Academic literature on the topic 'Muzeum II Wojny Światowej (Gdańsk, Poland)'

The author analyzes the narrative of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk using the category of moral capital, which is defined as a supply of moral stories influencing the moral status of the collective entity described as perpetrator or victim of a given event. The author considers that the decision, in 2008, to create the museum was one of the most important initiatives of Polish historical policy. From the beginning, the idea of the museum was the source of disputes, primarily concerning the shape of the Polish narrative about the war. Discussions on the subject and divisions in the political scene led to a spectacular “takeover” of the museum shortly after its opening in 2017. The management was changed and numerous alterations to the main exhibitions were made. The first version of the exhibition stressed the universalism of the experiences of civilians, including Poles, as victims of war-time terror, poverty, fear, occupation, forced labor, or extermination. After analyzing the narrative content of the exhibition opened in March 2019, the author of the article claims that in the modified version we can observe the (re)construction of a heroic narrative, aimed at reinforcing the moral capital of Poles.

This article focuses on the problem of Germans in Gdańsk shortly after the end of World War II. Among the issues analysed are: forced relocations of the German population by the Red Army; the so-called wild expulsion of Germans by the Polish authorities in 1945; the attitude of the Gdańsk administration towards the Germans; relations with Polish settlers from Central Poland and eastern territories incorporated into the Soviet Union. Mistrust, aversion and disputes were parallel to, sometimes, brutal competition for material goods, such as houses and workshops left by previous inhabitants. The Germans were underdogs in this conflict. They understood that they would no longer be responsible for their home city. They lost their position. Not having civil rights, they lost the right to their houses and farms. Gdańsk was an example of a former German city, whose new Polish community was created in the presence of its German inhabitants, who were subsequently deported to the territories on the other side of the Oder River. By this time, the coexistence of the Polish and German populations had evolved from hostility to cooperation between people devastated by war experience and forced migration. An official verification procedure was launched to determine who was a real German or Pole. One had to prove Polish descent and national usefulness in front of the Verification Commission. By the end of 1948, the number of native citizens of Gdańsk accepted as Polish citizens reached nearly 14,000. However, it was not possible to classify instantly all citizens of Gdańsk by their nationality. The memory of the pre-war Free City of Gdańsk was often more important for the collective identity of those who were born and lived in Gdańsk or Danzig before 1939. Both German and Polish citizens of Gdańsk were so strongly linked to their local homeland that they called themselves and were called by others ‘gdańszczanie’ or ‘Danziger’ for many years after the war.

German crimes committed against the Polish people during the first months of the Second World War 1939/1940 The aim of the article is to show the scale and extent of the extermination of Polish society, which was a component of the national policy of the Third Reich in the first months of the Second World War. It is a quantitative presentation of the phenomenon of a crime which included arrests, interrogations, the use of physical and mental coercion, shootings and executions. The extermination activities against the Polish nation continued throughout the entire period of the war. The Terror of the Third Reich covered the areas of Gdańsk Pomerania, Greater Poland, Upper Silesia, and central Poland. As part of the policy of exterminating the Polish nation, at the beginning of the war, the Third Reich began the so-called “Action Intelligentsia”(Intelligenzaktion) and AB (Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion) which was formally named Extraordinary Pacification Action. In the occupied areas, various German formations (Selbstschutz, Einsatzgruppen SS) committed mass, planned crimes against the Polish elite, intelligentsia, teachers, clergy, local government officials and state officials.

446 thousand German soldiers died in Poland in World War II. Until the end of the 1980s, the Poles were unwilling to remember most of the German graves situated in their country. The breakthrough of 1989, together with a series of bilateral agreements, on the basis of which the graves of the German war victims were to be legally protected, respected and appropriately maintained, changed this. As a result, the remains of over 100 thousand German soldiers have been disinterred, the graves of German soldiers at the cemeteries in Joachimów-Mogiły, Kraków, Warsaw (The Northern Cemetery) and Poznań have been commemorated, and new, mass cemeteries have been built in Przemyśl, Mławka, Modlin, Siemianowice Śląskie, Nadolice Wielkie, Gdańsk, Puławy, Bartosze, near Ełk, and Stary Czarnów (Glinna) near Szczecin. These cemeteries are to provide for reconciliation and a genuine normalisation in relations between Poles and Germans. Since the late 1990s, youth camps as well as the Bundeswehr and Polish army camps have been organised in localities where German war cemeteries are situated, during which the participants carry out building work and repair the architectural artefacts in German cemeteries from both World War I and the World War II. The camp organisers’ aim is for these events to help the youth of both countries to become acquainted with each other, to learn history and tolerance, to disperse prejudices, and so forth. While to most of the Poles such actions are a form of expressing a humanitarian attitude, some of them find it unacceptable to commemorate the aggressor’s dead, while others perceive these efforts as a business opportunity.

Artykuł recenzyjny dotyczy najnowszych monografii polskich uczonych (także tych stworzonych z udziałem japońskiego publicysty), które są poświęcone wynikom wieloletnich badań naukowych nad losami polskich dzieci jako ofiar I oraz II wojny światowej. Wspólnym mianownikiem analiz jest fakt rekonstrukcji repatriacji polskich dzieci po I wojnie światowej i po II wojnie światowej z Syberii do Polski. Autor zachęca do przeczytania dwóch monografii Wiesława Theissa, w tym jednej napisanej wspólnie z Teruo Matsumoto z Japonii, oraz historycznego studium z lat 1944–1948, które Witold J. Chmielewski poświęcił repatriacji polskich dzieci-uchodźców z Syberii do Nowej Zelandii. Sięgnięcie do tych książek powinno sprzyjać doskonaleniu warsztatu metodologicznego historyków oświaty i wychowania. Upbringing Historians about the Fate of Polish Children during Two World Wars The review article concerns the latest monographs of Polish scientists with the participation of a Japanese journalist, which are devoted to the results of many years of scientific research on the fate of Polish children as victims of the First and Second World Wars. The common denominator of the analyzes is the reconstruction of the repatriation of Polish children from Siberia to Poland after World War I and after World War II. The author invites you to read two monographs by Wiesław Theiss, including one written together with Teruo Matsumoto from Japan and a historical study from 1944–1948, which Witold J. Chmielewski devoted to the repatriation of Polish refugee children from Siberia to New Zealand. Using these books should help to improve the methodological workshop of education and upbringing historians.