It made Dr. Michalik think differently about history, without any time or temporal relations. “How should we talk about the past? Not necessarily with the history in the background. Without dates perhaps? Is the past the void of history? This is the question that we frequently ask ourselves. What does history teach us? That is another question. How to talk about the past without any abstract words. If time, as the word “time”, is an abstract word, and people, former prisoners, keep telling us that everything that happened is unimaginable, can you really think about what happened?”
To finish, he underlined that, “memory sites should be the places where we promote another way of thinking about the past and about history. Not with a dominating line, but from the perspective of the minorities. […] The past should be perceived by different groups of people.” Narratives should be adapted to be accessible for as many people as possible, based on a kind of historic pluralism.
Dr. Tomasz Michalik concluded his presentation with an interesting philosophical story giving even more food for thought to the entire audience. There was a council of gods and they were thinking about where to hide all knowledge away from humanity. The first god said: “Let’s hide it under the ground because they will never look for it there.” The second god said: “Let’s hide it underwater, they cannot breathe there.” Another said: “Perhaps high in the air, they do not have wings to fly.” And the fourth god said: “Let’s hide the knowledge deep inside them, they will never look there.” Dr. Michalik’s personal conclusion was, “please look carefully in your mind and you will find the answers…”