Poland Archives - Page 4 of 9

Feature

Collective Amnesia in Post-Communist Poland

Why history, not memory or mythology, is the path to Polish-Jewish reconciliation

June 14, 2019 • by Magda Teter

After WWII, many European countries engaged in what some scholars dubbed “collective amnesia.” Austria, for example, began to redefine itself as the first victim of the Nazis. France amplified the Resistance, forgetting about its Vichy days; Western Germany, after the trials of several high-profile Nazi leaders, allowed for silence to ...

Feature

The People’s Vote That Ended Communism

Lessons from Poland on the role of elections

June 8, 2019 • by Jim Bjork

On June 4th, 1989, Polish voters went to the polls to elect new members to the national legislature. The election was designed to produce a managed, incremental modification of the Communist regime’s four-decade-long rule. Only a third of seats in the lower house (the Sejm) were contested, and the newly ...

Democracy

The People’s Vote That Ended Communism

Lessons from Poland on the role of elections

June 8, 2019 • by Jim Bjork

On June 4th, 1989, Polish voters went to the polls to elect new members to the national legislature. The election was designed to produce a managed, incremental modification of the Communist regime’s four-decade-long rule. Only a third of seats in the lower house (the Sejm) were contested, and the newly ...

Feature

The Rorschach Test of Notre Dame

Notre Dame fire provoked universal shock and grief but its meaning has been refracted through radically different lenses

May 11, 2019 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

Although the Notre Dame fire in Paris provoked universal shock and grief, its meaning has been refracted through radically different lenses. Whereas the French have focused on issues of distributive justice, Poles have locked horns in another battle in the culture war that has defined the country's post-Cold War history. WARSAW ...

Feature

Forming a New Polish Political Consciousness

Part Three: Confronting Polish Responsibility for the Shoah in Paris

May 8, 2019 • by Izabela Wagner

Editor’s note: in two prior essays on the challenges Polish scholars are confronting in their efforts to bring attention to Polish-responsibility for portions of the Shoah, Prof. Wagner discussed the origins of, and the historical and contemporary resistance to, the New Polish School of the History of the Shoah. In this ...

Forming a New Polish Political Consciousness

Feature

How Media, Political and Religious Elites Shape Plebian Resistance

Part Two: Confronting Polish Responsibility for the Shoah in Paris

April 24, 2019 • by Izabela Wagner

Editor’s note: in the first part of her essay on the challenges Polish scholars are confronting in their efforts to bring attention to Polish-responsibility for portions of the Shoah, Wagner discussed origins of – and the rise of resistance to – the New Polish School of the History of Shoah. In this ...

How Media, Political and Religious Elites Shape Plebian Resistance

Feature

The Subtext of a Recent International Scandal

Part One: Confronting Polish Responsibility for the Shoah in Paris

April 17, 2019 • by Izabela Wagner

In Paris, on February 22nd of this year, a conference entitled “The New Polish School of the History of the Shoah” (NPSHS) began. The conference was meant to be a celebration, particularly a celebration of all the research done over the past 15 years on the role that non-Jewish Poles played ...

The Subtext of a Recent International Scandal

Education

Why Teachers Are Striking in Poland

Faced with the biggest strike since 1993, the Polish government suggested teachers get pregnant and collect a child-care benefit

April 12, 2019 • by Beata Zwierzyńska

“We want to teach, we want to work. Please, understand us.” —Teachers’ general strike in Poland, 2019 Poland’s striking teachers have three messages for the right-wing government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party: we care about the future of education, we are fighting for our dignity, and we are definitely fighting ...

Feature

Statues for Predators

Poland struggles with the entanglements of the Catholic Church and Solidarity

March 13, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

Less than two years ago, the Charlottesville alt-right march and various other white nationalist rallies threw into renewed spotlight the racist aspects of the politics of commemoration in the United States. Communities across the country, from Baltimore to New Orleans, began to assess more openly and more critically the value ...

Feature

Policing the Womb 2.0

Why Hungary and Poland’s pro-natalist policies won’t work

February 28, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

Fifty years ago, neo-Malthusian demographers and politicians warned that overpopulation would wipe out all efforts to modernize the world, especially the postcolonial Global South. Rapid population growth in India, Nigeria, Brazil, and Iran were depicted as impediments to development. Republicans (Richard Nixon) and Democrats (Lyndon B. Johnson) worked with Planned ...

Feature

A Murder in Gdańsk

The assassination of Mayor Paweł Adamowicz

January 22, 2019 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

The assassination of Gdańsk Mayor Paweł Adamowicz at a fundraising event for Poland's most beloved charity culminates years of fear-mongering about the country's opposition and judiciary by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party. And now the PiS has chosen the wrong scapegoat for Adamowicz's murder. The murder of Gdańsk Mayor ...

Feature

An Assassination in Poland

Charity and madness in times of hate

January 16, 2019 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

Paweł Adamowicz, the mayor of Gdańsk, was fatally stabbed on Sunday while standing on the stage in the center of the city during the finale of the Grand Orchestra of Christmas Charity winter drive, Poland’s largest and until now most joyous charity event. Although immediately hospitalized, he died Monday. Everyone instantly ...