other side simply stops listening,” Cywiński said.
He described the Auschwitz Museum’s approach, comparing it to medical triage. Rather than devoting most of one’s energy to people who knowingly and consistently deny history, it is better to reach, above all, those who lack knowledge or have questions or doubts but are not acting in bad faith. Only when denial gains significant social and political reach does it call for a direct legal and institutional response.
The discussion also kept returning to the way societies use history to build their own identities. Piotr Cywiński warned against a model of memory that serves the need for national pride, one in which uncomfortable events are pushed to the margins.
“For me, pride is almost like a poison, something very dangerous. I see history as a set of warnings that should lead us to caution or greater wisdom in our actions, rather than to pride,” he said.
The debate did not produce a single answer to the question in its title. It did show, however, that countering denial requires action on many levels at once: law, education, historical research, the responsibility of public institutions, the language of debate, and the workings of online platforms.
Perhaps the most important conclusion, though, concerned how the problem itself is understood. Denial does not begin only at the point when someone rejects the existence of gas chambers. It can take far subtler forms: cherry-picking facts, shifting responsibility, relativizing research, discrediting testimony, or presenting uncomfortable history as a threat to national identity.
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