• 3 Prime Minister Morawiecki based his data on Gunnar S. Paulsson’s book Secret City: Jews on the Arya (...)
• 4 Mateusz Morawiecki, Post (Twitter).

3Morawiecki went on to state that in Warsaw alone, some 70,000–90,000 Poles aided Jews despite being threatened with death for doing so, and that this figure was many times higher in the provinces.3 Engelking’s “unscientific” statement was placed by the Prime Minister within the tradition of anti-Polonism: “The scandalous opinions – I repeat – OPINIONS – not facts and the anti-Polish narrative presented in some media are unfortunately the result of years of neglect by the Polish state as well. In the People’s Republic of Poland, which was known for its top-down imposed, communist anti-Semitism, and later in Poland after 1989, the topic of Poles aiding Jews was neglected and rarely discussed. This was exploited by other countries to spread their own narratives, unfavorable to Poland, and to disseminate a falsified historical politics. The results are the kind of pseudo-historical statements we heard yesterday on TVN24. We are fighting for Poland’s good name in the world. This requires time and investment.” 4

• 5 Przemysław Czarnek, Post (Twitter), accessed August 26, 2023, https://twitter.com/CzarnekP/status/1 (...)
• 6 “Minister Czarnek: Będę rewidował swoje decyzje finansowe dotyczące Instytutu Socjologii PAN” [I wi (...)

4 On the same day (April 20, 2023), Przemysław Czarnek, head of the Ministry of Education and Science, posted a comment on the ministry’s official Twitter account: “I have commissioned a very broad inter-university study within the framework of the NPRH [National Programme for the Development of the Humanities – author’s note] to demonstrate community by community the involvement of [Polish –P.Cz.] society in saving Jews during the Holocaust. So that people like those on TVN24 can never again insult Poles, [who were – P.Cz.] murdered by Germans for this reason.”5 In a radio statement, Minister Czarnek added: “This is scandalous, the unbelievable insolence of this lady, it’s not the first time, after all. This woman does not understand what happened during the Second World War in Poland. This woman does not understand the tragedy of the Ulma family, for example, and this is just an example. […] I do not intend to influence in any way the employment policies of the Institute of Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences – this is not my role. However, I will certainly review my financial decisions, because I will not provide significant funding to an institute which employs the kind of people who simply insult Poles.”6

• 7 For the sake of order, it should be recalled that Barbara Engelking is one of the most careful (met (...)
• 8 Mateusz Morawiecki, Post (Twitter): “A nation that knows nothing about its own past, is not proud o (...)
• 9 “Czarnek grozi PAN: ‘Nie będę dawał pieniędzy naukowcom, którzy obrażają Polaków’,” [Czarnek threat (...)
• 10 In the article “Polacy! Wszyscy jesteście bohaterami! To mówiłem ja, Morawiecki, premier, historyk (...)

5 Neither of these officials mentioned the issue of blackmail or the extortion payments collected from Jews in hiding, both of which were raised by Engelking. Instead, they adopted a strategy of challenging her authority. They both called the researcher’s statement “scandalous,”7 both denied her words the status of scientific facts (they were “opinions”), and both linked them to the propaganda of the communist period and negligence during the years since 1989. Both politicians contrasted such “opinions” on the prevalence of blackmail with a heroic version of wide scale aid given to Jews by Poles; they both considered ignoring this aid to be an insult to the good name of Poland and Poles, and described study of the Holocaust as essential for Poland’s future.8 Morawiecki’s threefold enumeration – “as prime minister, a historian and, above all, a Pole” – established the basis on which the Minister based his very real threats: in the name of the legitimate authorities, in the name of “real” science, and in the name of the nation; Czarnek, without hiding his bias, announced the commissioning of a study to document the involvement of the inhabitants of Polish communities in aiding the Jews. In doing so, the Minister considered “the feelings of Poles” as the only criterion for scientific validity9 and announced that he would apply financial pressure to researchers who “insult Poles.”10

• 11 Translator’s note: In the original Polish text of the present article, the term kultura prawomocna (...)

7The fact that both officials invoked the authority of the government, the nation and science, indicates that this conflict is over the basis for what constitutes a legitimate culture.11

• 12 See Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, trans (...)
• 13 Ibid.

8 According to researchers,12 a legitimate culture is an axiological frame of reference for society as a whole: it defines what brings prestige and shame, it sets the ceiling for social aspirations, establishes the measure for evaluating the lives of individuals and societies, and allows the value of past and present actions to be assessed. It should be possible to apply this frame of reference in the evaluation of all past, present and anticipated actions. However, although a legitimate culture is the basis for definitive judgements, it is not itself subject to evaluation. What legitimates it is that it provides legitimacy. It is not subject to questioning because, by setting the standard for judging all other forms of culture, it produces mechanisms that make it impossible to know its basis. It dictates obligatory patterns (of reading, writing, speaking, behaving), defends their inviolability and, at the same time, is itself defended by them. According to Pierre Bourdieu’s inspiring term, it is a dominant cultural arbitrary whose reproduction influences the reproduction of power arrangements and power relations.13 It is thus an official culture sanctioned by social institutions, but, at the same time, it endows these institutions with their own means of sanction. The stakes in this game are the means for representing what constitutes a legitimate culture, while its enactment is tantamount to gaining control over the circulation of meanings and values.

• 14 The Polish term dziady [literally “grandfathers”], used here in the source text, refers in Slavic f (...)
• 15 This category was used to describe Polish culture after the transformation by Joanna B. Bednarek – (...)
• 16 For the most comprehensive monograph on the phenomenon of resistance culture in the 1980s, see Marc (...)
• 17 See, among others, Entry: “trzeci obieg,” Parnas Bis – Słownik literatury polskiej urodzonej po 196 (...)
• 18 The first monograph on artzine activity and poetic creation was written in German. See Michael Flei (...)
• 19 See Kościelniak, Egoiści.
• 20 See Łukasz Kamiński, “Krasnoludki i żołnierze. Wrocławska opozycja lat osiemdziesiątych,” Pamięć i (...)
• 21 For a selection of the editor-in-chief’s sharpest columns, see Jerzy Grupiński, Dziedziniec strusic (...)
• 22 See Marcin Wieczorek, BruLion. Instrukcja obsługi (Kraków: Korporacja Ha!art, 2005).
• 23 For a characterization of the literature of the 1990s from a generational perspective, see Jarosław (...)

11In the history of Polish legitimate culture15 more important than 1989 is the mid-1980s, during which key forms of cultural activity were directed at dismantling legitimacy. The rationale for such a conclusion is not only the diversity of cultural forms emerging in the mid-1980s, but also the unique carnivalesque atmosphere of anarchism that targeted all – especially national, Catholic and also proto-capitalist – hierarchies.16 In almost all registers of social life, activities emerged that contested both official and underground culture. This was the nature of the so-called “third circuit” in communication,17 which maintained its independence from state structures and from the underground culture of Solidarity; the artzines,18 that is the magazines created by small collectives, which emerged within the framework of the third circuit, parodied all officiality and allowed “immature” forms (humorous, irreverent, raw, amateurish) to speak out. Anti-hierarchism also manifested itself in the activities of artistic groups that combined moral scandal with political anarchism (TOTart from Gdańsk, Kultura Zrzuty [Pitch-In Culture]19). A less iconoclastic but more participatory carnivalesque practice was introduced into public life by the Orange Alternative happening movement.20 A similar tendency towards protest and provocation nature was characteristic of two important literary journals of the period: Poznan’s “Czas Kultury” [Culture time, 1985]21 and Krakow’s “Brulion” (1986),22 which dealt both seriously and comically with opposition culture.23 Alongside these initiatives, a plethora of new value systems emerged, alongside new forms of association and action geared towards group bonding that blurred the boundary between creators and audiences, while also making no reference to “anti-communism” as a shared identity. Such a call for participatory engagement could also be seen in music subcultures (from rock to punk) and in close-knit communities of SF literature fans. All of these activities showed that social communication no longer fit into the “authorities/opposition” (communism/anti-communism) dichotomy into which Polish symbolic culture had become jammed after martial law.

12 Thus, in Polish culture of the mid-1980s a mass diffusion was taking place in practices on the streets, in artistic niches and in the popular register. A diverse culture was emerging, anchored in everyday communicative practices, engaging in group activity, and mocking all (ecclesiastical, national, Solidarity, etc.) authorities.

• 24 To this we could add the two-hour version of Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (TVP 1985), Jan Błoński’s (...)

14Such a prospective society – expressing itself through multiple, diverse and relatively equal forms of activity – was significantly disrupted by literature. There was little of the offbeat energy of musical or performance groups in the literature of the mid-1980s. But these literary texts introduced a necessary dose of doubt, evoking the memory of social differences, the conflicts arising from them, and the violence that was carried out on such occasions. The combined criteria “memory–conflict–violence” defines a small constellation of works (Hanna Krall’s Sublokatorka [The subtenant], Andrzej Szczypiorski’s Początek [Beginning], Paweł Huelle’s Weiser Dawidek, Piotr Szewc’s Zagłada [Annihilation], Tadeusz Konwicki’s Bohiń, Adolf Rudnicki’s Teatr zawsze grany [Theatre always performed] and Krakowskie Przedmieście pełne deserów [Krakowskie Przedmieście, full of desserts, 1986], Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz’s Umschlagplatz, Henryk Grynberg’s Kadisz [Kaddish] Andrzej Kuśniewicz’s Nawrócenie [Turnaround], Jacek Bocheński’s Stan po zapaści [Conditions after the collapse])24 that evoked the greatest social resonance in the latter half of the 1980s.

• 25 Maria Janion, in her book Do Europy tak, ale razem z naszymi umarłymi [To Europe, yes, but together (...)

15If the cultural activities discussed above designed and practiced a pluralistic society, literature offered a foundation for this pluralism – the memory of exterminated differences.25 In all of the aforementioned texts, the specters of Poland’s former minorities return: first and foremost among them are the Jews, but they also include the Kashubians, Gypsies, Ukrainians, Lemkos, Lithuanians, and others. Literature evoked these communities and began to reveal the attitudes that Poles once held towards them. These varied recollections included images of ordinary neighborly coexistence, sympathy, camaraderie, friendship and even love, all of which were decisive factors in people’s providing aid to minorities both during the war and in the times of the People’s Republic of Poland. Alongside this, however, much more often and on a larger scale, literature evoked darker affects: dislike, disregard, contempt, disgust and hatred. In these cases, the plots took us through the successive stages of Poles’ attitudes towards Jews: from the nineteenth century to the late 1920s, Poles tried to keep Jews isolated; in the 1930s they resorted to legal discrimination and street violence; during the war they maintained an indifferent acquiescence to the crimes committed by the Germans. This literature did not provide a full picture of this process or suggest sociological explanations. Rather, it directed readers towards repressed content and posed questions: how did ethnic differences disappear? If the Germans are to blame for the eradication of these differences, why is the memory of those who were exterminated not widely cultivated? Does the poor and reluctantly expressed memory of Jews, Ukrainians, Lemkos and other minorities reveal any hidden secrets about Polish attitudes during and after the war?

• 26 See Kinga Dunin, Czytając Polskę. Literatura polska po roku 1989 wobec dylematów nowoczesności (War (...)
• 27 See Inga Iwasiów, Rewindykacje. Kobieta czytająca dzisiaj (Kraków: Universitas, 2002); Gender dla ś (...)

20An area where Poland’s new political system found common ground with an emerging emancipatory culture that sided with the Other was in the deregulation of collective ties. From the point of view of the emancipation movements, only the dismantling of existing collective identities offered the Other – in Polish culture this included, above all, women, sexual others and Jews – a chance for equality26: the delegitimization of Polish masculinity gave rise to hopes for loosening patriarchal ties and opening up to female Polish historical narratives (herstories)27; the weakening of the heterosexual regime was a condition for the emancipation of sexual minorities; the dismantling of nationalism provided a basis for naming and possibly eliminating the ideological violence used by the majority against minorities (especially against Jews). Exposing the discriminatory aspects of identity and collective categories – like “nation,” “local community,” “Catholicism,” “masculinity,” “Polishness” or “patriotism” – offered a chance to move on to a new stage of modernity. For this reason, the 1990s saw the deconstruction of the story of the collective subject in Polish culture.

• 28 This discourse implied a rather simple social contract. It argued that social conflicts would disap (...)

22The process of dismantling collective entities was rooted in a troublesome nonculpable guilt on the part of culture. Both Polish culture and Poland’s economic transformation were working towards the same thing – deregulation. Their objectives, of course, were different. Cultural work sought to raise awareness of the damaging power of the family, the nation and male identity, and pointed to the need to develop new bonds – ones based on choice, granting more freedom to the individual, and promoting equality and reciprocity. Capitalism, on the other hand, was interested in individualism, not in new bonds: the success of the economic transformation was conditioned on the transformation of collective subjects into a collectivity of separate subjects. However, the difference between capitalism and critical culture became blurred where neoliberal rhetoric met emancipatory discourse: neoliberals attacked the social demands of workers and peasants, while proponents of emancipation criticized the oppressive nature of the masculocentric, national or Catholic community. The object of criticism – collective subjects – was a shared one.28

• 29 See Kinga Dunin, Czytając Polskę, 48: “It is the Holocaust present in museums, on monuments, in cin (...)

23This ad hoc discursive alliance allowed Polish liberal-capitalist democracy to appropriate the Holocaust. This assimilation consisted in transforming the Holocaust into a delegitimization of nationalism and, more broadly, into evidence of the dangerous power inherent in collective subjects – especially the nation or religious community. When viewed in this way, the Holocaust needs to be seen as a challenge to the renewal of collective ties;29 however, neoliberal discourse essentially incorporated the Holocaust into a broader process of weakening collective ties. This discourse warned against collectivism, recalled the criminality of nationalism and racism, and realized that ideological unity always leads to collective violence. In the public debate of the 1990s, an effective defense mechanism against collective identities was created: if workers stood up for workers’ interests, this was labelled an entitlement mindset and snubbed as an attempt to return to communism; if someone called for protection of the Polish labor market or Polish products, they were accused of nationalism and their attitude compared to fascism. A syntax was thus created that allowed every collective subject to be placed in the light of suspicion, and every suspicion to be justified by the memory of mass violence. In this way, neoliberal discourse hijacked the Holocaust to use as a means of self-legitimization and appointed itself as the guardian of a new legitimate culture.

• 30 This kind of operation was parodically depicted in later literature as being too easy – see the sce (...)
• 31 Michael Rothberg, in his inspiring book Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the A (...)
• 32 See Dorota Krawczyńska, “Empatia? Substytucja? Identyfikacja? Jak czytać teksty o Zagładzie?,” Teks (...)

24 Since the 1990s, it has been possible to use the Holocaust as a label to situate oneself within a legitimate culture. This required shifting the shame from “being Jewish” to “being a persecutor of Jews.” After the debate on Neighbours, the Polish right wing often levelled the accusation that the cult of Holocaust victims was designed to make Poles feel ashamed – to instill in members of the Polish nation a sense of dishonor about the deeds of their ancestors. These accusations seem misplaced: the error, the fault, the negligence of the first legitimate culture lay in the fact that it made it all too easy to free oneself from the shame associated with the Holocaust. The Holocaust was, within this culture, not a machine for shaming, but the exact opposite, a machine for self-purification. It is no coincidence that in the literature of the 1980s one can observe biographical operations that prevented this kind of self-absolution: writers did not assume the role of judges of the nation, but simulated a kinship with Jews (this is what Tadeusz Konwicki did in Bohiń and Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz did in his autobiographical essay Umschlagplatz), assigning a new identity to social dispositions and signaling that they were ready to accept the possible stigmatization associated with Jewishness.30 This fostered thinking that was less focused on the guilt of the (co-)perpetrators of the Holocaust than on Polish attitudes towards Jews. In public discourse, however, distancing oneself from the shame associated with the Holocaust took on the form of dissociating oneself from its ideological sources (nationalism, fascism, racism) or its contemporary derivatives (neo-fascism). The associated critique of collective subjects endowed Jewish identity with the quality of being the only acceptable one, and made the Jewish experience of death an exemplary form of suffering. As a result, the clash of various social memories turned into a battle for exclusivity.31 Artistic works (e.g. Bieńczyk’s Tworki or Bożena Keff’s Utwór o matce i Ojczyźnie [A piece about mother and fatherland] made it difficult to simply identify with the victims of the Holocaust,32 differentiated perspectives, mixed languages, and encouraged an empathetic reading while at the same time creating a readerly distance. Political discourse, meanwhile, used the Holocaust to delineate a “correct” sensibility, one which neither broadened social empathy nor helped to connect diverse social problems. Thus, in the Poland of the 1990s, it was possible to empathize with the victims of the Holocaust and yet remain completely indifferent to current exclusions, especially if they affected members of the majority (e.g. the unemployed or the “mohair berets,” i.e. older women declaring their attachment to the Catholic Church). The memory of the Holocaust, incorporated into the mechanisms for producing distinctions, became a tool for hierarchizing suffering and isolating social groups.

• 33 A profanation of this sacrum was a play by the duo Paweł Demirski / Monika Strzępka, Sztuka dla dzi (...)

25This diffused process meant that the cultural capital of neoliberalism grew, while at the same time the social assimilation of the Holocaust was dangerously simplified. In place of a reform of the educational system, an overhaul of Catholicism, a new labelling of public space, a rethinking of the social foundations of prewar anti-Semitism and, above all, a systemic transformation of the Holocaust into a building block of contemporary connectedness, there was merely a simple ritual. In it, the Holocaust appeared as a utilitarian sacrum in the service of individuality.33

• 34 The Holocaust, Polish Jewish relations, blackmail, and the Jedwabne massacre were not included in t (...)
• 35 The most important public disputes of the 1980s and 1990s included: the conflict over the construct (...)

26This individualistic aspect is perhaps what led this first legitimate culture to be characterized by an organizational nonchalance. This can be seen in the disproportion between the abundance of outstanding texts on the Holocaust and the deficit of sustainable infrastructure. The turn of the century saw a growing number of important works (prose by Henryk Grynberg, Hanna Krall, Ida Fink, Wilhelm Dichter, Michał Głowiński, Marian Pankowski and Piotr Matywiecki; such films as Agnieszka Holland’s Europa, Europa [1990], Dariusz Jabłoński’s Fotoamator [Photographer, 1998], Jan Łomnicki’s Jeszcze tylko ten las [Just beyond this forest, 1991], Andrzej Wajda’s Korczak [1990] and Wielki Tydzień [Holy Week, 1995] and Paweł Łoziński’s Miejsce urodzenia [Birthplace, 1992]; scholarly monographs by Barbara Engelking, Jacek Leociak, Jan Tomasz Gross, Jan Grabowski and others), but no mechanisms had emerged to translate these works into educational programs;34 this growing Holocaust library was not matched by the growth of institutions whose activities included issues concerning the Holocaust, Jewish culture or Polish Jewish relations; controversy grew,35 but the law protecting the independence of cultural and scientific institutions was not strengthened. Individual initiatives were numerous, while organizational networks remained weak and financial support irregular and uncertain. The Holocaust was not tethered to collective life through educational initiatives in schools and churches, was not accompanied by coverage in government-funded media, and was not supported by initiatives to introduce signs of either Jewish life or death in Poland into public space. As a result, Holocaust-related works and activities came to resemble a movement to build a road network solely for its own use.

• 36 “The acts specified in Article 1, point 1 of the Act are: a) those committed against persons of Pol (...)

27 However, the movement had the strongest possible legal protection. In 1999, a parliamentary act established the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. The Act defined the duties and prerogatives of the new institution, which included the right to prosecute certain acts. The most important provision concerning the Holocaust – Article 55 – stated that “Whoever publicly and contrary to the facts denies the crimes referred to in Article 1(1),36 shall be subject to a fine or imprisonment for up to 3 years.” This was the foundation of the first legitimate culture: it pointed to past crimes, set the boundaries of freedom of speech, allowed for punishment to be meted out for lying, included Jews within the category of Polish citizens, and expanded the chronological field of inquiry to 1990. A tool was created to protect the search for truth.

• 37 Andrzej Nowak, “Westerplatte czy Jedwabne,” Rzeczpospolita, August 1, 2001.

29In August of 2001, at the height of the debate surrounding Jan T. Gross’s book Neighbours, the daily Rzeczpospolita published an article by Andrzej Nowak entitled Westerplatte or Jedwabne.37 According to the author, in contemporary Polish historiography one of two models is practiced: monumental or critical. The monumental model is “a succession of lofty examples, a teacher of honour,” while the critical model “finds corpses and tracks down criminals; it aims to uncover the sins of our past and condemn the perpetrators.” The clash between them “is a clash between the history of national glory and the history of national disgrace, or rather an aggressive assault by the latter on the former.”

• 38 As an aside, it is worth noting that Nowak viewed as impossible that which constitutes the foundati (...)

30 Neither of the two historiographies, the author writes, strives for truth, as both interpret the past “for the use of the present.” The first idealizes to evoke pride, the second demonizes to evoke shame (“in essence [it is – P.Cz.] idealization a rebours. Critical history is the result of a quest not for truth but for shame”). The difference between these historiographies lies in their social objectives: “[…] monumental history, the history of heroes, serves to build a community, most often a national one; it sustains a reflexive loyalty to it.” In contrast, “the aim of the creators and propagandists of critical history is, of course, to stop this drive towards collectivity, to inhibit this reflexive allegiance. But they offer no real community in return. It is impossible to create a community of shame.38 Pride in shame is an absurdity that sooner or later reveals itself. We can feel proud as a community at the monument to the heroes of Westerplatte; at the monument in Jedwabne, we will not be able to feel the unifying pride of being able to afford being collectively ashamed about what happened there.”

• 39 For more on the right-wing reception of the book, see Łukasz Opozda, “Lęk przed ‘Strachem’: recepcj (...)
• 40 The grounds for the refusal included both articles (132a and 133 of the Penal Code) and stated that (...)
• 41 Wyrok Trybunału Konstytucyjnego, sygn. akt K 5/07, accessed September 7, 2023, https://sip.lex.pl/a (...)

35 The substantive proximity of Articles 132a and 133 was quickly confirmed in practice. Shortly after Jan Tomasz Gross’s book Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation was published July 2006, a group of right-wing Polish senators demanded that Gross be prosecuted under Article 133 of the Penal Code (for “publicly insulting the nation or Poland”).39 A preliminary investigation was initiated by the District Public Prosecutor’s Office in Krakow to determine whether the content of Gross’s book likely violated Article 133 or the newly added article 132a (“Slandering the Polish Nation”). On February 11, 2008, after concluding its preliminary investigative proceedings, the Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a decision not to launch a formal investigation.40 However, if an investigation had been launched, it would have had to have been limited to Article 133 of the Criminal Code, as during the course of the investigative proceedings, Article 132a came under legal scrutiny: in January 2007, Polish Ombudsman Janusz Kochanowski challenged the article and requested a ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal as to its legality. On September 19, 2008, the Tribunal ruled that the article was incompatible with the Polish Constitution.41

• 42 Tomasz Sommer (editor-in-chief of Czas), uttered a sentence during a discussion about Gross’s Fear (...)

38 The formulation of such a message, however, faces an obstacle. This was concisely expressed by Nowak, who stated: “at the monument in Jedwabne, we will not be able to feel [a] unifying pride.” This meant that the Holocaust should be left to the Jews.42 Accordingly, the second legitimate culture proceeded to repartition the Holocaust according to nationality. The boundaries between persecutors, victims and bystanders were to coincide closely with national identity: the victims of the Holocaust were Jews, the executioners were Germans, and the bystanders were Poles. Such a division allowed for recognition that the murder of Jews was the rule on the German side and the exception on the Polish side. This served to maintain a division in accounts: Germans were to feel guilty, Jews were allowed to mourn, Poles were allowed to show sympathy. Neighbours disrupted these divisions: the Germans remained the persecutors, but some Polish outsiders were turned into perpetrators; the murders committed by the Poles turned out not to be exceptional but the result of “ordinariness,” that is a stable and deeply rooted set of beliefs that dehumanized the Jews; the guilt of the Germans did not disappear, but this did not exempt the Poles from facing a re-examination of their conscience.

• 43 The repressive censorship is allowed by Polish law, the preventive one is illegal. However, the com (...)

39 Unlike the representatives of the first legal culture, who learned nothing and changed nothing, the organizers of the second culture learned their lessons very quickly. They recognized that in order to protect the impermeability of national borders, it was necessary to use existing legal regulations and introduce new ones. Their content – focused on protecting the affective comfort of the nation rather than the truth about the Holocaust – was to serve not only to mete out punishment for words already published, but also to deter the publication of such texts in the future.43 The failure of the legislative initiative (Article 132a) meant that a national division of the Holocaust was impossible and that the fate of the Jews could not be isolated from the attitudes of the Poles. Consequently, another method emerged within the second legitimate culture. This consisted in legitimizing the violence used by Poles against Jews.

• 44 See Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941. Before, During, and After (Boulder (...)
• 45 Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, After the Holocaust. Polish-Jewish Conflict in the Wake of World War II (Bo (...)
• 46 Chodakiewicz, After the Holocaust, 1.
• 47 Ibid., 213.

40Marek Jan Chodakiewicz became an exponent of such a concept as the author of the books Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941. Before, During, and After44 and After the Holocaust. Polish-Jewish Relations 1944–1947.45 In both publications, the author affirmed the factuality of the killings carried out by Poles both during the occupation (in Jedwabne) and after the end of the war. However, he stated that the violence was justified. In After the Holocaust, he wrote that the killings of Jews after 1944 were a reaction to “the actions of Jewish Communists who fought to establish a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist regime in Poland,” to “the deeds of Jewish avengers, who endeavored to exact extrajudicial justice on Poles who allegedly harmed Jews during the Nazi occupation” and to “the efforts of the bulk of members of the Jewish community, who attempted to reclaim their property confiscated by the Nazis and subsequently taken over by the Poles.”46 Furthermore, on the basis of his calculations, the author concluded that between 1944 and 1947 “in self-defense or in revenge, acting independently or in concert with the Stalinists, denounced, abused, and despoiled at least 7,000 Poles, even killing some of them,” while during the same period “probably a minimum of 400 and a maximum of 700 Jews and persons of Jewish origin perished” in Poland.47 From the author’s reflections, it therefore appears that the killing of Jews after the war was: 1) part of the general struggle against communism or 2) an act of self-defense against 2a) self-appointed avengers or 2b) self-appointed revindicators of Jewish property. A comparison of Chodakiewicz’s statistics further proves that the losses suffered by Poles exceeded those on the Jewish side tenfold.

• 48 Uchwała Sejmu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 14 marca 2001 r. w sprawie hołdu poległym, pomordowa (...)
• 49 Ustawa z dnia 3 lutego 2011 r. o ustanowieniu Narodowego Dnia Pamięci “Żołnierzy Wyklętych”, access (...)

42 The legitimization of violence against Jews as a fight against the communist regime was linked to a project, ongoing since 2001, to establish a day of remembrance for soldiers of the anti-communist underground. On 14 March 2001, the first resolution of the Sejm was passed recognizing “the merits of the independence organizations and groups who, after the end of the Second World War, decided to undertake an unequal fight for Poland’s sovereignty and independence”;48 in the original resolution only the Wolność i Niezawisłość [Freedom and Independence] organization was mentioned by name. Over the following years, the list was expanded, with such general terms as “soldiers of the second conspiracy,” “soldiers of the anti-communist underground” and “cursed soldiers” being used interchangeably. In 2009, veterans’ organizations asked the Sejm to establish March 1 as the Day of Soldiers of the Anti-Communist Underground. In 2010, a legislative initiative to establish the holiday was sponsored by President Lech Kaczyński. After his death, the project was continued by President Bronisław Komorowski, who on February 9, 2011 signed the “Act of February 3, 2011 on the Establishment of the National Day of Remembrance of the Cursed Soldiers.”49

• 50 Rzeczpospolita, January 11, 2008.
• 51 On the series of speeches given by Jerzy Robert Nowak, see Marta Cobel-Tokarska, Bo “‘Żydzi atakują (...)
• 52 In December 2021, the District Court in Hajnówka sentenced the organizer of the March in Memory of (...)

43 The establishment of the new holiday, I should make clear, did not legitimate antisemitism, but it did blur the line between it and anti-communism, and above all – from the point of view of the Jewish victims – sanctioned violence as a social tool for self-organization and self-help. At this point, further differences between the two legitimate cultures become apparent. The first was founded on the renunciation of violence and the recognition of the Other as the model human being of postmodernity; representing a non-majority identity, the Other was exposed to discrimination, so the attitude towards him or her became a test of the tolerance of democratic society and a challenge for the law. The second legitimate culture was oriented towards the majority, so that the social, cultural or legal needs of the majority were considered the primary responsibilities of the state and politics. The collective was not given the right to use violence, however, it was equipped with qualities (dignity, pride) that were presented as values threatened by unethical external actions. This legitimated the treatment of inconvenient truths (“Poles helped the Germans murder Jews”) as attacks on the nation’s good name, which in turn led to violence against the “outsider” being considered a means of defence. This perverse reversal was well illustrated by the title of a public discussion devoted to Fear and annotated by one daily newspaper: Spór o książkę Grossa. Polacy-Żydzi: kto się kogo bał? [The dispute over Gross’s book. Poles-Jews: Who was afraid of whom?].50 Jews, as Jerzy Robert Nowak argued in public speeches, were and still are to be feared, because “the Jews are attacking us.”51 The Polish majority, it thus follows, did not use violence and did not commit crimes – it was and is a victim defending itself against someone else’s onslaught. The portrayal of the majority as threatened by the minority, though, was rather rarely used by mainstream politicians. There were two reasons for this: firstly, the inversion carried a genetic burden, as it was first used against the Jews in the Third Reich; and secondly, it opened up a pathway from anti-communism to fascism.52

• 53 See, for example, Franciszek Piper, Ilu ludzi zginęło w KL Auschwitz. Liczba ofiar w świetle źródeł (...)

44 The weaknesses of the two methods discussed – the nationalization of the Holocaust and the legitimization of violence against the Jews – led to the creation of another method: the Polonization of the Holocaust. This method was used on a smaller or larger scale throughout the entire postwar period – after all, the basic message of the communist authorities was that the Poles were the nation that suffered most under Nazi occupation, and that Auschwitz was a symbol of the mass martyrdom of Poles. However, after 1989, reliable monographs were published that presented with great accuracy the total number of Holocaust victims (1.1 million) and the number of Jews exterminated at Auschwitz (1 million).53 The use of this method by the second legitimate culture has little in common with the propaganda of the communist regime; what is common to both is the solicitation of victim status. The Polonization of the Holocaust, which serves this purpose, places a strong emphasis on Polish Jewish relations, with a special focus on Poles providing aid to Jews.

• 54 Those killed were: Jozef Ulma, his wife Wiktoria (who was heavily pregnant), their six children, an (...)
• 55 Dziennik Ustaw, 2018 [Journal of laws], item 589, “Ustawa z dnia 6 marca 2018 r. o ustanowieniu Nar (...)

45It is worth discussing the infrastructure behind this method in more detail. If the first legitimate culture was lacking in terms of infrastructure, the second culture has shown a tendency to place all cultural institutions under its jurisdiction – whether by legal, semi-legal or illegal means – and control its message concerning the Holocaust. The infrastructure supporting the second legitimate culture is, moreover, more extensive and complete, as is well demonstrated by the example of the Ulma family from Markowa – Poles murdered on March 24, 1944 by German gendarmes for hiding Jews.54 At the end of 2007, the idea of creating the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews during the Second World War in Markowa was first proposed; after all of the necessary formalities were completed (2009: Podkarpackie provincial assembly adopts a resolution; 2011: Museum-Castle in Łańcut assumes oversight over construction work; 2013: the local government of the Markowa municipality provides land for construction) the Museum officially opened on March 17, 2016. In 2018, by decision of the President of the Republic of Poland, the anniversary of the death of the Ulma family (March 24), was declared the National Day of Remembrance of Poles who rescued Jews under German occupation.55 On October 19, 2018, an Orchard of Remembrance (modelled on the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem) was created at the Ulma Museum; illuminated plaques were placed in the Orchard with the names of 1500 Polish towns and cities where Polish Righteous Among the Nations rescued Jewish people.

• 56 The beatification of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their children is scheduled for September 2023. In (...)

46 The infrastructure created in this example is made up of points which suggest the existence of a larger whole: the museum is dedicated to Poles who saved Jews, and not only to the Ulma family, which makes it possible to treat the institution as being a representation of a broader, still unexplored community of the Righteous. A single point thus becomes a link from which lines of a network run out in different directions: from Markowa to the towns and cities where Jews were helped; from the Ulma family to thousands of other Poles; from the Court of Remembrance to the Garden at Yad Vashem. All of this is reinforced in the state order by a holiday that officially consecrates both a particular family and all Poles who saved Jews.56 One museum and one garden – remarkable in their effect – create an implicit network that, with its vastness, inverts the previous proportions: if Gross’s and other “revisionist” books showed indifference and denunciation, blackmail, the looting of property, rape and murder as the rule, one that grew out of pre-war antisemitism, then “Markowa” (Museum, Orchard, Day of Remembrance) says that helping was the norm.

• 57 Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945. Studia i materiały, ed. Andrzej Żbikowski (Warszaw (...)

47The official commemoration of the Righteous crowned a decade-long effort to shut down research on the Holocaust as a Jewish tragedy and open up research on the Holocaust as a Polish experience. In 2006, the project “Poles rescuing Jews” was added to the national registry of Central Research Projects of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), while an earlier project, “Holocaust of Jews on Polish lands,” was designated “completed.” The culmination of this project was a collection of articles titled Poles and Jews under German Occupation, 1939–1945. Studies and Materials with a foreword by Jan Żaryn, director of the IPN’s Bureau of Public Education. At the time, Żaryn stated explicitly: “We are now closing a certain stage of research. […] in the following years the BEP [Bureau of Public Education] will take up new issues.”57