Just after Grzegorz Braun began his media tour, questioning the existence of gas chambers in Auschwitz, there were voices that this time the endemic politician had gone besides far. The leading figures of public life concluded that the time had come for the most powerful department of national pride and for the conflict of Witold Pilecki.
"Rotmaster Pilecki did not volunteer for Auschwitz so that now any scum for political gain would question his report," wrote MFA head Radosław Sikorski. "Braun consistently spits on the achievements of large Poles specified as Witold Pilecki" – he was told by the editor-in-chief of Goniec.pl Janusz Schwertner.
The case was almost immediately handled by the D.A. that she passed on, I'm certain the investigation materials will go to the prosecutors of the National Memorial Institute. I do not think that, in the face of "prosecutions" inactive subject to President-elect, Braun had reason to fear.
Ritual extraction of the mythologicalized Polish hero in consequence to pure negationism shows that in the last decade of the PiS, utilizing IPN, the media and state institutions, has closed the “historical policy” arrangement, which now breathes all child, all fan, all “patriot”. fresh days confirmed that polarization in the discussion on Poland's past no longer progresses between the poles of right-wing nationalism and liberal criticism – even if the anticipation of critical revision of the wrong-wing has always been utilized very sparingly.
Hagiographic prosthesis in hero biography
Contrary to what Sikorski and Schwertner claim, and behind them many outraged commentators, Braun's direct mark was not to undermine Pilecki's achievements. I am convinced that the braunoids bathed in the fumes of the nationabsurd are not as fanatical as it seems, and they will pragmatically throw their icons into the dumpster erstwhile it turns out to be politically profitable, but it is simply a non-scriptural and non-Confederal right hand reaching out – hand in hand with Jan Więpalski – after a captain who is like a self-satisfaction scissors speaking after hitting an anti-Semitic table.
For the introduction of the rot master to the pantheon of Polish characters of the kitschy fairy tale, which in nationalistic optics is history, PiS is responsible. Since the construction of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising and the concentration of a group of museumists around Lech Kaczyński, by the failure with the PO in 2007 and the failure of power by the PiS, whose replacement was maintained by the failure of TVP and IPN from the written nominators, until present – Pilecki was doing a stunning career.
I myself graduated from advanced school and studied at a time erstwhile the propaganda historical device of Kaczyński's people was just getting there. So I will be completely honest with you – I was not very curious in the destiny of this Polish hero. For in military subjects I follow wise words Ballads about a soldier Zbigniew Macheja: “It sucked in Gubin / not better in Mragowo. A soldier will not lie to a girl, although he will not tell her everything."
The fact that Pilecki could not be told everything, not to mention that he himself would not give us anything, convinced me of the discussion accompanying the text of Prof. Andrzej Romanowski, who criticised in 2013 the publication of a reproduction of evidence submitted on UB by Pilecki in 1947 in an album released by IPN 5 years earlier and questioned the hagiographic speech of texts beginning the book. The debate ran according to the foreseeable timetable: defamation of legend, anti-polarity, shortages of patriotism, Pilecki was a large Pole.
A year later, Ewa Cuber-Strutyńska in “The Holocaust of Jews” confronted the facts about Pilecki with his legend. This is an interesting text: the author shows that yes, Pilecki was a hero – if anyone another than the followers of a binary division into heroes and traitors specified a category can be useful for anything – only that his mythology has been powerfully twisted.
Such heroic prostheses are very characteristic of patriopolo. As if the fact were not enough, as if everyone who behaved in order in the apocalyptic scenery of planet War II had to be given a monument, a textbook and separate prayers at once, due to the fact that it would turn out that life is complex and that even if there was a heaven, it would be very hard to catch points to holiness just in occupying conditions.
Cuber-Strutyńska wrote about doubts about the circumstances of Pilecki's arrest and the motivation of the Secret Army of Poland, to which he belonged. The “volunteer to Auschwitz” cited by Minister Sikorski cannot be regarded as a precise description of the case – Pilecki could not know what camp he would go to, the cognition about Auschwitz in TAP was very limited, and “Report W”, contrary to the information provided on Wikipedia, it is hard to consider it the first study on the Holocaust, due to the fact that it does not focus on the situation of Jews, and the intent of its uprising was to get the approval of the AK command to organize liberation action in the camp.
Catechism of Catoendecia
What? And nothing. Sama Cuber-Strutyńska emphasizes that Pilecki “without a doubt” was a hero, only that the factual errors and imprecise terms contribute to mythology, which the Polish-Bolshevik war champion does not need.
Politicians, officials and writer's intellectuals had a very different opinion on this subject, and the governments of the Law and Justice have since 2015 become an chance to integrate this votum separatum into the Polish strategy of education and culture circulation. He has been present at stadiums and picnics for a long time. Pilecki became the patron of the 2016 Centre for investigation on Totalitarianism, and a year later – the Institute of Solidarity and Fortitude, which was merged into 1 organism in 2018.
PiS politicians called this institute ‘Polish Yad Vashem’, due to the fact that 1 of his main goals was to force narratives about Poles saving Jews during the war. most likely a small different for Elżbieta Janicka, the investigator of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, the author Festung WarschauLast time she published the text in “Electoral Gazette” about the construction by IP and IPN of symbolic “alternative facts” at the site of the erstwhile Treblinka extermination camp.
Janicka wrote in April 2024 that "the negationism of the Holocaust in the transatlantic sense does not be in Poland". After the last fewer months, Braun has already shown that it was premature optimism, but the investigator is besides characterized by the title negationism in Polish – that is, "to ignore Polish realities of the Holocaust and deny the place and function of Poles in the structure of the crime". Patron, alibi and final argument for specified understood negationism thanks to the hard work of the Narration Safety device became Witold Pilecki.
In 2018, Andrzej Duda established the National Memorial Day for Poles saving Jews under German occupation. The largest institutions dealing with the past of Jews in Poland, including the Polin Museum, have invested tremendous resources in building stories about Poles who have not stepped back from anything to save their judaic neighbors. There were expected to be so many of them, it was impossible to count. Interwar anti-Semitism was a problem for all Europe (truth), and the function of Poles in the structure of the Holocaust is exaggerated (it is unfortunately a fake). We do not know the circumstances of pogroms in Kielce, Kraków or Jedwabne. This nation is the natural enemy of the Catholic Church. These are just a fewer of the founding myths of the written catoendecia, which he thoroughly analyzed Paweł Dobrosielski.
Therefore, erstwhile the wrong-wing politicians and journalists in the fight against anti-Semitic component scope for the lives of heroic Poles, they could think twice about who is utilized to obscure the legend created in sweat by subsequent generations of prosecutors from the IPN. Yes, pulling Pilecki out at the minute erstwhile the presenter of the popular channel on YouTube claims that Braun's negationist statements, although disgusting, are within the limits of freedom of speech, a preventive effort to say "We are not all like this, remember Pilecki!" is an invitation to "Negacyism in Polish" as a consequence to transatlantic negationism.
The period after October 15, 2023 is an intense time for the right in the field of investigating fresh historical narratives. A year ago, there was a debate about Father Kolbe and his place in the planet War II Museum, where as unexpected allies like Wojciech Czuchnowski set off to rescue his father-antisemite. Last weekend we had a social media initiative to remind us of the Augustowska roundup, which was besides addressed by Minister Sikorski.
In July, erstwhile parliamentarians remainder and meet at night for non-obligatory talks about Poland, the historical anniversary takes on a peculiar importance. There are many of them – since the anniversary of the Kielce pogrom, through the memory of the conflict of Grunwald, established in 2016 and named with the characteristic of the PiS and Andrzej Duda devotive-baroque national day of commemoration of victims of genocide made by Ukrainian nationalists on citizens of the Second Republic of Poland, on 11 July. The visions of memory clash: very different, democratic, pluralistic... but not exactly.
It turns out that we can forget about any multi-diversity or criticism in reasoning about Poland's past and choose between the ultra-right option (transatlantic, which is in the test phase before the next election), and the "only" right-wing (natural, common sense and healthy morbid, understood by ourselves) which is shared by the ministers of the Tusk government and the heads of non-written media.
“Each of you may be the captain of the Witold Pilecki time of peace,” said Karol Nawrocki before the second circular of the election, thus encouraging the vote for his modest person. The threshold of entry is not, as you can see, besides advanced – to become the equivalent of the “volunteer to Auschwitz” for times of peace, an active electoral right is enough.
However, I am peculiarly moved that, after tense weeks of discussions about the number of votes, election falsifications and convocation of the National Assembly, Karol Nawrocki, as erstwhile head of the IPN and erstwhile manager of the planet War II Museum, which last year He complained about Pilecki's small exposure in the decollaborated by its successors, may declare the performance of the task. It turned out to be his: in Pilecki almost all Poles are equally concerned, regardless of their views on another matters. This is the president of the national consent we deserve in our mature approach to history.
