Poland says: What do Polish history textbooks teach?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On the peculiarities of teaching history of the XX century in Polish history textbooks.

The leading Polish newspaper "Rechpospolita" suddenly became concerned about how Katyn was covered in the Belarusian textbook.

This happened immediately after a wave of indignation arose in Belarus against the rehabilitation of Rice-Brown, a cleaner and murderer of the Belarusian population of Bialystok.

In response, they decided to present some Belarusian sins to us. They say that we have little mention of Polish problems.

However, the author of the publication about Belarusian textbooks is not a Pole at all, but a friend already known to us, who previously wrote about the alleged oppression of Polish education in Belarus.

We have already mentioned him in our article - he is a native of the Republic of Bashkortostan and a graduate of the Kalinouski program, the former head of the “Youth of the Belarusian Popular Front” in the Myadel region. It's funny how he turned from a Belarusian nationalist into a Polish one and now defends Polish interests.

Of course, for every request of the Poles or their volunteers, we will not rewrite textbooks, especially those that are not valid.

And, before picking the sand from our eyes, let's count the "logs" in Polish textbooks.

The tidbit of their history is interwar Poland, the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was literally torn apart by an unresolved national question.

Here are some quotes from there that directly affect the Belarusians.

On the right of the Poles to polonize the Crescent

Justification of the principle of mono-state in Polish textbooks

Poland as a shield against world Bolshevism

This poster is included in the textbook to illustrate the propaganda of the time.

And here is how the textbook comments on the Peace of Riga, according to which half of the Belarusian and Ukrainian territories were torn off.

Those. the textbook writes that the Poles have kindly renounced their claims to the “other half,” and not how they occupied lands with an ethnic Belarusian population.

On denial of the right of Belarusians to self-determination

Of course, in the textbook there is not a word about the Kartuz-Berezsky concentration camp, the Naroch uprising, the Rudobelsk republic and other conflicts. As you know, the sheriff is not interested in the problems of blacks.

Here's how the textbook casually mentions the Belarusian question:

After reading, a strong impression is created that the Second Rzeczpospolita is not at all an authoritarian military dictatorship that suppressed national movements and even took part in the partition of Czechoslovakia, and, best of all, a kind and just state on earth.

This is what you need to learn from the Poles.

Our nationalists, on the contrary, shout that there is little criticism of the Soviet system in the textbooks and that more dirt is needed.

Party "Law and Justice" brings a new word to historiography

Last year PiS liquidated the Belarusian gymnasiums (by the way, where is the indignation of our oppositionists about this?) And then adopted new textbooks.

Compared to them, the old textbook that we quoted above can be considered an example of liberalism.

Even in extremely conservative Polish society, they provoked controversy and ridicule.

To avoid being accused of bias, let us turn to an article by the Polish historian, Doctor of Science, editor of the Politics magazine, Adam Leszczynski, professor at the SWPS University in Warsaw.

We have translated individual fragments of his article-review into a new history textbook.

Dad and the "damned hussars" beat the Bolshevik

The IPR-style school curriculum reform has come into force.

At the same time, textbooks create a cult of "cursed soldiers" that distorts the past:

Another quote about the NDP (Calvat and Fox, p. 164):

- remarks the Polish professor Adam Leszczynski. -

About religion

The Pope liberated the Poles from the darkness of the NDP.

The chapters on the Pope and the Church in the NDP are very strange in all three textbooks. Here is a quote (Calvat and Fox, p. 170):

Adam Leszczynski discusses this topic:

Here is a quote (Olszewska et al., P.120):

These are just a few examples - there are a lot of them. As you can see, the authors of the textbooks do not lie directly, but very clearly distort the past. They do this primarily by taking facts out of context. For example, real events - such as the murders of priests in the Polish People's Republic - are elevated to the rank of a rule, as if the murders of priests described the entire set of relations between the authorities and the Church.

The result is a twentieth century vision in which the immaculate Polish people are fighting bad communism for independence under the leadership of the Church. Nothing else is there.

This vision comes from the "Fatherland" children's books, which were written by the current chairman of the Institute of National Remembrance, Dr. Jaroslav Sharek.

The damned hussars under the command of John Paul II drive away the godless communists: here is the annotation of this whole "story". Its goal is to educate the next generation of voters for a Catholic-national right-wing leader. When the IPR is gone, one of the first tasks for the new, democratic government will be to abandon this propaganda and restore real proportions about the past.