The cultural manager and director of the polish culture institute in Berlin, Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska, was fired this past Tuesday from her position. According to the German left-leaning daily TAZ that broke the story, Poland’s right-wing PiS-led government called for her immediate departure due to her programming, which included “too much Jewish-themed content,” as Poland’s ambassador in Germany Andrzej Przyłębski complained. [...]
In a recent internal assessment of the institute carried out by the foreign ministry, her work received a negative evaluation due to the focus on Jewish themes, and insufficient engagement with social media, the Berliner Zeitung reports.
Earlier this year, Poland’s minister of culture, Piotr Gliński (PiS) called for an end to the “culture of shame” regarding WWII and the Holocaust, and Wielga-Skolimowska’s work has irked the government ever since. [...]
This is not the first time that Warsaw interferes with cultural programming abroad. The Vienna branch of the Polish culture institute was not allowed to work with the Austrian author and journalist Martin Pollack, who had criticized the PiS party. According to the Polish paper Gazeta Wyborcza, 13 institute directors in different countries were fired this past summer. The director of the Madrid branch was criticized for not placing enough focus on the work of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin.
No comments:
Post a Comment