Bitter Lessons of the Past: The Importance of Historical Memory in Poland

Bitter Lessons of the Past: The Importance of Historical Memory in Poland

Contemporary Blog

Erik Ehrenfeld

     Poland was a country of incessant memory. The monumental events that occurred there have left a deep mark on the Polish people, both those who lived through them and those who came after. Even in discussions of current events, allusions to the past were bound to come up. Most of these narratives portrayed the nation as a courageous yet tragic victim that reflected a desire to never let the slaughter of the past happen again.

     The Polish self-perception of victimhood is not surprising. Poland’s eastern and western neighbors have partitioned, occupied, and brutalized the country for centuries.

Despite this long history of foreign conquest, the Polish museums demonstrated that the country often fought until resistance became futile. Even in defeat, therefore, the Polish people were proud of their fight.

These patriotic feelings and actions continued during Poland’s World War II and Cold War occupations. During a tour of the Oskar Schindler Museum in Krakow, our tour guide told me that her father privately, and illegally, told her the true story of the 1940 Katyn Massacre—when the Soviets killed 22,000 Polish prisoners of war—when she was a schoolgirl despite the communist authorities’ false assertion that the Germans committed the crime. In this manner, history itself became a form of resistance.

     These memories provided the Polish people with a unique perspective on the current war in Ukraine. Throughout the visit, Polish, Ukrainian, and European Union flags adorned many public and private buildings and monuments.

These sights communicated a desire both to resist foreign aggression and, as opposed to the dual Soviet-German invasion in 1939, to do so with the help of allies. Finally, again at the Schindler Museum, our guide stated that the 2022 invasion did not surprise most Polish people, which suggested a lingering animosity towards Russia based on historical experiences. The past, therefore, remained at the forefront of most Polish people’s minds.