration of the memory of the Polish citizens murdered by Soviets in 1940[10]. Kaczynski, never an enthusiast of the European Union, has spread and encouraged mendacious propaganda about the evils of “Brussels”, viewed with particular suspicion.

His latest initiatives include the “anti-defamation” amendment of the Institute of National Remembrance law, apparently aimed at protecting the Polish nation from being accused of perpetrating crimes against the Jews[11], though allegedly aimed at silencing Jan Tomasz Gross, the Polish historian of the Holocaust who was the first to publish an account of the massacre of the Jews by the Poles in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941[12]. Another initiative was the “demotion bill” allowing the current administration to deprive generals responsible for declaring martial law in 1981, especially Wojciech Jaruzelski, of their ranks. Allegedly the bill, vetoed by the president, was motivated by the fact that the generals to be demoted did not arrest Kaczyński during martial law in 1981, in the stark contrast to the treatment of Adam Michnik, Karol Modzelewski, Jacek Kuroń and other figures of the anti-communist opposition who were immediately arrested and spent long years in prison.

Swaying the crowd

Kaczyński has won his position of authority by brazenly resorting to radical exclusionary ideas which very few dared to invoke in the past three decades. By doing so, he has awakened spectres which seemed to have been buried forever. This has brought immediate fruits in the shape of a steep rise in xenophobic incidents across Poland. According to the independent Monitoring Center on Racist and Xenophobic Behavior, since 2010 the number of racist attacks has risen in Poland six times over. The example he has set was the call to his party faithful to follow suit.

The example he has set was the call to his party faithful to follow suit. According to the bulletin published by the Never Again Association, whose aim is to fight xenophobia in Poland,[13]after the harsh criticism of the anti-defamation bill by the state of Israel and the Jewish communities across the world, “the deputy Speaker of the Parliament and spokesperson of the ruling party tweeted: ‘From now on it will be difficult to look at Jews with sympathy and friendship’”. Also, a deputy chairman of the Law and Justice faction in the Parliament has claimed that “if Poles are held responsible for the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom ‘then one might as well conclude that if Jewish police were responsible for leading Jews to the gas chambers, Jews themselves created their own Holocaust.’” A Law and Justice MP has proposed a revisionary interpretation of the Holocaust: “‘Do you know who chased the Jews away to the Warsaw Ghetto?The Germans, you think? No. The Jews themselves went because they were told that there would be an enclave, that they would not have to deal with those nasty Poles.’”[14] Rafał Pankowski, a professor of sociology in Warsaw and activist of the “Never Again”, was smeared by government officials after his speech at the Global Forum Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism held on 19-21 March 2018 in Jerusalem.

Enthusiasm, fear and loathing

All this generates a variety of reactions in society: enthusiasm and satisfaction on the one hand, and public agoraphobia and fear, on the other. Beneficiaries of the new social policies support the new regime enthusiastically; the xenophobes rejoice in the exclusionary rhetoric. This is duly reflected in the polls: despite understandable aesthetic reservations and a number of blunders, Law and Justice still enjoys the greatest popularity among the electorate.

Those, however, who do not take active part in public life anyway, are withdrawing into their seclusion even more, giving vent to their disgust and anger in private and in social media. Fear is the common condition of those occupying middle-rank public positions, and, as always in the case of fear, it has a paralyzing effect: they act in such a way as to avoid attracting excessive attention, and steer away from any decisions which they think may be seen as controversial by the eager supporters of the new regime. Once again social mimicry assumes the form of mediocrity and cowardice.

Having engineered xenophobic practices and attitudes in order to secure his victory, Kaczyński and his party have become prisoners of their own exclusionary rhetoric. In order to uphold their now weakening position, he and his successors will have to continue to resort to the same rhetoric in the future. What is most worrying is that the awoken spectres of exclusivism turn out to be very much alive in Polish society and, in any foreseeable future, will not be readily dispelled.

Notes and references
[1] Adam Leszczyński, No dno po prostu jest Polska. Dlaczego Polacy tak bardzo nie lubią swojego kraju i innych Polaków, Wydawnictwo WAB, Warszawa 2017; the title of the book may be roughly translated as: “But it is just a hopeless pit, Poland. Why the Poles dislike so much their own country and themselves”.)
[2] Niall Ferguson, The War of the World. Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, Penguin, London 2006, p. 249-250.
[3] Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory and other Essays, Simon and Schuster, New York 1951, p. 27.
[4] Ibid., p. 31. More recently the attitudes of the British public have been engineered into volatility again. This time it has led to a decision to part company with the European Union, and in view of its uncertain consequences, has generated even more instability across the globe.
[5] Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. IV, Fifth Impression, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1951, p. 265.
[6] Etienne de la Boetie, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, trans. Harry Kurz, The Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama, 1975.
[7] Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1944 (2006), p.143.
[8] François de la Rochefoucauld, Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, transl. by E. H and A. M. Blackmore and Francine Giguère, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, 230.
[9] I have dealt with this issue in the paper Academies of Hatred.
[10] Adam Chmielewski and Denis Dutton, Poland’s tragedy: sorrow, and anger:
[11] Adam Chmielewski, The guilt, dignity and pedagogy of shamelessness.
[12] Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2001.
[13] http://www.nigdywiecej.org/en/.
[14]  “Never Again” Targeted for Speaking against Antisemitism here.

Adam J Chmielewski is professor of philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy, University of Wrocław, Poland. His books include Popper’s Philosophy: A Critical Analysis (1995); Open Society or Community? (2001); and Psychopathology of Political Life (2009). He is also the author of the successful bid of the city of Wroclaw for the title of the European Capital of Culture 2016

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‘Anti-Semitism is treatable’ – a banner at a Warsaw demonstration. Reuters/ Agencja Gazeta

This caused immediate outrage around the world and nowhere more so than in a country that has been, until now, a close ally of Poland: Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the bill as “distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history and the denial of the Holocaust.”

And yet, 10 days later, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, signed the bill into law retorting that “the historic truth is that there was no systematic institutionalized participation among Poles [in the Holocaust].”

What is happening? Why, over 70 years since the end of the Second World War, is this argument taking place?

I am a sociologist who has studied controversies around the memory of the Holocaust in Poland. For me, this dispute is more than a crisis in Polish-Jewish relations. It is, above all, a crisis in Poland’s national identity.
 

The memory of World War II in Poland

This is not the first time the Poles have legislated against what they see as defamation of Poland’s record in World War II, but it is certainly the most wide-reaching. Under this new law, the punishment for people claiming that “the Polish Nation or the Republic of Poland is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich” carries a possible prison sentence of up to three years.

The timing of the vote was no accident. The government used the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day as a platform to denounce the misnomer “Polish death camps” that some – including former President Barack Obama – have used to refer to Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland.
The Polish government, along with other Polish organizations, has been fighting the use of that expression in foreign media for several years, and with considerable success. Most American newspapers and other major media outlets have updated their stylebooks to stop those words being used.
Nevertheless, given the growing controversy, the German minister of foreign affairs took it upon himself to declare that the Germans bore the entire responsibility for the extermination camps. But then he added that “the actions of individual collaborators do not alter that fact.”
And therein lies the rub.

Many Poles find it difficult to accept they could have played a role in the Holocaust. That is because, unlike many other nations, the Polish state did not collaborate with the Nazis. Considered an inferior race by the Nazis, Poles were targeted for cultural extermination to facilitate German expansion to the East. Polish elites were systematically murdered. Tens of thousands of Poles were imprisoned in concentration camps or were forced into slave labor.

The Old Town burns during the Warsaw Uprising, August 1944. Museum of Warsaw

Poland’s losses in World War II were enormous: Approximately 6 million Polish citizens were killed in the war, over half of whom were Jewish. Warsaw was left in ruins, and its 1944 uprising alone cost the lives of about 150,000 citizens.

The dominant Polish narrative of World War II is, therefore, about victimhood, which fits squarely into its broader national mythology of martyrdom.

Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) Unknown

Repeatedly invaded by its powerful neighbors, the Polish state disappeared from the European map for over a century – from 1795 to 1918. Poland’s national bard, the 19th century poet Adam Mickiewicz, described his country as a “Christ among nations.” In this telling Poles are a chosen people, innocent sufferers at the hands of evil oppressors.

“Revelations” of crimes committed against Jews by Poles tarnish this narrative and shake Polish national identity to its core.
 

Narrative shock

The fact is, however, as historians have shown, crimes committed against Jews by Poles were much more prevalent and widespread than most people realized.

Perhaps the most controversial and impactful research is that of the Polish-born Princeton University professor, Jan T. Gross.

In his 2000 book “Neighbors,” Gross recounts in painful detail the violent murders of Jews by their ethnically Polish neighbors in the small town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941.

The book marked a watershed in the public debate about Polish-Jewish relations.

On July 10, 2001, roughly a year after the publication of Gross’ book, the Polish government acknowledged the murders and erected a monument at the site where several hundred Jews were forcibly brought to a barn and burned alive. Although the monument’s inscription fails to explicitly indicate that it was ethnic Poles and not Germans who committed the crime, the official apology by then-President Aleksander Kwaśniewski was unequivocal. “Here in Jedwabne,” he said, “citizens of the Republic of Poland died at the hands of other citizens of the Republic of Poland.”

The Jedwabne memorial. Genevieve Zubrzycki, Author provided

Such was the shock the story of Jedwabne caused that it is possible to distinguish between Poland “before and after” the appearance of Gross’ book. As leading Catholic journalist Agnieszka Magdziak Miszewska put it: “Facing up to the painful truth of Jedwabne is … the most serious test that we Poles have had to confront in the last decade.”
 

Law and Justice’s politics of history

It is that test, arguably, that the ruling Law and Justice party is failing.

In the battle over Polish collective memory, the party has been promoting the stories of the Poles who rescued Jews – and who are honored by Israel as the “Righteous Among Nations” – by creating museums and monuments in their name.

Through the new “Holocaust Law,” the government is, in effect, trying to repress knowledge of crimes committed against Jews by Poles. The defense of the law, however, goes one step further. In a remarkable case of what I would describe as manipulating the message, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki issued a video statement claiming that it is the Poles who are the guardians of historical truth and fighters against hatred.

And yet, the same politicians remain silent when their supporters express anti-Semitic and anti-refugee views. On Feb. 5, for example, demonstrators impatient for President Duda to sign the Holocaust law gathered in front of the Presidential Palace chanting anti-Semitic slogans and demanding that he “remove [his] yarmulke and sign the law!”

The president did sign the law, but he also sent it to the country’s constitutional court for examination.

Those Poles opposed to the law – and there are many, judging by the number of organizations and public figures denouncing it and the number of petitions circulating – hope that it will be deemed unconstitutional because it represses freedom of speech and could significantly curtail academic research.
Regardless of the ultimate outcome, however, the government’s politics of history will continue to be waged on many other fronts. What is at stake, in my view, is nothing less than the definition of Polish national identity. This is why, for all the international outrage, the controversy about the Holocaust law is hottest inside Poland, among Poles who are now debating what it means to be Polish and where Poland is going.

Geneviève Zubrzycki, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, University of Michigan

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Members of Polish Women Strike lie down on the road outside Parliament in silent protest at the moment “democracy died”, while fellow protestors hold up umbrellas to shield them from the rain. Photo by Łukasz Kohut. All rights reserved.

In 2014, the Polish documentary ‘Solidarity according to Women’ attempted to reinstate the key role that several women played in the rise and success of the 1980s Solidarity movement.

Largely working behind the scenes, they left the visible leadership roles to the men who wanted them, and so were written out of history. Today, women are making history again in defense of Polish democracy, but this time they are the leaders we see – and they will not be forgotten this time.

On Saturday 15 July, an urgent communiqué from the Polish Women’s Strike warned in clear terms: “Poland is burning down!” The rallying cry called on all opposition parties and pro-democracy forces to unite against the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party’s attempt to take control of the judiciary announced in a rush a few days before.

This latest anti-democratic move by an increasingly authoritarian government would see the destruction of the principle of tripartite division of power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches that underpin a functioning Polish democracy. PiS had already taken apart the Constitutional Tribunal in a crisis that paralysed the country last autumn. Now it sought to dismantle the independence of the judiciary. 

Frustrated at the opposition’s fragmentation, civil society groups’ inability to collaborate, and lack of a united plan between them to block PiS, the Polish Women’s Strike took it upon themselves to organize an emergency coalition meeting on Sunday 16 July – to seek cooperation between groups on a strategy for resistance at least for the immediate future while on red alert. Their communiqué stated: “When our home is on fire, we do not discuss who did and did not do what eight years ago. We do not remember sins, we do not compete for beautiful words and looks, we do not beat our breasts in front of the camera, we do not go on holiday. We save what we can.”

After an intensely urgent meeting, a memorandum of agreement was signed between many allies to agree to create a pro-democratic coalition, at least for the upcoming days. Since then, large-scale mass protests have swept the country. Cooperation has been shaky at times, but largely intact. “We are not naive – we don’t think we’ve created a longterm reality, this political collaboration is for here and now – we don’t know how it will develop next,” – says 49-year-old Elżbieta Podleśna, a leading PWS activist and professional psychologist.

How and why did women, under the banner of Polish Women’s Strike, become a key mobilizing force and convening power in the struggle to defend democracy in a country where women have low political visibility and feminism is a bad word? I spent two nights at the tent village they, together with other civil society groups, have erected outside Parliament in Warsaw, and spoke with key members of PWS to learn there was a longer history at play.
 

Black protests

On 3 October 2016, in the dripping rain, 100,000 women from 149 different towns and cities in Poland took to the streets, dressed in black, in what became known worldwide as the ‘Black Protest’ or ‘Polish Women’s Strike’ against a proposed total ban on abortion. Many more women as well as men wore black to work in an act of solidarity.

Marta Lempart, who is now PWS’s formidable leader, was the main impetus behind this action, taking inspiration from Iceland’s 1975 women’s strike for equal pay. This was a lightning rod moment – a point at which many women stepped out onto the street to protest for the first time to say enough is enough. As one 73-year-old protesting woman told me “PiS has now got into bed with us! No more!” The result of the Black Protest was a retreat by PiS on the abortion law – at least for the moment.

While PiS was not the first government to strip away women’s rights, it has ramped up the attacks. In 1993 abortion law was restricted for the first time since the 1950s, putting Poland amongst the most conservative on this issue in Europe. This near-total restrictive law was known as the ‘compromise’ – ‘it had nothing to do with women’, says Elżbieta Podleśna, ‘and everything to do with a compromise between the Catholic church and the state’. As Kasia Narkowicz for openDemocracy wrote last year, people slowly came to accept this status quo, and only a small circle of feminists continued to battle a growing anti-women tide.

Our rights as women have never before been so threatened…this threat for us is so much more personal.

Journalist Joanna Solska writes in a recent Institute of IDEI report on womens rights, that in the last eight years, under the former government, headed by Civic Platform, ‘the cauldron wasn’t hot yet’. Women were discriminated against on the job market, had lower pay, and family policy aided their tie to the household, but, still, most women were taking it. “But after eight years in cooler water, now the frogs are starting to cook. And it’s the PiS government which is heating things up with increasing fervor. The church is supplying fuel too.”

On 8 March 2017, International Women’s Day, the newfound group ‘Polish Women’s Strike’ organised a second protest – this time international in scope. “We surprised the whole world!”, says Marta Puczyńska, a 26-year-old PWS activist who has just thrown in her whole ‘former life’, as she calls it, having quit her job in Poznań to move to Warsaw to be full-time at the picket-fence. “It was a historical moment – protests in 60 countries worldwide – a phenomenon!”
 

Direct action

Now in July, the government upped the anti by accelerating its attempts to tear apart the country’s democratic structures, motivated by a paranoid, conspiracy-theory led vision in which such institutions needed purging of communist relics. The sense of impending bodily threat spurs these women on yet further. “We, women, in particular are in great danger. Our right to safety and self-determination at the biological level is being undermined. We fight for life,” the Polish Women’s Strike wrote in their call to collaborate.

Around 75% of those currently sleeping at the protest tent village, keeping 24-hour watch over the goings-on in Parliament opposite, are female. “More women sleep here in the tents at night, even beneath the open sky, than men because we have greater determination”, Marta Puczyńska tells me. “Not only are we threatened right now by the ruling government’s dismantling of the tripartite division of power as citizens, but our rights as women have never before been so threatened – so we have twice the determination of men, because some things don’t affect them directly. This threat for us is so much more personal”.

Alicja Molenda, who at 51 lives and organizes in Berlin for PWS, notes that – “Women have everything to lose – in women an awareness has awoken that if I don’t fight for my own rights, then nobody will – neither politicians, men – nobody. Without democracy we will have no rights for women – and without women’s rights there is no democracy! So we are here because we must be.”

The success of the Women’s Strike also meant that PWS was catapulted into a leadership role at this critical time. “The one protest that had an effect was the Women’s Strike – so we are seen as people who can make things happen. We don’t just talk, we do”, Agnieszka Wierzbicka, a lawyer who actively supports PWS’s work, says. PWS have played a big part in mobilizing citizens, organizing actions, being vocal in the media, leading protests, and keeping a presence day in day out in the tent village opposite Parliament for the last eight days.

There is a sense that women offer a different kind of approach to protest and ways of working too – one that is more ‘effective’, Marta Lempart has said, and based on collaboration. Not all in PWS are sure whether this is innately to do with being a woman, or just because they are who they are as people.

With events moving fast, and Polish Women’s Strike being less than a year old, interpreting and understanding womanhood is still emerging, both individually and collectively. What feminism means to them is not a one-trick answer. Where there is at times a seeming impossibility of moving away from stereotypes, they are made use of, or drawn upon, as inspiration instead.

Agnieszka Wierzbicka recalls a moment of insight when she was proofreading the Polish Women’s Strike call for collaboration. The metaphor of the house burning down immediately reminded her of a poem by Władysław Broniewski called ‘Bayonets for Weapons’ which is a call to take up arms for Poland and starts ‘When they come to burn the house down…’ 

“The poem describes a male reaction to the burning down of one’s house – to go to war. PiS have set our house on fire and we are reacting like women – coming together. Those people in our house are family. These are not the relations of those mythical concepts of fatherland – which are also important – but of the home, and this speaks closely to people.”

Sitting by the barricades, Elżbieta Podleśna tells me – “I think women are capable of speaking in a different language – a language of nonviolence,” and Polish Women’s Strike attempts to embody that. At the moment when Parliament passed the proposed bill that politicizes the judiciary, women from PWS and supporters lay on the asphalt in the road outside Parliament, holding hands in silent protest to mark the point in time ”when democracy died”. A white rose – which has become a symbol of ’extreme hate’, according to Jarosław Kaczyński (PiS party Chair) and PiS – one of hope and anti-fascist resistance for the opposition – lay on each of their bodies.

Polish Women’s Strike members at basecamp in the tent village opposite Parliament having a moment’s rest. Photo by Łukasz Kohut. All rights reserved.
 

Fighting talk

This struggle over language has become central. At the meeting convened by Polish Women’s Strike it was on the agenda. ”We must change the language we are using to talk about one another – no talking about protestors causing ’scenes’, no talking about ’jumping over the barriers’. We are in this together”.

This discipline comes largely as a response to the toxic media environment in which public television has become a PiS propaganda machine. News headlines have included ’Peadophiles and child-support-payees the face of protestors’. Increasingly hate-filled, aggressive and crude attacks have emanated out of forums ranging from Parliament to the internet.

A part of Polish Women’s Strike’s vision is to contribute to changing this, to stem the tide of hate that many feel has reached never-before-seen proportions between opposing sides. Most recently, Kaczyński shouted at the opposition during a session in Parliament, saying that they are ’criminals’ who ’murdered his brother’ (who died in the Smoleńsk crash in 2010, which PiS believes was a Russian plot) and yelled at an opposition MP to ’shut his gob!’.

For two years I have had no contact with my Mum and Dad. They love PiS – I don’t!

This has brought on a backlash from moderates. ”He has offended all of us Poles”, cry three women who’ve travelled to Warsaw to protest the reforms. ”We are here for that reason – we will not allow PiS to make a circus out of our Parliament!” Defending civility and ’parliamentary’ – which in Polish means polite – engagement is increasingly part of what many women see themselves as doing and the linguistic links with democratic functioning in those concepts is not a coincidence. With PiS enabling and encouraging hate-fuelled fascist groups like Mlodiez Wszechpolska (All-Polish Youth) and ONR (National Radical Camp), the stakes could not be higher.

Elżbieta Podleśna, whose own family has a traumatic war-time history and who lives in Warsaw, is very worried by what she is seeing. Recently she attended a counter-demonstration against fascist groups, and reflected in detail on her experience there.

”I cannot understand a situation in which a country in which concentration camps functioned, in which a huge proportion of society disappeared, in which our neighbours disappeared, can allow itself to have people marching with fascist symbols through its main streets in the capital city, who with their fists in the air call out for the death of enemies of the fatherland, for the death of anyone! I went up to those people and asked them – who are these enemies of the fatherland? Are you talking about me? And I heard – yes, we mean you, said directly into my eyes.”

In response, Elżbieta has taken to a vision inspired by Wiktor Ośiatynski, a Polish constituional lawyer and human rights advocate, who died recently. ”He said that our main obligation as people is ’the dissemination of kindness’. Only this way can we oppose fascism, obscurantism, defend the courts”, says Elżbieta. “We are trying to do this, but it’s very difficult, because in the current masculinist understanding that has prevailed for many years in government and its structures, the kindness of women means the submission of women. So it is very hard to understand that the kindness of women is a strength and not a sign of weakness.”

”I came to civil disodience slowly – but I saw what an amazing power there was in the use of non-violence. How when we sit down together and hold each others hands that there is so much energy. Once I read somewhere that love is a giant bomb, and that exactly spoke to me, that this kind of dignity and peace is indeed the biggest bomb. If you look at Kaczyński and those guys – his rage is greater when he is confronted by people who do not show rage. But it is very hard, very difficult not to show rage.”

One of the most devastating effects socially of the political rift and its toxic language has been at the inter-personal level. “PiS has killed my family”, writes one woman in chalk on the pavement outside Parliament – “For two years I have had no contact with my Mum and Dad. They love PiS – I don’t!”

Increasing suspicion and mistrust between people in daily life is another fatality. “I saw a man with a dog walking across the street from us as we put up our posters here at the tent village. Long ago I would have been afraid of his dog perhaps – but now I look at the man, and I look at his eyes and how he is looking at me. I really want to cry when I say this, because these are things that we will have to rise up from for many years to come. Perhaps the whole of Europe will have to. Fear is easy to create, easy to sow. I am thinking that kindness should also be that easy to sow. But kindness is not media-friendly – it is not sellable. Would somebody write about the fact, for example, that a 92-year old woman came to me, Mrs. Józefa, bringing us soup and asking us to do everything we can to make sure Poland doesn’t leave the European Union”?

Elżbieta’s voice breaks at this moment as she holds back tears after an exhausting and emotional few days. ”Does this interest anybody? No! And we have lost in this way. Because for the first time in my life I feel the values I believed in may have stopped meaning anything – and on such a big scale that it seems we dont have anyone to turn to – Mum! Dad! Europe! America!”
 

Umbrella groups

Often in return even for polite disobedience, women face harrassment, bullying, repression and discrimination in their communities. This is especially true in smaller towns, where the ability to be an anonymous face in a crowd is limited. Hate on the internet is merely an everyday occurence. 

Beata Siemaszko, a key member of PWS, based in a small town north-east of Warsaw, addressed the Polish Women’s Strike emergency meeting to give her perspective. ”For participating in these actions we get called names in the street, our children are bullied at school.” Jola Jackiewicz, an active member of PWS and Silesian Pearls, based in Rybnik, a town of 140,000 people in Upper Silesia, mother and grandmother, shares the story of a female teacher who is regularly harassed by her pupils over the internet for her pro-women, pro-refugee views. She would like to organise actions to support disabled children, but is afraid, due to growing fascist sentiment. She worries about the repercussions for her children, but attends protests anyway.

Concerns are not unfounded: two female teachers in Zabrze, Upper Silesia, were dismissed from their work at a local school for wearing black on the day of the Polish Women’s Strike. There are reports of police intimidating participants and handing out fines for legal acts of protest. The Church also acts as a custodian of ultra-conservative, pro-government sentiment. Alicja confirms that ”representatives of some churches don’t want to give the sacrament to the children of those who participate in strikes”.

Across the border, where Alicja lives in Berlin, the Polish Catholic Church organized a counter ‘White Protest’, putting up photographs of the Black Protestors on their website denouncing them as women who promote the murder of children. For participating in the current demonstrations there are also fears of recrimination – it means being the face of the opposition – those ”of the worst sort”, as Kaczyński has labelled protestors, those ”communists”, ”animals”, ”pigs” and ”thieves”. With this in mind, PWS has also set up a citizens’ legal aid alliance called ’Little Umbrellas’. The name was inspired by the symbolism of the umbrellas women carried on that rainy day in October last year.

With the second week of protests against the politicisation of the judiciary underway, people gather not only in Warsaw, but also across country in nightly candlelit vigils outside local courts. President Duda’s recent promised double veto does not deter the crowds, especially since he has just signed the third bill which protestors were also seeking a veto for.

More and more people are coming out onto the streets. Young people are joining the throng of the older generation who remember life without freedoms. Those in smaller towns are finding they are not perhaps as alone as they thought, and this unity is one of the main positives in a toxic situation. Through organizing and participating in new relationships, alliances and bonds have been formed.

Marta Puczyńska sees hope in that “we are also becoming educated through what is happening not only as women but as citizens in this young democracy – we are learning that we can go out onto the streets, we have a right to protest, to speak out.”

Agnieszka Wierzbicka feels that “awareness of our strength as women is just awakening. This is a moment that has pushed women to the frontline and will be remembered in history. But we can’t go back and retreat, we can’t take up that subordinate role again that we have had for centuries. We must stay at the frontline – and we will learn how to do that.”

Irma Allen is a Marie Curie ENHANCE ITN PhD Fellow at the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. She is British-Polish, and is doing her PhD research in Upper Silesia, Poland on living with coal, air pollution, breathing and toxic politics.

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 

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