Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979. Jonathan Huener

remember the heinous factories of death—we are, for the Polish nation, for Europe, for the entire world . . . not only a document; we must be the conscious, organized vanguard of the struggle, so that the tragedy to which we are witnesses, of which we are living documents, is never repeated.” That struggle, according to the premier, included concrete goals, among them “the progress of states toward independence,” “reconstruction of Poland from the ruins,” and “the building of a lasting peace.”² The only salvation for the Polish nation, he claimed, and the only way out of the abyss of terror and destruction, was for the Poles to rebuild their land from the ashes of the German invasion and to struggle for a new beginning.³ The grounds of Auschwitz, according to the premier, would function both as a historical artifact and as an admonition to future generations. “The museum,” Cyrankiewicz stated, “will be not only an eternal warning and document of unbound German bestiality, but also at the same time proof of truth about man and his fight for freedom—a document arousing intensified vigilance so that genocidal powers that bring destruction to nations will never rise again.”⁴ At the conclusion of his speech, the prime minister declared the museum officially open and the crowd joined in the singing of “Rota” (Pledge), a patriotic Polish anthem from the early twentieth century.

      The crowd then walked the three kilometers from Auschwitz I to Birkenau, the spacious moor that had served as the massive extermination center of the Auschwitz complex. Passing through the main gate and along the railroad siding where the infamous “selection” of deportees took place, the crowd stopped between the rubble of the gas chambers and ovens of Crematoria II and III. Wreaths were laid in memory of the victims, a cross was erected atop the ruins of one of the crematoria, and the day’s ceremonies were concluded with the singing, once again, of “Rota:”

      We shall not yield our forebears’ land,

      Nor see our language muted.

      Our nation is Polish, and Polish our folk,

      By Piasts constituted.

      By cruel oppression we’ll not be swayed!

      May God so lend us aid.

      By the very last drop of blood in our veins,

      Our souls will be secured,

      Until in dust and ashes falls,

      The stormwind sown by the Prussian lord.

      Our every home will form a stockade.

      May God so lend us aid.

      We’ll not be spat on by Teutons

      Nor abandon our youth to the German!

      We’ll follow the call of the Golden Horn,

      Under the Holy Spirit, our Hetman.

      Our armed battalions shall lead the crusade.

      May God so lend us aid.⁵

      This day’s ceremonies were more than a nationalist commemoration of Poland’s concentration camp victims; they also provide a lens through which to view Auschwitz memory in the first years after the liberation. A new world order free of the Hitlerite menace, a museum documenting Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland, the righting of wrongs done to Poland, a vengeful patriotic anthem, and a cross erected on what is arguably the largest Jewish cemetery in the world—these are only a few examples of the public manifestations of historical consciousness at Auschwitz. The June 1947 dedicatory ceremonies were an early register of the characteristics of Auschwitz memory in the early postwar years and an early expression of the political and cultural trends that dominated the public manifestations of that memory in the decades to follow.

      In this chapter I examine these trends as they contributed to the development of a collective Auschwitz memory in Poland in the first two years after the liberation. Proceeding thematically rather than chronologically, I first offer a brief discussion of the political and social context for developments at the Auschwitz site in the years 1945–47. Second, I describe and analyze events and trends in these years that communicated the history of the camp to the Polish public—events that stimulated a broad discussion of Auschwitz and its place in the history of the occupation. In the third section, I account for the development of a Polish-national commemorative idiom at Auschwitz, for by 1947 Auschwitz had become the central locus of Polish wartime martyrology. I therefore examine two formative and characteristic aspects of Auschwitz memory in the context of this idiom: the notion of “martyrdom” as applied to Auschwitz victims and the concurrent marginalization of Jewish suffering and victimization. In the course of only two years, Polish national sacrifice became the central element of Auschwitz memory, while the fate of Jews at the camp, although never explicitly denied, remained on the margins of the more comprehensive commemoration of registered Polish prisoners and those of other nationalities.

      The Early Postwar Context

      The Poland that rose from the ashes of the Second World War was a country much different from what any Pole would have imagined in 1939. From the arrival of Soviet troops on Polish soil in early 1944 until the communist consolidation of power in 1947, Poland was in a state of economic and demographic devastation, had a variety of parties competing for political power, and was, arguably, in a state of civil war. Already in 1943 Stalin had organized in Moscow the Union of Polish Patriots (Związek Patriotów Polskich, or ZPP), a group of exile communists led by members of the newly established Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, or PPR). In July 1944, this group formed the core of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego, or PKWN), which was installed in Lublin and hence was known as the Lublin Committee. At the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill had reached vague agreement on the formation of a “government of national unity” representing anti-Nazi and democratic forces in the reconstituted Poland. This was a clear victory for Stalin, for the basis of the new government would be the Lublin Committee. The Polish government in exile, based in London, was thus rendered inconsequential, and in January 1945 its underground military wing, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK), was officially disbanded. The PKWN reconstituted itself at the end of 1944 as the Provisional Government of the Polish Republic, which then became the Provisional Government of National Unity in June 1945. This body, claiming legitimacy on the basis of the Yalta agreements and Western recognition, was composed, in part, of PPR communists. It also included members of the London government-in-exile such the Polish People’s Party (PSL) leader Stanisław Mikołajczyk, who had left London for Poland in the hope of lending this government some democratic legitimacy. Mikołajczyk would be disappointed, however, for despite nominal commitment to diversity and pluralism, the Provisional Government of National Unity was a vehicle for the steady subordination of the state to communist rule. Eventually threatened with arrest, Mikołajczyk was forced to flee Poland in late 1947.

      From June 1945 until its dissolution in February 1947 the provisional government’s authority rested on minimal public support. Poland had never been a bastion of leftist revolutionary politics; its proletarian classes were less developed than those in the West, and bitter memories of the 1939–41 Soviet occupation of eastern Poland remained. Indeed, for many Poles, it appeared as if the Red Army and its Moscow-trained Polish stooges had replaced the German occupier. The early months of Soviet “liberation” seemed to confirm fears of Soviet-style repression and coercion. Following the Home Army’s failed Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944, the Lublin Committee began to organize, in cooperation with the Red Army, a new police and security apparatus. Through espionage, intimidation, and terror, these organs assisted in the consolidation of communist rule. Their tactics were directed against anti-Soviet armed insurgent groups such as the right-wing National Armed Forces, against remnants of the AK known as the Freedom and Independence Movement, and against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The security forces and police did not, however, limit their activities to the fight against armed opposition groups. With the promulgation of a decree in January 1946, they had the freedom to punish those who had been involved in the “fascistization of political life,” and six months later, they would pursue opponents of the new order on the basis of the law “On Offenses Particularly Dangerous at the Time of the Reconstruction of the State.”⁶

      The security