Victimhood, Polish Identity and #GermanDeathCamps

 (Disclaimer- This post is not about the history of the Holocaust, but the relationship between modern Polish identity and victimhood. If you would like to read about the Holocaust then plenty of smarter people than me have provided you with a wealth of literature)

Recently I was binge watching cat videos on YouTube when a particularly advert caught my attention. Usually I do my best to ignore YouTube ads, but this one stood out. Probably because, in contrast to the usual array of adverts for music and bullshit I get targeted with, this one was about the Holocaust.

Today, we are still on the side of truth video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrkQ20SjHoU


If you haven’t seen the Today, we are still on the side of truth video I’ll quickly summarise. Created by The Institute of National Remembrance, a Polish government institution, the video provides a montage of the Holocaust. However, it invites us to see the Holocaust as not a genocide against just the Jews, but rather ‘Jews and Poles suffered its terrors together’. Furthermore the Poles ‘did much to save the Jews’. The video then ends by reminding us that Poland is still on the side of truth and then displays the phrase ‘#GermanDeathCamps’.

The video is a response to the occasional use of the phrase ‘Polish Death Camps’ to describe Holocaust camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Occasional is a very apt term. Perhaps the most recent notable use of it came from President Obama, back in May 2012! Obama duly apologised, clarifying that he meant ‘a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland’.

Poland’s video is an attempt to reassert Poland’s victimhood identity. As the longer version of the video argues (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q88AkN1hNYM), Poles were the innocent victims of World War II. As the narrator (yes that is Sean Bean) tells us, Poland was squashed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, receiving no help from its allies. Polish victimhood is further sold by claims that Poland was abandoned by the ‘Free World’ after the war and left behind the Iron Curtain. The audience is left with no doubt that Poland is the modern world’s innocent victim, not a perpetrator.  

By contrast, specifically placing the blame for the Holocaust on Germany, as opposed to the Nazis or Hitler, is a shrewd move. When asked about the video German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded by saying ‘We as Germans are responsible for what happened during the Holocaust, the Shoah, under National Socialism (Nazism)’. German identity has become associated with being a perpetrator. Thus the nation must accept such allegations to illustrate its maturity and transformation into a peace loving state.

It may seem strange for a state to produce and distribute a video that fetishizes its victimhood. However, this is part of a competition for victimhood that is not uncommon. An interesting example is the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which opened in 2014. After its conception there were frequent protests by Ukrainian groups that the museum was focusing too much on the Holocaust and not enough on the Soviet caused Ukrainian Famine 1932-3, which activists argued claimed far more lives. The Ukrainians evidently felt their victimhood was being forgotten at the expense of another, so they counterattacked by reasserting it.   

We often think of victimhood as a negative trait. To be victimised is to be singled out for cruel or unjust treatment. However, there is a positive side to the victim coin. There is no such thing as a guilty victim, rather they are all innocent. Therefore, this justifies all acts by the victim, regardless of how violent or authoritarian, as right in the context of their suffering. This was seen extensively in the Bosnian War. Serbs frequently referred to their Muslim rape and murder victims as ‘Turks’, referencing the Ottoman Turks who had occupied Serbia in the early modern period. Thus, they were justifying their brutal atrocities as righteous retribution by a victim against a perpetrator (regardless of how non-historical this was).

This leads to the obvious question: If Poland is reasserting its victim identity, what is it trying to justify? The answer is the right-wing policies recently passed by the Law and Justice Party (PiS). Directly, the video is linked to a law that criminalised the phrase ‘Polish Death Camps’. People who use the phrase can now be imprisoned for up to three years. However, it corresponds more broadly with the general right wing sentiment that is visible in Poland. The law goes beyond criminalising the phrase, but makes it illegal to discuss Poland’s role in the Holocaust ‘publicly and against the facts’. That the government can limit public historiographical debate and declare what is a fact is very troubling. This corresponds with Poland’s judicial reforms which have destroyed judicial independence. For instance, a law was passed last year that allows the ruling party to appoint judges. Consequently, there appears to be a right wing shift occurring in Poland, which has not escaped global attention. The Council of Europe called the judicial policies a ‘systemic threat to the rule of law’, a view seconded by the European Commission and US Senators, including John McCain.

The video and its accompanying literature is a response to these criticisms. It says to the world ‘We are the victims! You cannot attack us because our policies are justified in light of our suffering!’ In fact, the full-length video goes even further than that. References to Germany’s aggression against Poland and the West’s abandonment of it turn a mirror on the world and declare ‘YOU DID THIS TO US! YOU OWE US!’  

Bibliography

‘ABOUT THE IPN’, Institute of National Remembrance: https://ipn.gov.pl/en/about-the-ipn/2,Institute-of-National-Remembrance-Commission-for-the-Prosecution-of-Crimes-again.html . Accessed 12 February 2018

Boose L, ‘Crossing the River Drina: Bosnian Rape Camps, Turkish Impalement , and Serb Cultural Memory’, Signs, 28 (2002)

Chatterley C D, ‘Canada's Struggle with Holocaust Memorialization: The War Museum Controversy, Ethnic Identity Politics, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 29 (2015)

Gross J, ‘Poland’s death camp law is designed to falsify history’, 6 February 2018, Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/1c183f56-0a6a-11e8-bacb-2958fde95e5e . Accessed 12 February 2018

‘Merkel dodges question on Poland's new Holocaust law’, 10 February 2018, Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-poland-germany/merkel-dodges-question-on-polands-new-holocaust-law-idUSKBN1FU105 . Accessed 12 February 2018

‘"Polish death camp" controversy’, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Polish_death_camp%22_controversy#Historical_context . Accessed 12 February 2018

Smith L, ‘Poland moves to make phrase 'Polish death camps' a criminal offence’, 27 January 2018, Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/poland-polish-death-camps-nazi-germany-holocaust-auschwitz-criminal-offence-a8180471.html . Accessed 12 February 2018

Strupczewski J, ‘Polish reforms of judiciary pose threat to rule of law: EU Commission’, 6 November 2017, Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-poland-judicairy/polish-reforms-of-judiciary-pose-threat-to-rule-of-law-eu-commission-idUSKBN1D6272 . Accessed 12 February 2018

Tara J, ‘Poland Just Passed a Holocaust Bill That Is Causing Outrage. Here's What You Need to Know’, 1 February 2018, Time: http://time.com/5128341/poland-holocaust-law/ . Accessed 12 February 2018