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Machcewicz, Pawel
3 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Paweł Machcewicz on the Polish anti-Semitism of 1968
Last weekend, Polish President Lech Kaczyński described the expatriation and deportation of around 15,000 Polish Jews 40 years ago as "shameful". Talking to Cezary Michalski, historian Paweł Machcewicz claims Poland rather than the Soviet Union was responsible for the anti-Semitic campaign that started in March 1968. "The anti-Zionist campaign of 1968 was autonomous. There is no evidence that Moscow stipulated either its form or its intensity. Moscow simply demanded that the entire bloc position itself on the right side in the conflict with Israel. The campaign was carried out with enormous zeal by the party apparatus of the Polish communists. Of course the government was not democratically elected because the state was not sovereign at the time, but they were still Poles."
» full article (external link, Polish)
More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Religion, » History, » Poland
All available articles from » Cezary Michalski
A "Second World War" museum in Warsaw?
Polish historian Paweł Machcewicz proposes the founding of a "Second World War Museum" in Warsaw as a counterpart to the planned permanent exhibition in Berlin on the expulsion of Germans from Poland and other countries after the war. Poland, he says, should give up its blockade against the German initiative and initiate its own European project which would include the governments and historians of other European countries. "A museum of this kind, the likes of which exists nowhere in Europe, would provide the space to offer a comprehensive overview of the experiences of the war from the perspective of people who suffered under totalitarianism - not only that of the Nazis but also that of the Soviet regime. ... This museum would be based in Warsaw, but with its European or international character it could revive the memory of certain events that have fallen into oblivion, such as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Katyn, the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and the Baltic states or the conduct of the Red Army and the NKWD in 1944 and 1945."
» full article (external link, Polish)
More from the press review on the subject » Exhibitions / Museums, » History, » Germany, » Poland
Pawel Machcewicz on disputes over Soviet war memorials
The Polish government has postponed a proposed law for the removal of Soviet war memorials in Poland, in order to avoid exacerbating current tensions with Russia. Historian Pawel Machcewicz of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun finds this good, and emphasises that the Estonians were under more pressure from the Soviet Union than were the Poles. "The Poles are in an incomparably better situation. We don't have to shake off a colonial yoke, or an inheritance of decades of Russification. We don't have millions of Russians in our country whose identification with the Polish state is debatable. There also is no current mood in our society that would justify such spectacular moves aimed at the few remaining memorials to Russian soldiers… So we don't have to start our own memorial war against Russia. Especially because it would not only be a fight with the government of the Russian federation, but also with millions of Russians whose memory of those who fell in the war against Germany remains holy, the most important element of their patriotic tradition."
» full article (external link, Polish)
More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » History, » Poland, » Estonia
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