injustices, produce unexpected, perverse effects: they threaten the
freed exercise of the profession of historian, but above all they become
a political weapon that takes the form of a monopoly on historical
interpretation, and hereby change the rules of democracy. Clearly, then,
such laws create more problems than they resolve, opening the way—
and a wide way it is—to instrumentalize historical facts and memorial
representations of them. Meanwhile, the initial question remains
unanswered: How can we simultaneously prevent negationism or
purge a criminal past—two phenomena that must be regulated—while
ensuring that the dead do not govern the living?
In 2016, Poland’s history institute declared that seized documents suggest former president and Solidarity hero Lech Walesa was an informer | Picture: Lech
Walesa issues signatures during stakings in Poland, August 31, 1980 | Source: Photo collection Anefo (Dutch National Archives), Wikimedia Commons
References
Statement by the Polish MEP Wojciech Roszkowski cited
in “O potrzebie polskiej polityki historycznej” [On the need for
Polish historical policy], in R. Kostra, T. Merta (eds.), Pamiec
i odpowiedzialnosc [Memory and responsibility], Center for
conservative political thinking, Cracow and Wroclaw, 2005, p. 125.
1
EUROPE INSIGHT
See, for example, Alain Finkielkraut, “La nouvelle immortalité”, in A.
Houziaux (ed.), La mémoire, pour quoi faire? Les Éditions de l’Atélier,
2006, pp. 105-111.
2
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