Polish Memory Laws and the Distortion of the History of the Holocaust
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Abstract
This chapter discusses the controversial January 2018 “Holocaust Law,” which the nationalist Polish government introduced, and which calls for prison terms of up to three years for those found guilty of “slandering the good name of the Polish nation” and implying that Polish society and its institutions were in any way complicit in the Holocaust. The law was speedily approved by the Parliament and signed into law by the Polish president. Shortly thereafter, Polish nationalists rescinded the criminalizing provisions of the law, in an effort to quiet international criticism of the law. The issue is far from being settled, however, and this chapter provides a larger historical perspective about national Polish discourses, and in particular those narratives that stress the citizenry’s foremost opposition to communism, their victimization at the hands of the Nazis, and an emphatic denial of any collaboration with Nazis in their annihilation of Polish Jewry.
Topics
Antisemitism Holocaust Commemoration Holocaust Communism Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial Memory Law and Justice Nationalism
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Page Number / Article Number
75-95
ISBN/ISSN
978-3-030-94913-6
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Link to article (paywalled), Polish Memory Laws and the Distortion of the History of the Holocaust
Bibliographic Information
Polish Memory Laws and the Distortion of the History of the Holocaust. 2022: 75-95. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1007/978-3-030-94914-3_4
