The Imperial German Board of Archives in Warsaw: A Paradigmatic Example of the ‘Moral Conquest’ Policy in the Polish Territory during the First World War (original) (raw)
Related papers
Prace Etnograficzne, 2018
Th e article refers to the research and activity of Nazi Institute für Deutsche Ostarbeit (IDO), which operated in occupied Poland between 1940-1944. Drawing on archival sources mainly on Diary of archeological research in Szafl ary (1942), the author provides new and verifi es existing information about research projects and expeditions carried by IDO in Poland, in this case by Section Vorgeschichte. Th is yet unknown Dictionary provides new insight not only into research procedures and excavations in Szafl ary village but also into Germans ethnopolicy towards conquered nations (Polish Highlanders from Podhale region), as well as relations between German and Polish scientists. In that sense presented article contributes to the contemporary discussion about political involvement of German and academics in the Nazi regime, taking under consideration the relation between science, war, and power. Th e article is also questioning the problem of ethics, responsibility and political engagement of academics and the statues of data produced by IDO.
In this paper, I present a number of chronological snapshots that combine (or so I hope), into a stop-motion view of German-Polish historiographical relations from the immediate post-World-War-II years until the era of late socialism. Thematically, I will concentrate on Polish-German controversies surrounding the interpretation of World War II. As for perspective, I will tell the story from the vantage point of Polish historians dealing with their German colleagues East and West – as well as with their own connotations of German-Polish relations past and present. My main argument will be that coming to terms with the Polish–German past unquestionably required that nationalist categories of interpretation be deemphasized and decentred, and complemented by alternative frameworks of interpretation, so as to render the shared past more malleable, but that in order to do so, it was inevitable to first acknowledge their overwhelming power in shaping these relations and their interpretation in the modern era.
Early 2011 saw the publication in Poland of three noteworthy studies exploring Polish behaviour toward the Jews during World War II and the various forms of Polish participation in the Holocaust. These publications clearly advance the state of research, although they do not completely exhaust the topic, or even come close to that. They interrogate the image of the Holocaust as a largely German undertaking that has had a strong presence both in German and Polish research down to the present. The existence of this image is bound up with the historiographic circumstance that now as before, German Holocaust research is more closely connected with the German regime of occupation or the German Einsatzgruppen and execution units and less with the population under occupation, and in this way concentrates on the perspective of the German perpetrators. There is a concomitant tendency to neglect the perspective of the non-German perpetrators (and in part also that of the victims). By contrast, Polish Holocaust research has until recently viewed the Poles solely as victims of the National Socialist regime of occupation, and seen the murder of the Jews as an exclusively German matter. All three publications are written contra these continuing tendencies in thought and inquiry.
Acta medico-historica Rigensia, 2021
The Polish-Jewish paediatrician, pedagogue and writer Janusz Korczak (1878/79–1942) has not been honoured in Germany until many years after his death in Treblinka in 1942. The German division led to the development of two separate German academic associations since the end of the 1970s, which aimed – under different political circumstances – to popularise and disseminate the memory of Korczak and his works. Both associations estab- lished personal and academic contacts and cooperations with the Polish Korczak Committee, whose history can be traced back to 1946, when contemporary witnesses of Korczak founded the Committee to honour Korczak’s memory. This paper aims to reconstruct the early scientific cooperations of both German Korczak associations with Polish scientists and the Polish Korczak Committee. While in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) major research stimuli emanated at the faculties of education at Gießen and Wuppertal, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) a first ...
The Light of History: Through the Lens of a Polish Museum
2013
Together with literature, history has played a defining role in shaping the consciousness of the Poles. This reflected in the history of Polish museums where we can trace the indissoluble nexus between history and politics. With the collapse of the communist regime in 1989 and the restoration of democracy the role the historical narrative should play in public debate needed to be redefined. These challenges would include: Polish identity and multicultural traditions. Reckoning with the communist past. A debate on “Historical politics” (i.e. what role history should play in the politics of the government). International debates on the Holocaust, German discussions on national socialism and the “victimization” of German social memory. New museology and international trends. As a result of all these processes and debates, around the year 2000 a series of new museum projects was launched in Poland including The Polish History Museum. The Museum’s narrative is buttressed by three pillars...