When the past matters: memory politics and ethnic relations in Poland

Abstract

This article identifies the conditions under which the interplay of past and present enables or constrains political action in the Polish public sphere. Using data from the Polish quality broadsheet Gazeta Wyborcza, I account for the puzzles in the Jewish, German and Ukrainian minorities' memory work. The study reveals that history empowers ethnic groups differently, in the function of the certification by external allies, diverse salience of the arguments raised and the state's distinct memory projects. Namely, the high resonance of the Jews' claims that seize on the Holocaust narrative and official acknowledgement of their past allow the group to escape the limits of their narrow organizational capacities. In contrast, the state's rejection of the Germans' and Ukrainians' interpretations of the past has the effect of channelling minority claims towards the fight for acknowledgement.