But it’s hard to see how they can walk it back. Proposed by a hardliner in Law and Justice, it’s significant that the law was rushed through just days after undercover reporters for a private Polish television channel filmed a neo-Nazi group in Poland waving Nazi flags, wearing Nazi uniforms, and burning a swastika. The report prompted Polish authorities to open an investigation into “public propagation of fascism.” But that, of course, put Law and Justice in a tough spot with its die-hards, who were already upset after a recent cabinet reshuffle had brought in some moderates. The reshuffle, in turn, came after Poland was trying to make nice after the European Commission threatened it with sanctions if it moved ahead with changes to its judiciary that European officials say threaten the rule of law—the biggest test yet for the bloc.
Messages crafted for domestic consumption reverberate far beyond national borders. “I wouldn’t say this is a completely planned and calculated action, it’s more a reflection of a complete self-isolation and lack of understanding of other countries,” Pawel Machcewicz, a historian and former director of a new WWII museum in Gdansk, told me. “They are surprised but they cannot back down because for their constituents that will mean the weakness, the betrayal of Polish dignity,” he said. [...]
Gross told me he didn’t think the law would have many practical consequences for established historians, although he worried that it might prevent younger ones from studying the Holocaust. Above all, he was concerned about the teaching of history in Polish schools. “No one will dare to teach the Holocaust,” he said. “The ignorance in Polish society about the Holocaust is extraordinary. There were surveys made and the majority of the people who were asked the question ‘Who suffered more during World War II under German occupation, Poles or Jews?’—the majority of the people responded ‘Poles.’ How ignorant do you have to be?” [...]
I’ve often thought back to this line as capturing the inchoate resentment that seems to drive the current Polish government. The French political scientist Dominique Moïsi has written that three emotions tend to drive politics: humiliation, hope, and fear. Poland falls into the humiliation camp. A feeling of grievance, a sense that the wider world doesn’t truly understand the suffering of the Polish people, but also a sense that the Holocaust—in which three million Polish Jews were slaughtered on Polish soil—was giving Poland a bad name.
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