For the majority of people born and raised in communist Poland, it was always obvious that one of the characteristic features constituting the reality of this state was the falsification of history. This applied in particular to the most recent history and, above all, to Polish history. With the knowledge we brought with us from our family homes, we distrustfully approached the interpretations of the history of the prewar Second Polish Republic, the years of war and occupation and, of course, the "liberation" by the Red Army, that were imposed upon us.
For my generation, the true heroes were those who were relegated to the fringes of our school history lessons: the soldiers of the Home Army, those of General Anders's army, the combatants of the Warsaw Uprising, and the Polish officers murdered by the NKVD, about whom nothing could be said. All of these great people were raised in the Second Republic-which was forcibly presented to us as incompetently governed, weak, poor, a persecutor of its national minorities, and hostile to the Soviet Union for no good reason.
While challenging what they taught us in school about twentieth-century Polish history, we simultaneously accepted, without any particular resistance, the history of Polish splendor and Polish heroism as taught in the same school. This latter history included the tradition of "noble democracy" and toleration on the one hand, and on the other the enormity of the undeserved misfortune that befell us down the ages. In brief, our relationship to our own history-both that learned at school and that learned at home-was above all affirmative and often, in view of our personal relationship to the regime of the day, deeply emotional. The apogee of this affirmation came in the 1980s with the emergence of Solidarność, and then resistance toward martial law. These experiences confirmed the view of Poland and the Poles that we had formed earlier, as freedom-loving patriots who were capable of great acts and great sacrifices-always, of course "for your freedom and ours."
The recovery of our independence unexpectedly disturbed our own good feelings about ourselves. Firstly, conflicts that emerged and the divisions that erupted within Solidarność itself were increasingly personal in character and fueled by ambition, and had less and less to do with substance and ideals. Secondly, national minorities that had been consigned to the margins of folklore in communist Poland now returned to the public scene.
The appearance in Poland of Belorussians, Lithuanians, Germans, Roma, Ukrainians and Jews, differentiating themselves through their language, culture or religion, came as a huge shock to many Poles, who only shortly before had been professing their allegiance to the Jagellonian traditions of a multicultural Republic. Conflicts and resentments that had been frozen by decades of communism suddenly saw the light of day. The appearance of minorities evoked consternation in places where these minorities were absent, and caused the revivification of old conflicts in places where the minorities were present. These old conflicts were most glaring in the east, where there was the greatest number of minorities. All of a sudden, it seemed that the rejected communist version of history had taken root in our consciousness in at least one sense: the acceptance of the dogma that Poland is a state belonging to ethnic Poles. There was no reason for anyone else to see that state in a way differently from the way we ourselves saw it. Yet history as told by the minorities often differed from what we considered to be our own history-and therefore the only true one.
The collapse of the Soviet Union brought freedom to our eastern neighbors, but only deepened this historical asymmetry. The confrontation with Lithuanian, Belorussian, or Ukrainian history caused anxiety. It led on the one hand to the reevaluation of our own stereotypes (something we did in Więź by introducing the series "Poles in the eyes of their neighbors"), or on the other to defending "our truth" from "others' truth." Both of these stances frequently went to extremes. Sometimes, all virtues and accomplishments were cast in to doubt. Alternatively, anyone who dared question even the most preposterous convictions about the exceptional nature of the Poles might be vilified.
Aside from controversy surrounding the recent history of Polish-Ukrainian relations, the greatest emotions were evoked when discussing the Germans-because of the conviction that we had always been their victims-and the Jews, for whom, we thought, Poland had always been a tolerant homeland, and towards whom the Poles had always been sympathetic neighbors ready to render aid. The discussion that has gone on for several years now on the expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War required us to accept the fact that those who had once been the Germans' victims could also be cruel oppressors. It had taken decades for most Poles to recognize the sense of the Polish bishops' 1965 letter to the German bishops: "We forgive and ask for forgiveness."
We also slowly began to accept the fact that anti-Semitic propaganda did exist in the 1930s, as well as the phenomenon of the szmalcownicy and the indifference among a section of Polish society toward the tragedy of the Jews during the Holocaust. Today, these phenomena are taught in many Polish schools. We know, after so many years of silence and lies, that 90 percent of the victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews. Interest in the history and culture of the Polish Jews is today sufficiently widespread for it to be seen as fashionable (which is not to say that anti-Semitism has disappeared from Poland).
Jan T. Gross's Neighbors, a small book published in mid-2000 by Pogranicze caused a real shock within Poland. Even among those who had never questioned the painful judgments on the stance of the Poles toward Jews during the occupation and immediately afterward, and who knew full well that Poles sometimes willingly assisted the Germans in plundering and even murdering individual Jews-the truth about Jedwabne was hard to accept.
I do not agree with Jan T. Gross on many specific points, particularly his use of the word "society" at the end of this terrifying book, but I am convinced that Neighbors is a book which had to be written and that is needed. Facing up to the painful truth of Jedwabne is, in my conviction, the most serious test that we Poles have had to confront in the last decade. How well we do on this test, will shape-and I do not hesitate in using these big words-our place in the family of free, democratic nations. Each of these nations has in its history dark or, at times, even black stains, but each of them, sooner or later, has been able to come to terms with these.
This test is so difficult because its standard has already been set. In acknowledging the guilt of the Catholic Church toward the Jews, Pope John Paul II has reminded us of the only possible canon for a truthful examination of our conscience: to ask for forgiveness without any conditions or justification. "Forgive, as we too forgive." The real sense of this plea requires an unparalleled double effort-asking for forgiveness and forgiving others at the same time.
Such a task, therefore, faces before us all, irrespective of whether any of us carries any individual responsibility for what happened 60 years ago in a handful of small Polish towns. It is all too human to seek justification and symmetry for our own guilt. The most difficult thing is to admit guilt, to say, simply: so it was. Especially when the admission is accompanied by a justified fear that it will be manipulated and exploited in order to confirm the already accepted thesis of the collective responsibility of the Poles for the Holocaust.
I shall never be able to come to terms with this thesis, which has been widely disseminated, unfortunately, especially amongst Jews in the United States, nor with the notion of "Polish concentration camps" or "Polish anti-Semitism." Yes, certain Poles murdered Jews. So it was. Many Poles helped Jews, and among them there were those who lost their own lives doing so. If I want to have a moral right to justified pride in the rescuers, then I must admit, to a sense of shame over the killers.
Great nations have a right to be proud of the great episodes in their history, and at the same time they are able to admit to the dark episodes. The test that faces us today will determine whether we are, in fact, a great nation.
February 2001