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 On November, 17, 2005 the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of Poland, the Institute for Europe Studying by
Jagiellonski University, the Institute of Strategic Research organized
in Krakow “Facts and Lies in the Common Knowledge on the Holocaust” the
International Conference.
Task
Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance
and Research also took part in the arranging and conducting the
conference.
The Conference
concluded the consultative meeting of the Working group comprising
representatives of different countries, as well as the state and public
organizations. The aim of the Working group is to provide social and
political support for activities on Holocaust Education, Remembrance
and Research on the state and international level.
It
is symbolic that the conference on the Holocaust history was held in
Krakov on the same day when David Irving, scandalously famous British
historian-revisionist, was arrested.
Poland,
on the territory of which due to certain historical reasons were
disposed 6 Nazi death camps in the years of the Second World War, is
aware of the recent tragic past and the pain of this historical memory.
The
common memory and knowledge on the Holocaust are often purposely or
involuntary misrepresented with historic reality, negative stereotypes,
falsifications and language cliché.
Recent celebration of the 60th
anniversary of liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
and the Second World War ending clearly demonstrated that the
falsification of history often comes from the way of its presentation.
As if Holocaust is not the fact and proven historic event, but
combination of different opinions including the one that excludes
Holocaust at all.
So the participants of the
Conference “Facts and Lies in the Common Knowledge on the Holocaust”
tried to analyse different types of Holocaust historic memory and
study. This phenomenon is often misrepresented due to different
ideologies and simple ignorance, which in its turn leads to
predominance of lying pictures over well grounded facts.
The
conference consisted of successively going sessions: historical, social
and educational. In the framework of these sessions 17 scientists from
Poland, USA, Sweden, Ukraine, Israel, Great Britain, Netherlands and
other countries delivered their reports concerning different aspects of
studing, teaching and social historic memory of Holocaust and its
consequences for modern society. The most active participants who
discussed delivered reports and expressed their opinions concerning the
questions raised were teachers of schools and universities from
different cities of Poland as well as representatives of the state
institutes and museums, Jewish educational and cultural organizations.
The
spectrum of the questions rose during presentation and following
discussions varied from the problems of Holocaust negation or attitude
of European people to Shoa history to the questions of the role the
Holocaust plays in national self-awareness formation. The opinion of
the discussants sometimes differed greatly, for example, in the
question concerning historical roots and peculiarities of existence in
mass consciousness such language stereotypes as “Polish camps of
death”or “German invaders- Nazi invaders”. Thus Professor Ionatana
Veber from Great Britain touched upon in his report the mechanism of
Holocaust stereotypes formation and its mythology in the public and
individual awareness. Professor Dina Porat from Israel examined, at the
example of Anna Frank diary, an attempt of modern revisionist circles
to disperse the essence of Holocaust and to replace it with the
faceless symbol deprived of specific peculiarities of this unique
phenomenon. Professor Felix Tyh, the head of the Jewish Historic
Institute (Warsaw) presented the scope of knowledge, myths and
stereotypes accessible for middle statistical citizen of Poland today.
Professor Zdislav Mah (Warsaw) presented to the audience his view
concerning the role knowledge about Holocaust played in forming Polish
collective self-awareness during the after war decades. Professor Marec
Kychia told about the way the whole generations including the modern
Polish youth react to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp visiting, about the
means of representation of Holocaust history in the museum of this once
the biggest centre for European Jewish destruction. The participants of
the meeting expressed great interest to the experience of the
representation and teaching of Holocaust of their colleagues from other
countries. How can we resist the pressure of the pupils’ negation based
on the information from the revisionist web-site? Krister Matson Sweden
teacher gave answers to these questions. Dr. Igor Shchupak, director of
Tkuma Central Ukrainian Holocaust Foundation (Dnepropetrovsk) told
about the experience of Holocaust teaching in the educanional
establishments of Ukraine, the reaction of Ukrainian pupils to the
Holocaust knowledge and the place Holocaust teaching takes in Ukrainian
system of education. In this connection F. Tyh brought up the question
concerning the ways of Holocaust representation in Ukrainian society
that has its own great ethnic tragedy – Famine. Dr. Anatoliy Podolskiy
director of Ukrainian Center of Studing the Holocaust History (Kyiv)
presented the program on Holocaust history teaching as the brightest
model of Genocide to be integrated in the Ukrainian system of education
to form tolerance and democratic society. In his speech “Michail
Tyagliy (Tkuma Center, Dnepropetrovsk) the Problems of Holocaust
History” journal editor characterized the consequences of anti-Semitic
Nazi propaganda in after war Soviet society on the example of Russian
and Crimean –Tatar invader press.
The fact
that participants and guests showed sincere interest in the questions
raised, activity discussed and the state supported the arrangement of
the conference shows that the modern Polish society differs from
Ukrainian in its development. The part of Polish population that has
been perished in the Holocaust, being an integral part of Polish
society, identity and culture before war, is nowadays considered to be
hard loss, the consequences of which appeared unfavourable first of all
for Polish people. That is the reason why people try to restore
historic truth about experience in the years of Second World War, to
save the society from misrepresentation of after war comunist period
and the influence of modern national and radical ideologies, as well as
clear Holocaust history from myths and lies.
Michail Tyagliy,
The member of Tkuma All-Ukrainian Academic Board
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