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. "?
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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
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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.
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
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