Two previous household pictures present the identical group: a short-haired lady, a lady in a striped gown, and a person in uniform. However there may be one distinction between these well-preserved, sepia footage: in a single, the person wears a Wehrmacht uniform; within the different his army gown has been altered to hide his wartime service.
Donated to the Museum of Gdańsk by the son of the woman within the striped gown, these pictures function in a brand new exhibition concerning the mass pressured conscriptions of Pomeranians into the German military. Consisting of picture albums, household heirlooms and oral testimonies of Poles who served within the Wehrmacht, the present asks whether or not somebody will be each a sufferer of and a soldier for an aggressor, and means that confronting these complexities is important to the nationwide identification. Unsurprisingly, the exhibition has proved extraordinarily controversial.
After the German invasion of September 1939, some Polish territories, together with Pomerania, Silesia and Larger Poland, have been straight included into the Reich. The inhabitants of those areas have been registered on the German Individuals’s Checklist (Deutsche Volksliste), which categorised the inhabitants of occupied territories. For males of conscription age, this typically entailed obligatory service within the Wehrmacht. Those that refused to serve, abandoned, or tried to affix the Polish armed forces or partisan teams have been condemned to demise and despatched to focus camps.
Historians estimate that between 400,000 and 450,000 residents of the Second Polish Republic served within the Wehrmacht, greater than the quantity who served within the Dwelling Military, the dominant resistance motion in German-occupied Poland – a painful actuality which, the Gdańsk museum contests, must be accepted to permit a extra truthful reckoning with its previous..
It’s also a actuality that not everybody has been keen to simply accept within the kind offered. Jarosław Kaczyński, president of the rightwing Legislation and Justice celebration, argued on X that Our Boys blurs duty for the second world war and even partially attributes it to Poles. Poland’s former president, Andrzej Duda, known as the exhibition’s portrayal of conscripted Poles as “ours” an ethical provocation, whatever the actuality of pressured service.
A number of Legislation and Justice-linked protests happened exterior the museum, with critics accusing the exhibition of whitewashing historical past and blurring the strains between sufferer and perpetrator. They objected to the ambiguous title, which references a time period used for Luxembourgers in comparable conditions (ons jongen).
The Warsaw Rising Museum, which is devoted to the 1944 rebellion, waded into the talk. Just a few days after the opening of the exhibition in Gdansk, it posted an image of teenage insurgents on its Fb profile, signed “our boys”. A heated dialogue broke out about what “ours” means to totally different folks.
Andreas Kasperski, who donated the 2 images talked about at first of the article, says the backlash has made him concern for his mom’s security. “I used to be afraid that, by going to see it, she would possibly meet somebody with extraordinarily patriotic, confrontational views,” he says. “Till a yr in the past, this is able to not have crossed my thoughts.”
The museum stood as much as its critics. “We oppose unfair and superficial assessments,” it mentioned in a press release. “We remorse the exhibition is getting used for advert hoc political functions.” The title Our Boys, it mentioned, was meant to acknowledge that these have been people from Polish communities, to not glorify them.
The museum acquired assist from the Kashubian-Pomeranian Affiliation, which mentioned in a press release that many critics “are usually not aware of the realities of life within the annexed areas of Pomerania, Kashubia and Kociewie”. In line with the organisation, the exhibition was wanted as a result of it revealed “the complicated destiny of the inhabitants, who’ve been marginalised within the official coverage of remembrance for years”.
Roman Rakowski, a former Polish navy commander and member of the paramilitary Gray Ranks who turned 100 final yr, wrote an open letter to the museum in response to the heated debate, by which he notes the tough repression and compelled displacement in Pomerania and requires a remembrance of those that have been pressured to make laborious selections. “These have been our boys, boys of their households, pressured into the enemy military to avoid wasting family members,” he wrote. “It’s simpler to evaluate than to face such hazard.”
The curator of Our Boys, Andrzej Hoja, says that whereas this complicated chapter in Poland’s wartime historical past is extensively accepted in Pomerania, it was troublesome to present private tales a good listening to at a nationwide degree, because the existence of the German Individuals’s Checklist is just not frequent information and performs solely a marginal function within the nationwide curriculum. “It’s no secret on the household degree,” he says. “Many hold footage from that period as a result of they’re the one pictures they’ve. Within the nationwide debate, nevertheless, having a relative who was conscripted by pressure could make you a simple goal. Throughout the 2005 presidential marketing campaign, it was revealed that Donald Tusk’s Pomeranian grandfather served within the German military. Tusk, who is Poland’s prime minister, promptly misplaced that election.
Cezary Obracht-Prondzyński, a historical past professor on the College of Gdańsk, says the controversy over Our Boys exposes deep variations in how Poland’s borderland and central areas understand identification. These variations are rooted in post-second world conflict border adjustments and the Treaty of Versailles.
In cities reminiscent of Warsaw, Kraków and Lublin, the Polish identification was clear – Polish was the first language, and Catholicism unified the folks. Historical past in these locations centered on uprisings and resistance to international oppressors, and the excellence between locals and outsiders was sharp. Nevertheless, in areas reminiscent of Silesia, Kashubia, Warmia, Masuria, and the Japanese Borderlands, life was extra combined. Individuals spoke a number of languages, practised totally different religions, and infrequently had members of the family who served in numerous armies. Outsiders may nonetheless be neighbours and even members of the family.
Individuals from the “core” areas of Poland discovered it simpler to observe a easy nationwide story – us Poles towards them. Individuals from the borderlands, nevertheless, lived with extra ambiguity and uncertainty. Polishness in Warsaw or Krakow within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was simple and clear, whereas within the borderlands it was complicated, fragile and open to negotiation. After the conflict, the dominant narrative ignored the expertise of individuals in these areas.
“Do we’ve got a proper to our historical past, to our reminiscence, to nuance and element?” asks Obracht-Prondzyński. “With out this openness, a slender and unifying mannequin dangers repeating harmful patterns from Europe’s previous. The exhibition’s debate ought to function each a lesson and a warning.”
