On May 27, 2016, at 11:15 AM, Stefan Wisniowski stefan.wisniowski@... [Kresy-Siberia] <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

Bernie

Thanks for your thoughtful and perceptive post. Personally, I agree in principle, but observe that in the real world, history is always interpretation and politicians always find it useful to tell their stories their own way. The combination of money, power and motivation means governments will always influence how history is presented.?

For our group this presents a fine line. ? Discussing remembrance and recognition is in our mission! ?But we need to stick to facts and steer clear of political opinions.?

KRESY-SIBERIA?can support or object to policies and actions that affect its mission but we?support no political party.?

We can discuss actions of politicians and others but must steer clear of party politics like blanket praise or condemnation.?

A fine line, but does it make sense to you?

Thanks

Stefan Wisniowski

Currently at Stanford?

On 27 May 2016, at 06:01,?bernard_starzewski@...?[Kresy-Siberia] <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

?

I have been watching this discussion with more than a little interest.
To a certain extent politics is always going to intrude on matters of Poland and the Kresy because we are all here bound together by political events of the past.? Anything that potentially impacts the remembrance of our history is of potential concern and I think it should be discussed.

As an American who is also watching the political circus with Trump and Clinton unfold this situation gives me great concern.
Let us remember it was Hermann Goering who said, "History is written by the victors".

As a result I am vehemently opposed to any political control or influence on the recording, preservation or interpretation of history by those with political motives.? This needs to be left to academics and then needs to be vigorously debated.
Once any particular political movement is put in control of the emphasis of a particular view of past events we can never again be sure of our collective memories of them.

We should discuss this here because we are in the business of the preservation of those memories and anything that impacts that should be a great concern.

I find the charges that the past government somehow suppressed one view or the other of history highly suspect, just as I find the idea of PIS (a particular political party with highly nationalist policies) of even higher suspect.

Leave history to the historians!
This should be the position of KS.

Bernie

?

I have been watching this discussion with more than a little interest.
To a certain extent politics is always going to intrude on matters of Poland and the Kresy because we are all here bound together by political events of the past.? Anything that potentially impacts the remembrance of our history is of potential concern and I think it should be discussed.

As an American who is also watching the political circus with Trump and Clinton unfold this situation gives me great concern.
Let us remember it was Hermann Goering who said, "History is written by the victors".

As a result I am vehemently opposed to any political control or influence on the recording, preservation or interpretation of history by those with political motives.? This needs to be left to academics and then needs to be vigorously debated.
Once any particular political movement is put in control of the emphasis of a particular view of past events we can never again be sure of our collective memories of them.

We should discuss this here because we are in the business of the preservation of those memories and anything that impacts that should be a great concern.

I find the charges that the past government somehow suppressed one view or the other of history highly suspect, just as I find the idea of PIS (a particular political party with highly nationalist policies) of even higher suspect.

Leave history to the historians!
This should be the position of KS.

Bernie

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Kresy-Siberia (Yahoo)] PiS "takeover" of Gdansk war museum
- NOT
From: "Jan Gan janus375@... [Kresy-Siberia]"
<Kresy-Siberia@...>
Date: Thu, May 26, 2016 6:46 am
To: Kresy-Siberia@...

?

Here is my answer to

Stefan Wisniowski

Kresy-Siberia Foundation President

If we are not going to discuss political issues here, we should not discuss them here. Your answer which condemns the statement which I quote:

"NB the unsubstantiated statement by Professor WJ Lukaszewski that "...people who controlled Polish government until last October tried to suppress popularizing the nation’s history as strenuously as did the occupiers in the past" actually transgresses our group value" - is just political discussion.?

How do you know, that it is unsubstantiated? You should not react to the opinion of Prof. Lukaszewski. It is his opinion, he has the right to express it, especially that it is related to the polish history and the Tusk government did a lot to deserve such opinion. To avoid political discussion, we should not to discuss opinion, but the subject matter.

As you said what you said, it raises the question why did you do that? Does not the grant from that government makes you feel obliged to stand in his defense? That is the most probable, as you indicate, that "our main grant applications have been rejected." by present government. Maybe they know more about our organisation than meets the eye or just do not have money right know, I do not know.

I will quote here what I answered to someone else in historical matter. It happens that my answer substantiates the opinion of Prof. WJ Lukaszewski.

With regards?

Jan Gan?

Quote:

"Polish military effort on the West is well documented, known to the public and we are proud of all of its members.

History is ?a very political issue. We have to distinguish here 3 areas.?

1.? Personal experience and knowledge of a person about historical facts.

2.? Experience, knowledge and ideology of different groups within a nation.

3.? Historical policy of a country, which depends on who is ruling that country.

In this discussion, there was a problem rised by a member of a group, that in the history of Poland, they are forgotten. This group in general may be described as Poles who were members of Polish Arm Forces in the West, who settled there after the war. As a 72 years old, raised and educated in Poland I have pretty good knowledge about your history. I have finished my education in the mid sixties. Era of Wieslaw Gomulka, who thrown the slogan "Poland - country of the learning people" and?

"A 1000 schools on polish millenium." They were built. We still had around teachers from before the war. We were taught thinking and making own conclusions.15 years later there was a different story. Policy changed into "pinguin education". All the same, a lot of material facts, no independent thinking, everything based on Marx materialism. Since 1945 historical policy of Poland supported interest of Russia, German Democratic Republic, Ukrainian and comunism in general. Therefore we did not know much about Katyń, and nothing about genocide of Poles in Soviet Union in 1937-1939 (200 000 victims), Wolyn massacre (120 000 victims). It did not change much after 1989, when Poland became "independent". Under Tusk government (2007-2015) education was diminished, limited the number of hours of history classes in high schools. There we sharp clashes on that issue of different groups, opposition, teachers, students, unions. There were no official protests against falsifying polish history by Jews and Germans. To the contrary. The authors received polish medals, honoris causa titles, took part in meetings and made lectures. Now this will be reversed.?

For many years in Poland grows grass root interest in true Poland's history. There are independent publishers, internet sites, video lectures, especially in , discussions in this subject. There are a lot of young people who take part in it. Historical reconstruction became very popular - the newest way of presenting historical events to the public. Attractive and engaging, especially to the performers. . The hottest isue is the history of underground soldiers fighting against communism in 1945-1963 ?

In the funeral of the most fameous mjr Zygmunt Lupaszka on the 24 of April 2016 took part the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda and none of the polish generals. This shows how much we are divided on historical issues. Your personal impression will depend on who you are talking to, descendants of communists or descendants of AK members.

You and I may rest assured, that polish history will not be forgotten, will not remain distorted and falsified. Finally we have enough tools and will to fight for it. This fight has just began. There are plenty of Poles who co-operate with our adversaries, for profits or ideological motivation.

?genocide 1937-39 in Soviet Union

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 1:43 PM, Izabela Spero izabela_spero@... [Kresy-Siberia] <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

?

Hi Dan

Thanks.This is the view of my father's generation who remember the old times, the communist times and experienced the years with the new political parties after Solidarnosc. According to my dad,?

for the first time since the postwar years Polish government ? is protecting Poland's interests instead of being influenced by the outside opinions.

Best regards

Izabela

On 25 May 2016, at 12:15, "Dan Zamoyski zamoyski@... [Kresy-Siberia]" <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

?

I also do not intend to get involved in this debate further than my comment here, which I trust might be illuminating for the person initially posing this question.?

From what I can tell, this is a battle about control over the content of the new museum, not whether it will open or not. Timothy Snyder and Norman Davies are certainly appearing to be anti-PiS party (so, it is them being political, not me), and are prematurely (over-) reacting to what they think might happen, when the actual changes in content have not yet been announced. So, their protestations do not appear to be based on fact, just innuendo, and are yet another attempt to seek to discredit the current Polish government.

However, one key Fact is revealed by a statement by Snyder in his attack on the current government's actions regarding the proposed combining of the two museums: "Snyder, a signatory of that statement and author of “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” said the world has other World War II museums but they all take an exclusively national view. "?

?

So, WHY, I ask Mr Snyder, should POLAND's WW2 museum be the first one to NOT take a nationalistic view ?! If a nationalist view was good enough for Germany, France, Britain, the USA etc, then Why Not for Poland?? All the other countries that interacted with Poland during WW2 (for better or worse!) would obviously be included in all the historical information, for reasons of context and timeline.

From what I have read, the initial concept of this new museum was to take a "unique" multi-faceted, global view of WW2, but it was also, from what I have read, designed to take an "EU"-political view of WW2. So, before anyone starts casting stones at Poland's current government for not being as EU-loving as the previous government, please take a look at all the many other EU member states (Germany, France, UK, Austria, etc) and see how many others are not as EU-loving as they used to be. Poland was just ahead of the curve?on many EU-related matters - and the rest of Europe is just catching up now.

My personal view is that Poland, like all the other major European countries who have a WW2 museum based on their own perspective, deserves to have a modern museum based on its own POLISH perspective. I also am very confident that they will have significant content coverage of the Kresy history, as these areas were part of Poland on 1 September 1939.?

More than any other Polish government since 1989, as the one that finally was democratically elected as a single-majority-party government, I trust the current Polish government to deliver this Polish perspective - no matter how many foreign-born historians get their nose out of joint about it.?

Dan Zamoyski

Bakewell, Derbyshire, England

---

From: Kresy-Siberia@...
To: Kresy-Siberia@...
Date: Tue, 24 May 2016 20:45:23 -0500
Subject: Re: [Kresy-Siberia (Yahoo)] PiS takeover of Gdansk war museum

?

I don’t intend to get into this debate; the question had been asked, I answered it. Each of us is capable of looking back into recent history and find out the extent to which my answer is correct or not.?

PS. Grant policies have nothing to with the intent of the question.

On May 24, 2016, at 8:28 PM, stefan.wisniowski@... [Kresy-Siberia] <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

Of course, Polish history must be made better known around the world - this is part of our mission as the Kresy-Siberia Foundation. However, the Gdansk WW2 Museum issue is a little more complex than some would have you believe. ?

The WW2 Museum's strategy was to put Polish WW2 experiences into the context of a comprehensive museum of World War 2, the only such one in the world.? This was actually a clever way to sell the Polish story,?by attracting worldwide interest in this unique museum first, then telling the Polish story once there...

This is why the Museum's advisors included non-Polish historians people like Tim Snyder and Norman Davies – two of those who are now decrying the recent actions to make the museum focus only on the Polish aspects of the war.

NB the?unsubstantiated?statement by Professor WJ Lukaszewski that?"...people who controlled Polish government until last October tried to suppress popularizing the nation’s history as strenuously as did the occupiers in the past" actually?transgresses our group values of avoiding to comment on current politics in the group. However, now that this claim was made, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that over the years 2008-2014 (when the Professor was a member of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation's Executive Committee), the Polish government granted about 1 million zloty's (US$250,000) towards the development of the online Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum and the recording and presentation of ?its Survivor Testimony interviews and historical exhibitions. This is hardly the action of people trying to suppress popularizing the nation's history!

How much financial support the new government provides remain to be seen, but so far our main grant applications have been rejected.

Regards,
Stefan Wisniowski
Kresy-Siberia Foundation President

?

?

Hi

I think we need to be very careful not to generalise all these issues mentioned in the email below:

1) from my own experience I can say that when I arrived in England 1981 I ?have experienced a mixed welcome by the Polish community here. There were every generous and helpful Poles but I have also been looked down by some Poles as being "a communist Pole" which hurt quite a bit.

When the second wave of Poles came ?to England in 2004 they have also experienced bad publicity and only a few Polish organisation took a stand on their behalf. I must congratulate Wiktor Moszczynski for that.

2) when it comes to the knowledge of Polish history, not all Poles are the same like in any nationality. Not all British or American citizens know their country history. However there are many young Poles who do amazing job to preserve our identity and our history.

best regards

Izabela?

On 25 May 2016, at 10:36, "Daniel Ford cub06h@... [Kresy-Siberia]" <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

?

On 5/25/2016 4:31 AM, Kresy-Siberia@... wrote:
> I still encounter this ex-Communist amnesia from mainland Poles who
> come to Toronto and seem to know nothing about the Polish 2nd Corps
> and often who will insist that we are not "true Poles" but merely
> foreigners of distant Polish ancestry, which is so very, very irritating.
Not quite the same thing, but I had an experience of lost memory last
month, in Florence. The clerk at our hotel was a pretty girl with
striking blue eyes and handsome cheeks. I asked her if she were Swedish.
No, she was Polish. Where from? "Oh, a place you have never heard
of--Lublin."

I insisted it was quite famous, and begin to talk about the "London
Poles" and the "Lublin Poles" in 1945 and all that they portended for
the future of Poland, not to mention Europe and indeed the world. Her
eyes glazed over. "Well, you know more about it than I do," she said.

To the young, everything that went before is ancient history.

-- Dan Ford USA

?

I also do not intend to get involved in this debate further than my comment here, which I trust might be illuminating for the person initially posing this question.?

From what I can tell, this is a battle about control over the content of the new museum, not whether it will open or not. Timothy Snyder and Norman Davies are certainly appearing to be anti-PiS party (so, it is them being political, not me), and are prematurely (over-) reacting to what they think might happen, when the actual changes in content have not yet been announced. So, their protestations do not appear to be based on fact, just innuendo, and are yet another attempt to seek to discredit the current Polish government.

However, one key Fact is revealed by a statement by Snyder in his attack on the current government's actions regarding the proposed combining of the two museums: "Snyder, a signatory of that statement and author of “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” said the world has other World War II museums but they all take an exclusively national view. "?

?

So, WHY, I ask Mr Snyder, should POLAND's WW2 museum be the first one to NOT take a nationalistic view ?! If a nationalist view was good enough for Germany, France, Britain, the USA etc, then Why Not for Poland?? All the other countries that interacted with Poland during WW2 (for better or worse!) would obviously be included in all the historical information, for reasons of context and timeline.

From what I have read, the initial concept of this new museum was to take a "unique" multi-faceted, global view of WW2, but it was also, from what I have read, designed to take an "EU"-political view of WW2. So, before anyone starts casting stones at Poland's current government for not being as EU-loving as the previous government, please take a look at all the many other EU member states (Germany, France, UK, Austria, etc) and see how many others are not as EU-loving as they used to be. Poland was just ahead of the curve?on many EU-related matters - and the rest of Europe is just catching up now.

My personal view is that Poland, like all the other major European countries who have a WW2 museum based on their own perspective, deserves to have a modern museum based on its own POLISH perspective. I also am very confident that they will have significant content coverage of the Kresy history, as these areas were part of Poland on 1 September 1939.?

More than any other Polish government since 1989, as the one that finally was democratically elected as a single-majority-party government, I trust the current Polish government to deliver this Polish perspective - no matter how many foreign-born historians get their nose out of joint about it.?

Dan Zamoyski

Bakewell, Derbyshire, England

---

From: Kresy-Siberia@...
To: Kresy-Siberia@...
Date: Tue, 24 May 2016 20:45:23 -0500
Subject: Re: [Kresy-Siberia (Yahoo)] PiS takeover of Gdansk war museum

?

I don’t intend to get into this debate; the question had been asked, I answered it. Each of us is capable of looking back into recent history and find out the extent to which my answer is correct or not.?

PS. Grant policies have nothing to with the intent of the question.

On May 24, 2016, at 8:28 PM, stefan.wisniowski@... [Kresy-Siberia] <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

Of course, Polish history must be made better known around the world - this is part of our mission as the Kresy-Siberia Foundation. However, the Gdansk WW2 Museum issue is a little more complex than some would have you believe. ?

The WW2 Museum's strategy was to put Polish WW2 experiences into the context of a comprehensive museum of World War 2, the only such one in the world. ?This was actually a clever way to sell the Polish story,?by attracting worldwide interest in this unique museum first, then telling the Polish story once there...

This is why the Museum's advisors included non-Polish historians people like Tim Snyder and Norman Davies – two of those who are now decrying the recent actions to make the museum focus only on the Polish aspects of the war.

NB the?unsubstantiated?statement by Professor WJ Lukaszewski that?"...people who controlled Polish government until last October tried to suppress popularizing the nation’s history as strenuously as did the occupiers in the past" actually?transgresses our group values of avoiding to comment on current politics in the group. However, now that this claim was made, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that over the years 2008-2014 (when the Professor was a member of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation's Executive Committee), the Polish government granted about 1 million zloty's (US$250,000) towards the development of the online Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum and the recording and presentation of ?its Survivor Testimony interviews and historical exhibitions. This is hardly the action of people trying to suppress popularizing the nation's history!

How much financial support the new government provides remain to be seen, but so far our main grant applications have been rejected.

Regards,
Stefan Wisniowski
Kresy-Siberia Foundation President

?

?

On 5/25/2016 4:31 AM, Kresy-Siberia@... wrote:
> I still encounter this ex-Communist amnesia from mainland Poles who
> come to Toronto and seem to know nothing about the Polish 2nd Corps
> and often who will insist that we are not "true Poles" but merely
> foreigners of distant Polish ancestry, which is so very, very irritating.
Not quite the same thing, but I had an experience of lost memory last
month, in Florence. The clerk at our hotel was a pretty girl with
striking blue eyes and handsome cheeks. I asked her if she were Swedish.
No, she was Polish. Where from? "Oh, a place you have never heard
of--Lublin."

I insisted it was quite famous, and begin to talk about the "London
Poles" and the "Lublin Poles" in 1945 and all that they portended for
the future of Poland, not to mention Europe and indeed the world. Her
eyes glazed over. "Well, you know more about it than I do," she said.

To the young, everything that went before is ancient history.

-- Dan Ford USA

On May 24, 2016, at 8:28 PM, stefan.wisniowski@... [Kresy-Siberia] <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

Of course, Polish history must be made better known around the world - this is part of our mission as the Kresy-Siberia Foundation. However, the Gdansk WW2 Museum issue is a little more complex than some would have you believe. ?

The WW2 Museum's strategy was to put Polish WW2 experiences into the context of a comprehensive museum of World War 2, the only such one in the world. ?This was actually a clever way to sell the Polish story,?by attracting worldwide interest in this unique museum first, then telling the Polish story once there...

This is why the Museum's advisors included non-Polish historians people like Tim Snyder and Norman Davies – two of those who are now decrying the recent actions to make the museum focus only on the Polish aspects of the war.

NB the?unsubstantiated?statement by Professor WJ Lukaszewski that?"...people who controlled Polish government until last October tried to suppress popularizing the nation’s history as strenuously as did the occupiers in the past" actually?transgresses our group values of avoiding to comment on current politics in the group. However, now that this claim was made, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that over the years 2008-2014 (when the Professor was a member of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation's Executive Committee), the Polish government granted about 1 million zloty's (US$250,000) towards the development of the online Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum and the recording and presentation of ?its Survivor Testimony interviews and historical exhibitions. This is hardly the action of people trying to suppress popularizing the nation's history!

How much financial support the new government provides remain to be seen, but so far our main grant applications have been rejected.

Regards,
Stefan Wisniowski
Kresy-Siberia Foundation President

?

?

On 5/25/2016 4:31 AM, Kresy-Siberia@... wrote:
> I still encounter this ex-Communist amnesia from mainland Poles who
> come to Toronto and seem to know nothing about the Polish 2nd Corps
> and often who will insist that we are not "true Poles" but merely
> foreigners of distant Polish ancestry, which is so very, very irritating.
Not quite the same thing, but I had an experience of lost memory last
month, in Florence. The clerk at our hotel was a pretty girl with
striking blue eyes and handsome cheeks. I asked her if she were Swedish.
No, she was Polish. Where from? "Oh, a place you have never heard
of--Lublin."

I insisted it was quite famous, and begin to talk about the "London
Poles" and the "Lublin Poles" in 1945 and all that they portended for
the future of Poland, not to mention Europe and indeed the world. Her
eyes glazed over. "Well, you know more about it than I do," she said.

To the young, everything that went before is ancient history.

-- Dan Ford USA

On May 24, 2016, at 8:28 PM, stefan.wisniowski@... [Kresy-Siberia] <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

Of course, Polish history must be made better known around the world - this is part of our mission as the Kresy-Siberia Foundation. However, the Gdansk WW2 Museum issue is a little more complex than some would have you believe. ?

The WW2 Museum's strategy was to put Polish WW2 experiences into the context of a comprehensive museum of World War 2, the only such one in the world. ?This was actually a clever way to sell the Polish story,?by attracting worldwide interest in this unique museum first, then telling the Polish story once there...

This is why the Museum's advisors included non-Polish historians people like Tim Snyder and Norman Davies – two of those who are now decrying the recent actions to make the museum focus only on the Polish aspects of the war.

NB the?unsubstantiated?statement by Professor WJ Lukaszewski that?"...people who controlled Polish government until last October tried to suppress popularizing the nation’s history as strenuously as did the occupiers in the past" actually?transgresses our group values of avoiding to comment on current politics in the group. However, now that this claim was made, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that over the years 2008-2014 (when the Professor was a member of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation's Executive Committee), the Polish government granted about 1 million zloty's (US$250,000) towards the development of the online Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum and the recording and presentation of ?its Survivor Testimony interviews and historical exhibitions. This is hardly the action of people trying to suppress popularizing the nation's history!

How much financial support the new government provides remain to be seen, but so far our main grant applications have been rejected.

Regards,
Stefan Wisniowski
Kresy-Siberia Foundation President

?

On May 24, 2016, at 6:31 PM, eve.marie123@... [Kresy-Siberia] <Kresy-Siberia@...> wrote:

Hello, what do people here think about the takeover of the new Gdansk war museum?

There seems to be a lot of opposition to this political manoeuver including by Norman Davies
and there was an open letter to the Minister of Defence published in Gazeta Wyborcza?
and co-signed by the 200+ scholars who helped to plan this new museum opposing this takeover.

I also read an article by the mayor of Gdansk, Pawe? Adamowicz, who said that the new PiS government wants to impose the doctrine of the "politics of memory" on this museum which apparently means suppressing anything which does not contribute to their version of political correctness much as the Communists also did.

However I honestly do not know what to think but I do know that the Communists wrote us out of Polish history books for 45+ years and I still encounter this ex-Communist amnesia from mainland Poles who come to Toronto and seem to know nothing about the Polish 2nd Corps and often who will insist that we are not "true Poles" but merely foreigners of distant Polish ancestry, which is so very, very irritating.

I'm certainly very much against a new attempt by the PiS to similarly write us out of Polish history books?
if that is really their intention.

Your comments on this situation would be greatly appreciated, thank you.