SZACKA, Barbara and Castle, Marjorie. Polish Remembrance of World War II PDF

Polish Remembrance of World War II
Author(s): Barbara Szacka and Marjorie Castle

Source: International Journal of Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 4, Collective Memory and Social
Transition in Poland (Winter, 2006/2007), pp. 8-26
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20628273
Accessed: 03-09-2016 13:19 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International
Journal of Sociology
This content downloaded from 131.156.224.67 on Sat, 03 Sep 2016 13:19:37 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
International Journal of Sociology, vol. 36, no. 4, Winter 2006-7, pp. 8-26.
? 2007 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 0020-7659/2007 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/IJS0020-7659360401
Barbara Szacka
Polish Remembrance of
World War II
ABSTRACT: The Polish collective memory of World War II integrates the Soviet
occupation of the eastern areas, and the Nazi occupation in the west. Analysis of
mass media communication shows that both pre-1989, and after that date differ
ent interpretations of events from that era were presented. Surveys carried out
from 1965 to 2004 demonstrate that for the majority of Poles World War II gives
them reason to be proud, and few see any cause for shame. The war experience
of family members is also a common topic between family and friends. Recalling
or passing down war experiences in a private, family setting stems from the fact
that in Europe World War II affected everybody, civilians included. The presence
of "personal perspectives " in the memory of World War II is a sign of the devel
opment of the "postnational" attitude toward the past. Another expression of
this attitude is the drive to preserve the memory of concrete individuals, victims
of the war, as well as to accept the remembrance of those who fought on the
other side.
World War II began September 1, 1939, when the German army crossed Poland's
western border. On September 3, Poland's allies, England and France, declared
war on Germany, transforming the Polish-German conflict into a European war.
While fighting the Germans, the Polish army gradually withdrew to the east, in
what would be called the September campaign. German planes bombed cities
and strafed roads crowded with soldiers and civilians fleeing toward the east. On
September 17, the Red Army unexpectedly invaded Poland from the east. Eleven
days later, at the Kremlin, Ribbentrop and Molotov signed a pact "on borders
Barbara Szacka is Professor Emeritus at the University of Warsaw and a professor at the
Warsaw School of Social Psychology (SWPS). Address all correspondence to:
bszacka@data.pl.
Translated by Marjorie Castle.
WINTER 2006-7 9
and friendship," revising the division of Polish territory between Germany and the
Soviet Union concluded in an August 23 accord. Some of the territories occupied
by the Germans were incorporated into the Reich, and the remaining territories
formed the General Government. The territories occupied by the Soviet Army
were incorporated into the Soviet Union.
Polish officers captured by the Red Army and sent to Soviet prisoner of war
camps in Kozielsk, Starobielsk, and Ostaszkow (a total of 14,700) were killed in
the spring of 1940 (Friszke 2003: 31). The prisoners sent to Kozielsk were killed
outside the hamlet of Katyn, the name of which became a symbol of this massacre
(Allen 1991); the name Katyn also became a symbol of Polish martyrdom at the
hands of the Soviet forces, including mass arrests and exiles.
Thus the period of dual occupation began. As one historian writes, this "caused
a broad-based threat to the survival of the Polish nation. It was not just the Polish
state that had been destroyed, but also the entire infrastructure of political, social,
and economic life. The occupiers carried out a systematic extermination of elites,
with the aimed of undermining the nation and making it impossible for it to be
restored" (Friszke 2003: 49; Lukas 1997).
Legitimate Polish authorities began to be set up abroad, at first in France. By
September 30,1939, a Polish government-in-exile had been created, with General
Wladyslaw Sikorski as prime minister and commander-in-chief. After France's
defeat, the remains of the Polish army and government evacuated to England,
where in November the Polish government-in-exile decided that conspiratorial
resistance should be undertaken in occupied Poland. Thus, the Union for Armed
Struggle (ZWZ) (the name of which was later changed to the Home Army) was
created as the only military force authorized by the Polish government to operate
in Poland. By 1943, the conspiratorial network of the Home Army (AK) covered
the entire country?most densely in the General Government, and more sparsely
in the territories incorporated into the German Reich and in the eastern territories,
where Ukrainians and Belarusians predominated.
There was also a network of conspiratorial civilian organizations. This included
the office of the Government Delegate at Home, including several departments,
constituting the Polish Underground State. A historian writes,
Compared with other countries' resistance movements, the Polish underground

was distinguished by its unusually high level of organization, the breadth of its
organizational network, the variety and number of initiatives it undertook, and
the fact that it included all political factions. Another distinguishing feature was
that the main underground institutions had authority delegated to them by state
authorities in exile. Thus we speak of a Polish Underground State rather than a
resistance movement, which would be a spontaneous phenomenon not controlled
from above. (Friszke 2003: 79)
After the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, the Polish government-in-exile signed
a pact with Moscow in which the Soviet Union agreed to the creation on its soil of a
Polish army, with its command chosen by the Polish government-in-exile; the Soviet
10 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Union also promised an amnesty for Polish citizens transported from Poland's east
ern territories to Soviet prisons, camps, and compulsory resettlement areas. The com
mander of the new army was General Wladyslaw Anders, just freed from a Soviet
prison. As a result of the Polish-Soviet agreement, and a subsequent British-Soviet
agreement, this entire Polish army together with accompanying civilians had left the
Soviet Union for Iran by August 1942; this army would fight alongside its Western
allies.
In April 1943, while advancing into the Soviet Union the Germans discovered
the graves of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. The Soviet response was to
accuse the Germans of being responsible for these crimes. Since the Polish gov
ernment refused to believe the Soviet claims, it was accused of collaboration with
the Germans and Soviet-Polish relations were broken off.
The Soviet Union uncompromisingly strove to dominate Poland through creat
ing authority structures headed by Polish communists, to be controlled by the
Soviets. Their training in preparation for operating in occupied Poland began im
mediately after the outbreak of Soviet-German hostilities. Several of these people
were parachuted into German-occupied territory, and in 1942 they organized the
communist Polish Workers' Party (PPR). That party created a small military orga
nization, the People's Guard (GL), later renamed the People's Army (AL). On
January 1, 1943, in Warsaw it also created the State National Council (KRN),
claiming it to be the only legal authority in Poland.
Even before breaking off relations with the Polish government-in-exile, Stalin
decided to create the Union of Polish Patriots, which emerged as an organization
in June 1943 in the Soviet Union, officially taking charge of a new Polish Army,
consisting of Poles who had not managed to join General Anders's army. The
majority of the officer corps consisted of officers delegated from the Soviet Red
Army, but Polish General Zygmunt Berling took command.
As the Red Army neared the borders of prewar Poland political activities aimed
at subordinating Poland to the Soviet Union intensified. Toward the end of 1943,
preparations began in Moscow for an alternative government-in-exile. On July 22,
1944, after the Red Army crossed the former Polish border and took the city of
Chelm, the creation of the Polish Committee for National Liberation (PKWN) was
announced, with a manifesto that while promising social reforms (for example, in
agriculture) claimed that the Polish government in London and its delegate in Po
land were without authority and illegitimate because they were based on the "fas
cist" prewar constitution. July 22 would be celebrated as a state holiday throughout
the existence of the People's Republic of Poland (PRL).
Meanwhile the Red Army quickly approached Warsaw. When it appeared that it
was about to arrive, the Home Army's General Staff began its uprising, on August 1,
1944. The Soviet army reached Warsaw in mid-September, took up a position on the
right bank of the Vistula, and remained there until January 17, 1945. On the other
side of the river the battle raged and Warsaw burned (Davies 2003). The Poles sur
rendered on October 2, 1944. A historian writes:
WINTER 2006-7 II
Ten thousand AK soldiers died in the uprising, another 5,000 disappeared, and
25,000 were wounded. The civilian losses are estimated at somewhere between
100,000 and 150,000. About half a million inhabitants of Warsaw were forcibly
removed from the city, with over 60,000 sent to forced labor in Germany. Per
haps a quarter of the city was destroyed in the uprising itself, but after the surren
der Hitler decided to systematically destroy the remaining buildings with the
goal of completely obliterating Warsaw. (Friszke 2003: 97)
Territories already liberated from German occupation were governed by the

PKWN, based in Lublin, which at the beginning of 1945 was transformed into the
Temporary Government, in which the PPR had the deciding voice. Its security
forces and the Soviet NKWD were busy at work, eliminating the military and
civilian forces of the underground state. A decree of August 1944 dissolved all
secret military organizations and ordered that their members report and turn in
their arms. A later decree, on October 30, threatened death for membership in an
armed organization, for hiding arms, or for participation in any underground orga
nization. At this point AK members were still under oath. Only on January 19,
1945, did the AK commander order the dissolution of the AK, but "the disman
tling of AK organizational structures was a process that took several months, espe
cially since AK soldiers were being hunted down and repressed by the NKWD and
the PKWN's security apparatus" (Friszke 2003: 100).
It is estimated that by 1945 the NKWD had arrested over 60,000 people and
deported at least 50,000, including several thousand AK soldiers. This repression
did not end with the war's end and Germany's surrender. In 1945-46 around 100,000
people were arrested in Poland for political reasons. From 1944 to 1949 military
courts handed down over 50,000 sentences, including around 4,000 death sentences.
The result of all this is that while the precise minute that World War II began in
Poland can be identified, the real end of the war is hard to establish. For different
people in different parts of the country the war ended at different times. For some
it ended as the frontlines went past them in 1944 and the German occupation came
to a close, which meant the reopening of secondary schools and universities closed
by the Germans, the start of rebuilding of the structures destroyed during the war,
and also the possibility that those who had been driven away could return home.
For others the war ended only when the last partisan laid down his arms and armed
conflict came to an end, which occurred a few years later than Germany's surren
der formally ending the war in Europe.
World War II in Polish Collective Memory
Robert Traba (2000) distinguishes three stages in Polish memory of World War II.
The first is from 1944-45 to 1949, which he calls the period of "living memory"
because of "the direct proximity of the traumatic experiences of the war period,
which created an intensely emotional social involvement" and "the public discus
sion of how to memorialize the war, which was not yet?relatively speaking?
monopolized by the state." The second stage, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Traba
calls the period of "legalized memory" (Traba 2000: 54), and the third stage, be
ginning after 1980, is the period of "the reanimation of memory" (ibid.: 60).
In the first years after a war, when the entire population remembers it directly,
the memory of the war and the traumatic experiences associated with it is usually
more private than in later years, after the social construction of it has been made.
The formation of memories as a collective memory of a common experience re
quires time. Gillis observes that the collective memory of the Holocaust, together
with the spread of that term, arose on the basis of individual memories of Jewish
survivors only at the end of the 1950s. "When the memory of those horrible events
could no longer be taken for granted, there was suddenly a powerful reason to
commemorate, to save both individual and collective recollections from oblivion"
(Gillis 1994: 12).
Traba finds the period of "legalized memory" to be characterized by how memory
is dominated by the ideological component (references to "the victory of the
People's Fatherland and to martyrdom at the hands of only the German occupi
ers") and by the national component (references exclusively to the martyrdom of
the Polish nation). Concerning the latter, he writes "One curious effect of this way
of thinking is the inscription at the Sobibor concentration camp, which almost
ignores the Jews among the 250,000 who died there, although the camp was cre
ated for the purpose of eliminating them" (Traba 2000: 62). This is not a Polish
peculiarity but a more general phenomenon. As a side note to her analysis of
German memory of concentration camps, Koonz asserts: "Outside Germany, con
centration camps and memorials recall an unproblematic narrative of national
martyrs killed by a foreign enemy. German atrocities can be remembered and
collaborators forgotten. National resisters can be enshrined while other victims
(including Jews) are easily forgotten" (Koonz 1994: 260).
But the special characteristic of Polish memory of World War II is that it was
and is a fragmented memory divided into memories of two different experiences:
the Soviet occupation in the eastern part of prewar Poland and the German occu
pation in the western part of Poland, which was itself experienced differently in
the territories incorporated into the Reich and in the territories ruled by the Gen
eral Government. The abyss between the official, "bureaucratic" memory of the
war and the divided social memory made it difficult or even impossible to recon
cile these and create a socially agreed upon common collective memory.
The need to legitimize the socialist government, created as a result of political
and military support from the Soviet Union, shaped the "bureaucratic" memory of
the war. This required that two kinds of content be eliminated from the portrait of
the war: First, everything that could mar the image of the Soviet Union as a model
of social justice and as Poland's best friend, deserving warm feelings of gratitude
for Poland's liberation from its ruthless German occupier; and second, everything
associated with prewar Poland and with the continuity embodied by the London
government-in-exile, which could undermine the new authorities' legitimacy.
WINTER 2006-7 13
Eliminating the first kind of content meant complete silence about the mass
deportations from Poland's eastern territories to distant parts of the Soviet Union
and its camps, as well as silence about the fate of Polish prisoners of war (POWs)
who had been sent to Starobielsk and Ostaszkow. As for those whose fate had been
made public, the Kozielsk POWs who were murdered in Katyn Forest, their deaths
had to be ascribed to the Germans.
Avoiding the second kind of content required ignoring the deeds of the Polish
soldiers of the September campaign as well as those who fought in Polish armies
in the West, and focusing solely on the deeds of the soldiers of the Polish People's
Army. Maintaining silence about what happened during the Soviet occupation
created a certain problem, because it left unanswered the question of why there
happened to be enough Poles in the Soviet Union to create not only Anders's army
but also the Polish People's Army. This issue was avoided with the phrase: "The
fortunes of war brought them to . . ." (and here was given the name of the city or
region of the Soviet Union, or simply the Soviet Union itself).
It also required presenting the Polish resistance movement as the work of pri
marily the People's Army and the People's Guard, associated with the State Na
tional Council created by the communists. Not only did the deeds of the Home
Army, the military arm of the government-in-exile in London, have to be ignored,
but the Home Army itself had to be discredited.
The silence about Soviet actions against Poland and Poles during World War II
remained utterly unbroken throughout the entire life of the PRL. Not so in the case
of the military deeds of the regular armies and the resistance movement led by the
government-in-exile. The initial extremely negative evaluation of them was moder
ated over time. As the years passed the authorities began to feel surer of themselves.
They also began to base their legitimacy more on national symbols than on class
symbols. This was reflected in changes in the propaganda about Poland's past, which
Szpocinski (1989) has observed in his analysis of educational radio broadcasts.
In the case of World War II this led to a gradual acknowledgment of the heroism
of soldiers and resistance fighters who had belonged to armies and organizations
that had earlier been condemned or ignored. The silence was broken over time,
and criticism began to be limited to the commanders, who were accused of ignoble
political machinations or even treason, as in the case of General Anders, who led
his army out of the Soviet Union. These two separate approaches to the soldiers
and to the commanders were evident in the official narrative of the Warsaw Upris
ing (Szacka 1995).
Throughout the PRL's existence a simplified picture of World War II, consisting
of two basic elements, was presented. One was the portrayal of the war as a complete
break with everything that had gone before. From that, from an almost mythological
chaos, the utterly new socialist Poland was born. The other was the portrayal of
Germany as the sole enemy and persecutor of Poles. This picture was strengthened
by an emphasis in older history on battles fought primarily with Germans, which
were presented as precursors to World War II. The victory at Grunwald in 1410 was
seen as an omen of the twentieth-century conquest of Berlin and the defeat of fas
cism. This was the picture of the war given in elementary school textbooks in the
final years of the PRL (Szacka 1988).
The 1980s, which Traba calls the period of "the reanimation of memory," brought
a significant change. During this time, there was an explosion of uncensored pub
lications that addressed what was called the "eastern martyrdom" of Poles. The
central symbol of this was Katyn. This encouraged the mending of the fragmented
social memory of World War II.
This attempt to give new form to collective memory, or as the slogan went, to
eliminate the "blank spots" in Polish history, undermined the legitimizing myths
of the communist system. It also helped to eliminate the abyss between the official
collective memory and the vernacular collective memory. After the system trans
formation, the official collective memory was changed but its earlier fragmenta
tion was not overcome. The reaction to the years of silence about the eastern
martyrdom was a focus exclusively on that aspect, which led to omitting those
aspects of the wartime history that were previously disseminated so insistently.
Thus began a new asymmetry in the picture of the war, and a new incongruence
between the official and the popular memory, at least in certain circles. This is illus
trated by research carried out by the Army Institute of Sociological Research. In
1988 military personnel felt that what was overemphasized in official sources were
the battles of Poles on the Eastern Front and the postwar struggle to establish people's
power. But in 1993 military personnel viewed the following events as overempha
sized: the 1920 war, the battles of the Home Army, Katyn, the battles of the National
Armed Forces (NSZ),1 and Poles fighting on the Western Front. Meanwhile many
respondents asserted that the battles of the Polish People's Army on the Eastern
Front were omitted in discussions of World War II (Lipiec 1993). In military circles
today there is still a feeling that there has been an unjust omission of the military
efforts of the People's Polish Army, created in the Soviet Union.2 But popular senti
ments on this are different. Survey research carried out in 2004 (TNS/OBOP) on a
nationwide sample shows the wartime events most frequently mentioned as requir
ing immediate explanation are associated with Poland's neighbor to the East: Katyn
(30 percent), the deportation of Poles to the Soviet Union during and after the war
(22.1 percent), and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 (17 percent). The only
other event that was chosen by a large proportion of respondents (29 percent) was
the 1943 death of General Sikorski in a mysterious air accident.
The new official approach to the wartime history also meant a change in the
portrait of Germany. Focusing attention on the east weakened the image of Ger
many as Poland's sole and eternal enemy and persecutor. Moreover political and
economic imperatives made friendly relations with Poland's western neighbor
necessary. This required elimination from the official media of the image of Ger
many as a bloodthirsty enemy, and even a tactful silence about what happened in
German-occupied Poland during the war. In the state television news and histori
cal programs in a three-month period (April-June) in 1993, analyzed by Szpocinski,
WINTER 2006-7 15
the dominant theme in references to World War II was reconciliation "between

nations once involved in conflict." Szpocinski states: "The majority of references
to the war are aimed at building a tradition of reconciliation. They obscure the fact
that Germans were the perpetrators." On the other hand,
Wartime conflicts with eastern neighbors are presented differently, not so much
as a result of what actually happened in 1939-45/47, but rather as a result of how
it was later viewed and evaluated. The way in which the Polish-German conflict
is presented in television informational programs implies that reconciliation is
already an accomplished fact. The problem of relations with Russians and Ukrai
nians is addressed differently. (Szpocinski 2000: 413-14)3
Nevertheless, the memory of the crimes committed by the Germans, strength

ened by half a century of propaganda, does not disappear easily from collective
memory. Research carried out in the 1990s shows that the majority of Poles feel
that this memory defines the relationship of Poles to Germans.
This opinion is expressed by the generation that remembers the war as well as by
younger people for whom this is part of their knowledge learned in school and
read in textbooks or literature, or part of the traditions passed down by their
elders. Among school pupils and university students 47 percent believe that World
War II has a strong influence on current relations between Poles and Germans.
(Nassalska 1998)
The persistence of memory of wartime crimes carried out by Germans is also

evident in the TNS/OBOP 2004 research cited above. Fourth among the wartime
events requiring explanation are "the Nazi crimes committed during World War II
against the Polish nation" (15.2 percent).
Polish Collective Memory of World War II in Survey Research
Szpocinski's analysis of state television informational programs leads him to assert:
In the analyzed programs the events of World War II decidedly dominate in refer
ences to the past. This resulted in part because two major anniversaries?the
Katyn massacre and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?fell during the sample pe
riod. . . . But we should note that even if we eliminate all instances arising di
rectly from the anniversaries, wartime references would still predominate over
references to events, people, and deeds from other eras. This shows how strong
the memory of the occupation years still is. (Szpocinski 2000: 408)
Research on collective memory also shows that this memory is still alive. The
research on which I base this statement was carried out in three different time
periods. The first and second were carried out in 1965 and 1988 by the University
of Warsaw, and the third in 2003 by the Institute of Political Studies. The samples
in the first two studies consisted of Poles with higher education, while the latest
study was carried out on two groups?all Poles and Poles with higher education.
The 2003 research project included focus groups as well as surveys. The concern
of all this research was the remembrance of Polish history from the formation of a
Polish state on, and not just World War II. This is reflected in the title of the 2003
study: "The Past in the Eyes of Contemporary Polish Society." Thus the remem
brance of World War II constitutes only part of the remembrance of Polish history
addressed in this research, and is seen against the background of memories of
other events in Polish history. In addition, I also use here research conducted by
TNS/OBOP in 2004, looking only at the remembrance of Polish history since the
regaining of independence in 1918.
First I discuss what qualitative survey research shows us about Polish remem
brance of World War II, and then I present the results of qualitative research. In the
quantitative research we are looking at remembrance of the war as formed from
information coming from various sources (including individual experience) and
transformed according to the rules of the collective memory. The remembered war
thus appears as a collection of events that are part of Poland's history; some of
these events are remembered better than others and evaluated differently than oth
ers, including events in which family members or acquaintances of the respon
dents took part. The passage of time from the first survey to the last allows us to
see if and how remembrance of World War II and its place in Polish history changed
as the number of people who had experienced it personally declined and as the
sociopolitical reality changed.
In 1965 the youngest respondents (21.1 percent) were born between 1931 and
1941, and thus at least part of their childhood took place during the war. In 1988
those born before 1931 constituted only 34.8 percent of the sample. Thirty-eight
years after the first survey, in 2003 people born by 1943, and thus including those
who were only very small children during the war, constituted 22 percent of the
higher education sample and 35 percent of the general sample.
In 1965 socialist Poland was prospering quite well, but a significant part of the
sample remembered a different Poland, for which many had fought during the
war. 1988 was the final stage of the struggle to overthrow the system that had been
brought to Poland on the bayonets of the Red Army in 1944. One element of this
struggle, which took place in the symbolic realm as well, was the fight over the
form of memory of Poland's past, which resulted in a huge interest in history. The
next research project, carried out in 2003, took place after more than ten years in
the new reality created by the systemic transformation that ended socialism?
creating new challenges as well as the need to solve previously unknown prob
lems. Absorbed by these challenges and problems people had less interest in history,
especially the older history from before Poland regained its independence in 1918.
The survey research carried out in three different time periods shows us how all
these changes affected the shape of Polish memory of World War II. The qualita
tive results from the 2003 focus groups, over half a century after the end of the
war, show not only the contemporary shape that memory takes but also the emo
tions accompanying it.
WINTER 2006-7 17
World War II in Polish Collective Memory as Reflected in

Quantitative Research
All the surveys analyzed here contained questions about events in Polish history that
could be cause for pride or cause for shame. World War II continues to be among
the events most frequently mentioned as a source of pride for Poles. The system may
have changed, and interest in history may have declined, reducing the number of
responses for all events, but the leading place of World War II as a time full of events
and deeds constituting cause for pride remains unchallenged. In 1965, 35.7 percent
chose it as a source of pride, in 1988,45.4 percent chose it, and in 2003,35.1 percent
of the higher education sample and 24.6 percent of the general sample chose it.
Technical limitations made it impossible to examine this question further in the first
surveys, but it can be examined more closely in the later surveys. In 1988, feelings of
pride about World War II most frequently concerned the Warsaw Uprising (14.1
percent) and the September campaign (11.5 percent). The 2003 higher education
sample also mentioned the uprising most frequently (8.5 percent) and the September
campaign (7 percent), as did the general sample (although as usual in surveys with a
lower average level of education the percentage of answers was lower). On the other
hand, sources of Polish pride mentioned most frequently in the 2003 survey were
"winning World War II" (9.6 percent) and the Warsaw Uprising (5 percent).
It is noteworthy that the most frequently mentioned causes for pride among war
time events are the battles of the Polish Army created in the West after the September
defeat and constituting the armed forces of the government-in-exile in London, and
not the deeds of the Polish People's Army created by the Union of Polish Patriots in
the Soviet Union. In 1988, 8.4 percent of those surveyed were proud of the former
and 2.6 percent were proud of the latter. The numbers for the 2003 sample with
higher education were 4.1 percent and one respondent. In the TNS/OBOP 2004
survey, few chose these answers but the proportions were similar: 2.6 percent chose
the battles of the Polish Army in the West and only 0.6 percent chose the battles of
the Polish People's Army on the Eastern Front. We can see that the Polish People's
Army's deeds in Wal Pomorski, by the Oder, and in the battle for Berlin, in which a
soldier raised a Polish flag on the Brandenburg Gate, did not constitute the same
kind of source of pride as the Polish Army fighting in Narvik or Tobruk, at Monte
Cassino, or participating in the Battle of Britain. This in spite of all the propaganda
efforts of the PRL, and in spite of the fact that 396,420 soldiers fought with the
Polish armed forces in the East, while only half that number (194,500) fought in the
West (Dzipanow 2005). The Polish People's Army is tainted by its association with
the Red Army, which brought not only liberation from German occupation but also
the new repression of communism and subordination to the Soviet Union.
Thus there is a widespread belief among Poles that World War II events consti
tute sources of pride. Significantly fewer see sources of shame in that period: in
1965, 4.5 percent, in 1988, 5.2 percent, and in 2003, 11.1 percent of the higher
education sample and 4.4 percent of the general sample. What produced shame was
defined in 1965 and 1988 as "behavior during the occupation," but in 2003 in both
samples the most frequently mentioned answer was "behavior toward Jews (failure
to help, indifference, participation in actions against Jews)." We might conclude that
the spread of knowledge about the Holocaust, the broad discussion about Polish
relations with Jews during the occupation, and the disclosure of the Jedwabne drama,
in which Polish peasants on their own initiative cruelly murdered their Jewish neigh
bors, has put the fate of the Jews into the Polish remembrance of the war. But this
may not be correct because in the TNS/OBOP 2004 survey the only cause for shame
indicated was "collaboration with the Germans" (2.4 percent). True, we do not know
how coding of answers to the open-ended question may have affected the results.
Perhaps shameful behavior toward Jews during the occupation was included in that
general category because of the small number of answers to this question.
Among the people associated with World War II there is not one of whom Poles
are ashamed. On the other hand, there are some of whom Poles are proud?above all
General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the first prime minister of the Polish government-in
exile. He was mentioned by 10.9 percent in 1965, by 9.3 percent in 1988, by 1.8
percent of the 2003 respondents with higher education, and 1.6 percent of the 2003
general sample. In the TNS/OBOP 2004 survey, which concerned a shorter period of
Polish history, giving potential sources of pride less competition, Sikorski was cho
sen by 4 percent.
Because we are interested not only in remembrance about Polish history but
also remembrance about people's family past and how this is passed on, in the
1988 and 2003 surveys we asked if someone from the respondent's family had
participated in an important historical event. In 1988, 76.1 percent said yes, but in
2003, only 50.1 percent of the higher education sample and 43 percent of the
general sample said yes. The smaller percentages in the latter surveys are not sur
prising, since fifteen years had passed during which many people who had lived
through major historical events had passed away. Gone were many family mem
bers who had taken part in those events and who could talk about them, and his
torical events in which one could take part were in the past. In 2003 we also asked
whether any of the respondent's acquaintances had taken part in such events.
Such acquaintances were possessed by 20.3 percent of the respondents with higher
education, and 16.3 percent of the general sample.
The most frequently mentioned historical event in which respondents' relatives
had participated was World War II. Such relatives were claimed by 62.6 percent of
those surveyed in 1988,41 percent of those with higher education surveyed in 2003,
and 36.9 percent of the general 2003 sample. The 2004 survey results showed a
difference between those with higher education and the general sample on the ques
tion of acquaintances who had participated in important historical events. The former
group had such acquaintances more frequently (19.9 percent) than did the latter
group (16.3 percent), but a smaller percentage of those with higher education had
WINTER 2006-7 19
acquaintances who had participated in World War II events. In addition, in the gen
eral sample a significantly higher percentage of older people than younger people
had such acquaintances, while among those with higher education age played no
discernible role. Unlike the general sample, those with higher education more
frequently had acquaintances who had participated in opposition activity during the
PRL, especially in its final decades, than acquaintances who had participated in
World War II events.
The respondents were also asked about what particular wartime events their
relatives and acquaintances had experienced. The results indicate that relatives of
the 1988 respondents most frequently participated in various forms of resistance
activity (such as partisan warfare, conspiracy, and underground education), and
next most frequently in the Warsaw Uprising and the September 1939 campaign.
In 2003 the higher education sample most frequently mentioned their relatives'
experiences in German concentration camps, prisoner of war camps, or in forced
labor in Germany; also mentioned was participation in the resistance movement,
as well as stays in Russian camps, deaths in Katyn, or deportation to the Soviet
Union. The general sample differed, placing the September campaign in third place.
When the question concerned acquaintances instead of relatives, participation in
the Polish Army in the West was also mentioned.
It is noteworthy that participation in the Polish People's Army on the Eastern
Front was mentioned less frequently than all of the above-mentioned events. In
spite of the fact that this army was twice as large as the Polish armed forces in the
West, in the collective memory it occupies a secondary place and it appears that
the respondents had fewer relatives and acquaintances in it than one might expect,
or perhaps that they do not consider service in that army to be as worthy of men
tion as other types of service in World War II.
The war itself is the most frequent topic of conversations about the past with
family members and acquaintances. Large proportions of the respondents assert
that they talk about it, whether frequently, not so frequently, or somewhat rarely:
98.1 percent in 1988, 83.4 percent of the 2003 higher education sample, and 55.8
percent of the 2003 general sample. Overall interest in history may have decreased,
fewer people may discuss the past, but World War II continues to be the chief topic
in such conversations.
In 1988 we also asked respondents if they discuss their family's past with their
children and if they discuss Poland's past with them. Sixty-six percent replied in
the affirmative to both questions?less than in response to the previously discussed
set of questions but this was probably because not all respondents had children.
World War II was a leading topic in these conversations as well, although more
frequently in conversations about the family's past (48.8 percent of those who had
such conversations with their children) than in conversations about Poland's past
(39.2 percent). This suggests that Polish memories about World War II are above
all memories of the wartime fates of families.
World War II in the Polish Collective Memory as Reflected in the

2003 Qualitative Research
The cities in which the interviews were carried out lie in regions with distinctly
different pasts. During the nineteenth century some were ruled by Russia and oth
ers by Prussia. Between World Wars I and II, two of these cities were not within the
borders of the Republic of Poland (Gdansk and Wroclaw), while the rest were.
Two of the latter were and are cities of two distinct cultures: Polish and Silesian in
Katowice, Polish and Belarusian in Bialystok.
The wartime experiences of the inhabitants of these cities were distinctly differ
ent, as were the wartime fates of these cities. Bialystok was occupied by the Soviet
Union, Warsaw found itself under the General Government, Poznan, and Katowice
were incorporated into the German Reich, and Wroclaw, a German city before the
war, remained German throughout the war. Gdansk was officially a free city with a
population of both Poles and Germans, but the Germans considered it a German city.
The Red Army also considered Gdansk a German city?when they crossed Poland's
prewar western border they believed that since they were on German soil, the land of
the enemy, they could wreak unlimited vengeance. As for Wroclaw, after the war its
German population was resettled (more or less voluntarily) and the city was repopu
lated with Poles from eastern territories taken over by the Soviet Union, with all their
baggage of the experiences of Soviet wartime occupation.4
The group discussions revealed that in 2003 the image of World War II in the
memory of Poles was not military battles or lethal bombs falling from the air, but
hunger, the struggle for mere survival, destruction, and looting. It also included
deportations, concentration camps, Auschwitz, Katyn, the extermination of Poles,
the drama of the Jews, and "the massacre of our intelligentsia by the Russians and
the Germans in Katyn, Lvov, and Cracow" (Wroclaw focus group).
The war, according to the group participants, made it impossible for the state to
develop, wreaked destruction on Poland, and left cities in ruins. During the war we
were abandoned, attacked from the West and from the East, and then betrayed at
Yalta, where the Great Powers decided among themselves that we would be subor
dinated to the Soviet Big Brother.
When asked about wartime events they evaluated positively, the participants
talked about heroism, and they mentioned the September campaign, not submit
ting to Hitler, the resistance movement, and the Warsaw Uprising. They were not
uncritical about the uprising, however, and one participant from the Gdansk group
(ages thirty-six to fifty-five) said: "you can have different opinions about the up
rising, but it was a very positive thing, and the fact that we were betrayed is a
completely different matter."
Polish memories of the war are accompanied by feelings of pride. "By their
stance Poles acquitted themselves well in the war," said a participant from the
Gdansk group (ages eighteen to thirty-five).
This does not mean that less praiseworthy behavior has been forgotten. In this
WINTER 2006-7 21
context the discussants mentioned collaboration with the Germans, and also anti
Semitism and Jedwabne. Jedwabne appeared in the group discussions a few times.
It was discussed in terms such as this: "A difficult topic" (Katowice, ages thirty
five to fifty-five); "How horrible to have to confess that Jedwabne happened"
(Warsaw, ages eighteen to thirty-five); "When we asked my grandfather if he be
lieved that the events in Jedwabne really happened, he said that Jedwabne is only
the tip of the iceberg" (Warsaw, ages fifty-six and older); "Those events allow
Poles to look at themselves objectively, to realize that we too can create victims"
(Warsaw, ages eighteen to thirty-five).
World War II also came up in the focus group discussions when questions arose
concerning whether the participants remembered their family's past, whether it
was spoken about, and whether there were taboo topics in it. Wartime experiences
of family members?the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, and
aunts?played a major role in memories of family past. This was especially evi
dent in answers to the question whether there was anything in the family past that
was not spoken of, that was taboo to bring up. Only once did a discussant mention
a family secret from private life: "My great-grandmother never said who my
grandmother's father was" (Gdansk, ages thirty-six to fifty-five). All other an
swers concerned silence about wartime experiences: "My grandparents never
wanted to mention that period, not because of how bad it was, but because it is
better not to talk about it"; "They do not want to relive it, recreate it, remind them
selves about it" (Warsaw, ages eighteen to thirty-five). Others: "After a long time I
found out that my mother was in a concentration camp. When I was little I was
curious about the scars on her legs, and she told me that a bomb exploded and the
shards cut her up. All she said was that they were in a concentration camp and they
lived off of potato peels, and that was it. I could not get anything else out of her"
(Wroclaw, ages eighteen to thirty-five). "Father was completely white-haired by
the time he was nineteen, his hair turned grey in just a few days, he was taken from
school on September 2 and sent to a concentration camp, taken with his whole
family, he survived the camp, and he never told about the details, but it was hor
rible" (Katowice, ages eighteen to thirty-five).
Still others: "My grandfather was deported to the Soviet Union; he returned in
the 1950s, but he never said a word about what happened-Terror, fear, a taboo
topic" (Bialystok, ages eighteen to thirty-five). "My father did not want to talk
about it. He was Colonel Zenon Tarasiewicz, counter-intelligence commander of
the General Staff of AK for the Nowogrodzki and Wilenski district. He was sen
tenced to death, he did very hard prison time, he never wanted to talk about it"
(Warsaw, ages fifty-six and older). "My grandmother starts to talk about how her
father perished in Ostaszkow; the tears come, and she does not want to talk any
more" (Katowice, ages eighteen to thirty-five).
Mouths are closed because of shame as well as because of trauma and terror.
"My other grandmother does not like to talk about it because her forefathers come
from German lands, and her uncle was in the SS. . . . If someone served in the
Wehrmacht, well, that may have been honorable but if it was the SS, there was no
honor in it" (Katowice, ages eighteen to thirty-five). "I recently found out that my
grandfather deserted from the army, and that is a little shameful" (Warsaw, ages
eighteen to thirty-five).
Thus memories of the war are passed down in what family members talk about
and in what they stay silent about, as the silence allows the listeners to imagine the
nameless nightmare behind the silence. But memories are also passed down in
behavior. "My grandfather was afraid of everything for the rest of his life," said
one discussant. Others: "My grandmother lived through the Warsaw Uprising, and
every time there was a storm she would lock herself in the bathroom and run the
water so that she could not hear the thunder" (Warsaw, ages eighteen to thirty
five). "Starvation in the concentration camp, starvation in the East?when my great
grandmother died at age eighty-six, under every mattress, in every possible place
there was dried bread, already moldy" (Gdansk, ages thirty-six to fifty-five). "My
grandfather supposedly had nineteen brothers and sisters, four of them survived,
six died in the camps ... one who came back would say nothing but only yes and
no for the rest of his life" (Katowice, ages eighteen to thirty-five).
The discussants' comments portray the various kinds of sufferings that Poland's
prewar inhabitants experienced during the war. In the western lands at the hands
of the Germans: "My wife's grandmother used to tell how her father was ar
rested and killed by the Nazis" (Katowice, ages eighteen to thirty-five). "In 1943
I was three months old and my brother was two years old. My mother was shot
to death while holding me in her arms. Other people hid us. What a sight that
must have been?two children by their mother's corpse and the Germans laugh
ing" (Wroclaw, ages fifty-six and older). In the eastern lands at the hands of the
Russians and Ukrainians: "My grandmother from Lvov would tell about how
they were always having to flee and eat scraps" (Wroclaw, ages eighteen to thirty
five). "My father-in-law spent ten years in Siberia for serving in the Home Army
(AK), he also went through a lot there. . . . My grandfather died tragically, and
my father's sister and her daughter were both raped by Ukrainians" (Warsaw,
ages fifty-six and older).
These wartime memories concern not only suffering at the hands of foreigners,
but also suffering at the hands of compatriots. "My grandmother came back from
Germany and found her neighbors looting her home" (Bialystok, ages thirty-six to
fifty-five).
Then came the end of the war, with the arrival of the liberating Red Army on
Polish soil, which certainly did not mean an end to wartime traumas for everyone.
The participants said,
Our grandparents emphasized that the worst thing that had happened to them
was the arrival of the Russian army, that this was an even worse experience than
the Germans. Young women had to be hidden because they would rape them. It
seemed to me that this was the worst period for Poland, when the Soviet Army
WINTER 2006-7 23
marched in. The Germans were more humane, they kill you immediately. (War
saw, ages eighteen to thirty-five)
Another woman said
An older lady told me that she knew my great-grandmother. When the Russians
arrived, everyone fled but my great-grandmother didn't make it, she was seventy,
and the Russians did what they did, and she took it very hard. When I stand by
her grave I think to myself, there was the occupation, and then people thought
that things would be better in liberated Poland, but it turned out that things were
still worse. (Warsaw, ages eighteen to thirty-five)
It was especially "still worse" on the lands that were not Polish before the war?
for example Gdansk and its environs:
The Russian army had free rein, since this was German territory. The church in
Oliwa at the end of the war was a place of horrors, for the women and young girls
who had fled there. It was a Protestant church, and the Russians went right in and
murdered and raped them all. (Gdansk, ages thirty-six to fifty-five)
The wartime fates of some people were determined after the war. Two such
stories passed down within families were told to us by discussants. One took place
in Pomorze, and the other in Rzeszow. The Pomorze story:
My grandfather lived in Rumia_His middle son was drafted into the Wehrmacht,
he had a lot of adventures, and made it to join Anders's army5 and fought at
Monte Cassino. He returned to Poland after the war, and one afternoon after
church in 1947, in the Arkonski wood in Szczecin, with his fiancee in broad
daylight he got a bullet in his head, and so did she, and that was the end of it.
(Gdansk, ages thirty-six to fifty-five)
The Rzeszow story:

My grandmother had a sister whose fiance lived in Rzeszow, he fought in the
Warsaw Uprising, he belonged to the Home Army. The war was over, and he had
papers that he was free,6 he went back to Rzeszow, they were supposed to get
married, and my great-aunt was coming back from forced labor in Germany.
They killed him, his parents, his uncle. My great-aunt missed her train, and she
arrived at her own wedding to find the family all gone. We guess she would have
perished too. (Gdansk, ages thirty-six to fifty-five)
Conclusion
The research results, the quantitative survey data as well as the focus group discus
sions, show that memories of World War II occupy a central place in the con
sciousness of Poles. They also show that these are predominantly memories of the
fates of family members and acquaintances in those dramatic times. Above all,
their content is what parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and acquaintan
ces have talked about and remained silent about, and not what the radio and news
papers reported then or what historians and school textbooks say today. This is a
strongly privatized remembrance. Undoubtedly this privatization of memory has
been aided by the fact that World War II in Poland, as in many other European
countries, was different from all other wars in the degree to which it affected the
civilian population and their private lives, turning them upside down. But this phe
nomenon has other causes as well.
Experts on European remembrance practices distinguish three periods: the
"prenational" period, up to the close of the eighteenth century; the "national" pe
riod, beginning with the American and French revolutions and lasting more or less
until the 1960s; and a subsequent "postnational" period (Gillis 1994: 5).
The defining characteristic of the postnational period is the privatization of
memory, which appears most frequently in remembrances of those who have per
ished. An excellent American example is the Washington, DC, monument for vet
erans of Vietnam, a war that occupies a much larger place in the memories of
Americans than does World War II. The central feature of this monument is the
long black-marble wall, on which are written the last names of the dead. This wall
of names is seen as the negation of the anonymity of the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier, and constitutes a turning point in collective memory of the war.
Polish remembrance practices also have features that are characteristic of the
postnational period. Memory of those murdered at Katyn and in other Soviet camps
is individualized. Sites of massacres are not memorialized by monuments to anony
mous victims but by cemeteries with walls of plaques on which are written the names
and ranks of the murdered and, in the case of Katyn, with cemetery books containing
information about and even photographs of the victims. Near churches in various
Polish towns are walls with the names of those who were killed in Soviet camps.
Another characteristic of the new postnational type of remembrance of World
War II is the use of symbols associated with that suffering that transcend national
borders. Hiroshima and Auschwitz are such symbols.
Besides the privatization of memories of World War II and the individualized
memorialization of its victims, there are other phenomena in Poland that take re
membrance beyond national borders. On the Polish landscape in the 1990s there
began to appear memorials to fallen soldiers who had not fought on the Polish
side: soldiers of the Wehrmacht or the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). These are
mainly (but not always) monuments erected in the places where they are buried.
They are frequently a source of conflict (sometimes intense) between the national
minority that wants to honor its dead and local Poles and local authorities; the
conflicts are resolved in the end with the erection of these monuments.
Notes
1. Narodowe Sily Zbrojne?a right-wing military organization.

2. In May 2005, the embittered retired brigade general Rudolf Dzipanow wrote: "LWP
soldiers fought on a front that extended 235 kilometers and liberated an area of 131 square
WINTER 2006-7 25
kilometers_We must remember this and honor those who died fighting in Wal Pomorski,
by the Oder, and in Berlin (Dzipanow 2005: 15).
3. The Ukrainian Central Committee, which worked together with the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), operated legally in the General Government. Both tried to
set up an independent Ukrainian state with the help of the Germans. After the outbreak of
the Soviet-German conflict one of the OUN factions announced the creation of a Ukrainian
state and set up a government. The Germans responded with repression. The OUN went
underground and created the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which controlled a large
portion of Wolyn by 1943. It saw its enemies as the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, and?
especially?Poles. Attacks on Poles began in 1942 and became large scale in 1943. Inhab
itants of Polish villages were brutally murdered and their houses burned in attacks in which
their Ukrainian neighbors took part. In response, Polish self-defense organizations carried
out retaliatory actions against Ukrainian villages, which also led to unthinkable crimes. It is
estimated that anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 Poles and around 20,000 Ukrainians were
killed. At the same time, leaders of the movement collaborating with the Germans created a
volunteer division, the SS-Galicia, which participated in actions against Poles (Friszke 2003).
4. We must emphasize that wartime resettlement and the scale of postwar migration
meant that significant numbers of Poles spent the war in different cities than the ones where
they and their families find themselves today.
5. Poles who were drafted involuntarily into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Western
Front often deserted and joined the Polish armed forces.
6. This probably means that he turned himself in and took care of the necessary formalities.
References
Allen, Paul. 1991. Katyn: The Untold Story of Stalin's Polish Massacre. New York:
Scribner.
Davies, Norman. 2003. Rising 44. The Battle for Warsaw. London: Macmillan.
Dzipanow, Rudolf. 2005. "Lekcja Berlina" [The Lesson of Berlin]. Przeglqd, May 15.
Friszke, Andrzej. 2003. Polska: Losy panstwa i narodu 1939-1989 [Poland: The Fates of
the State and of the Nation 1939-1989]. Warsaw: Iskry.
Gillis, John R. 1994. "Introduction." In Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity,
ed. Gillis, 3-24. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Koonz, Claudia. 1994. "Between Memory and Oblivion: Concentration Camps in
German Memory." In Commemorations, ed. Gillis, 258-80.
Lipiec, J?zef. 1993. "Continuity and Change of the Popular Memory of the War Among
Military Men." Ministry of National Defense (MON), Army Institute of Sociological
Research, Warsaw, December.
Lukas, Richard C. 1997. Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation
1939-1944. New York: Hippocrene Books.
Nassalska, Ewa. 1998. "Niemcy w pamieci spolecznej polskiej mlodziezy" [Germans in the
Social Memory of Polish Youth]. Paper presented at the Education for International
Understanding conference, Braunschweig, June 8-10.
Szacka, Barbara. 1983. Przeszlosc w swiadomosci inteligencji polskiej [The Past in the
Consciousness of the Polish Intelligentsia]. Warsaw: University of Warsaw.
-. 1988. "Dzieci?szkola: Spoleczna pamiec przeszlosci" [Children?School: The
Social Memory of the Past]. Kultura i Spoleczenstwo 4: 163-74.
-. 1995. "Powstanie Warszawskie w pamieci spolecznej okresu PRL" [The Warsaw
Uprising in Social Memory of the PRL Period]. In Powstanie Warszawskie a perspektywy
p?lwiecza: Studia i materialy z sesji naukowej na Zamku Kr?lewskim w Warszawie [The
Warsaw Uprising a Half-Century Later: Presentations and Materials from the Academic
Session at the Royal Castle in Warsaw], June 14-15,1994, 423-30.
Szacka, Barbara, and Anna Sawisz. 1990. Czas przeszly i pamiec spoleczna [Times Past
and Social Memory]. Warsaw: Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw.
Szpocifiski, Andrzej. 1989. Przemiany obrazu przeszlosci Polski: Analiza sluchowisk
historycznych dla szk?l podstawowych 1951-1984 [Transformations of the Portrayal
of Poland's Past: Analysis of Radio Plays for Elementary Schools]. Warsaw: Institute
of Sociology, University of Warsaw.
-. 2000. "Przeszlosc jako tworzywo kanonu kulturowego. Kanon kulturowy
upowszechniany w programach telewizyjnych" [The Past as the Product of the
Cultural Canon: The Cultural Canon Presented in Television Programs]. In Kultur a
narodowa ipolityka [The National Culture and Politics], ed. Joanna Kurczewska,
393-426. Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa.
Traba, Robert. 2000. "Symbole pamieci: II wojna swiatowa w swiadomosci zbiorowje
Polak?w. Szkic do tematu" [Symbols of Memory: World War II in the Collective
Consciousness of Poles: A Sketch on the Topic]. Przeglqd Zachodni 294: 52-67.
Appendix
Cited Research Projects
1965: "The Past and Today," Department of the History of Sociology and So
cial Thought, University of Warsaw, mail survey, sampling people with higher
education in five professions (engineers, lawyers, economists, physicians, and teach
ers) in five cities (Warsaw, Poznan, Cracow, Lublin, and Katowice), n = 3,416.
Results analyzed by Barbara Szacka (1983).
1988: "The Past and Today," Department of General Sociology, Institute of
Sociology, University of Warsaw, distributed questionnaire, sampling people with
higher education in five professions (engineers, lawyers, economists, physicians,
and teachers), in Warsaw and Wroclaw, n- 1,491, carried out by the Research
Group, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Sep
tember-November. Results analyzed by Barbara Szacka and Anna Sawisz (1990).
2003: "The Past in the Eyes of Contemporary Polish Society," Institute of Politi
cal Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, financed by the Committee for Scientific
Research, directed by Andrzej Szpocinski. Quantitative research: a nationwide ran
dom sample, ages nineteen and older (n = 800) and a random sample of citizens with
higher education (n = 200), November-December. Quantitative research: ten focus
groups in six cities, June-September, consisting of discussants with an interest in
history, average or higher education, women and men, ages eighteen to sixty-five
(three generational groups). Carried out by the Pentor Institute for Opinion and Market
Research.
2004: "The Historical Consciousness of Poles," TNS OBOP/Polish Television,
a random nationwide sample, ages sixteen and older (n = 1,003), December.
To order reprints, call 1-800-352-2210; outside the United States, call 717-632-3535.

SZACKA, Barbara and Castle, Marjorie. Polish Remembrance of World War II PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

SZACKA, Barbara and Castle, Marjorie. Polish Remembrance of World War II PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Polish Remembrance of World War II

Author(s): Barbara Szacka and Marjorie Castle

Compared with other countries' resistance movements, the Polish underground

Territories already liberated from German occupation were governed by the

World War II in Polish Collective Memory

the dominant theme in references to World War II was reconciliation "between

Nevertheless, the memory of the crimes committed by the Germans, strength

The persistence of memory of wartime crimes carried out by Germans is also

Polish Collective Memory of World War II in Survey Research

Szpocinski's analysis of state television informational programs leads him to assert:

World War II in Polish Collective Memory as Reflected in

World War II in the Polish Collective Memory as Reflected in the

Another woman said

The Rzeszow story:

1. Narodowe Sily Zbrojne?a right-wing military organization.

Cited Research Projects

You might also like