In a fewer days 60 years have passed since the words of Polish bishops addressed to the German people “We forgive and ask for forgiveness”. At the time, they met mixed reactions among our people.
From the point of view of the teaching of the Catholic Church, they were surely right, but from the point of view of the magnitude of the harm suffered by our nation as a consequence of the assault and long-term business for many at the time, inactive powerfully premature. Today, from the position of six decades since this event, the meaning of these words has faded. The Germans utilized them as if they belonged to them. The Catholic Church gained little, Poland even less. However, it stood at a time erstwhile no 1 serious in Germany then referred to Nazism, did not relativize the crimes of the planet War II period and did not block the exhumation of the victims.
Today, in mention to this anniversary, respective tv and radio broadcasts stated that Polish bishops should send a akin appeal to the Greek Catholic Church. It's a complete confusion of concepts. Today's Ukraine negates the genocide committed in the Polish, Russian, Jewish, Hungarian, Czech people, etc. He fakes past by talking about any common conflict, civilian war, “Soviet” inspiration, and combines defenseless victims with ruthless executioners. Many Ukrainian politicians and clergy mention to the expected heroism of the banders and whitewash the characters of Bandera and Shuchewycz. Places, squares, and streets are named for part of them, and in many cities there are their monuments. Our authorities should set minimum expectations for Ukraine for a long time: penalisation of flagism and Nazism in Ukraine, condemnation of the bander and neo-Bander organizations, allowing to carry out exhumation and forbidding the remains of Poles to the country, building a museum of victims of integral Ukrainian nationalism and a monument murdered by Ukrainians from 1939 to 1947 in Kiev, and immediate and final resignation from the curiosist ideas about rebuilding the memorial sites of the bander in Poland.
The German, German and German states of that time did not straight mention to Nazism. no of the Christian Churches in Germany defended Nazism. The German state did not prohibit the exhumation of the victims. They did not glorify NSDAP, SA or SS officers. There were no memorials of Hitler and Himmler in Berlin and Bonn. No 1 there organized parades in Nazi uniforms. There was no swastika or wolf hook on the graves of Nazi officers. After the war, Germany repeatedly apologized for their crimes and paid a large part of the victims of compensation. There were, of course, Nazis surviving and functioning in those German countries, but no 1 in their right head straight referred to this sick racist ideology. This is simply a powerful difference between Germany in 1965 and Ukraine in 2025.
Our mention to any political action should be Poland, not any abroad state or transnational concept. We Poles will gain nothing by humiliating and serving Ukraine. I am not the uncritical large supporter of prof. Felix Koneczny. In fact, his work tormented me. But describing Turism, he has distinguished in it any peculiar features that present fit peculiarly well with modern Ukraine. And as we know, he put them against Western civilization, which he called Latin. There is no uncertainty that present they are opposed to post-Latin civilization. Turanism is the militarism of a social organization, private property – oligarchy, spiritual localism, the deficiency of a notion of nationality in the western concept and the focus of politics around the individual in charge. Prof. Koneczny saw turism mainly in Russia. most likely due to the fact that he didn't have the example of today's Ukraine. In my opinion, Russia has created a unique sovereign civilization (a state-continent) in which the remaining elements of turanism remain, but it is nevertheless in its sovereign qualities. In the case of Ukraine it is crucial to have courage, strength and to put on your own at all costs. Matching is the constant Polish moaning and waiting for gratitude. Pathetic and future consequences would be to apologize to the Ukrainians.
Does this mean that as a collective we should reject an act of forgiveness in political life? Of course not. We should, however, apply here the edetic thinking, or looking at a given problem through the prism of profits and losses for our own nation. In our Polish interest – and besides in the interests of the Catholic Church in Poland – is the completion of the mad division from 36 years ago. Divided into the solidarity and commies. It would be useful to address akin words of forgiveness to our own fellow countrymen, and so inactive alive thousands of those who had any real part in strengthening and extending the RRL system. Breaking down the division into solidaritys and commies, whose extension is the division into the PiS-owts and PO-owts (now KO-owts) would be saved for our nation. If bishops had made specified a motion in 2025, in any way it could have united at least the believing compatriots against the dangers that are approaching Poland.
Łukasz Jastrzębski
Think Poland, No. 45-46 (9-16.11.2025)
