Resistance is building to a populist bid to center Polish heroism and to put the country’s Jewish history back in the “freezer”
For years Olympic slalom canoeist Dariusz Popiela, 36, trained on the Dunajec river in southern Poland. During his twenties, he paddled every day on a churning stretch between two bridges in his hometown of Nowy Sacz. He never thought that this place so familiar to him would become the source of what can be called his memory rebellion. Popiela has always been fascinated by history. He grew up quizzing his grandfather about his childhood memories of life in Nazi-occupied Poland.
But there was an enormous chapter that his grandfather had ripped out of his mental storybook of recollections: the nearly 12,000 Jews who lived in Nowy Sacz before 1939 — about a third of the town’s pre-war population. They had disappeared from the town’s memory. Absent from lessons at school, it wasn’t until Popiela began his own research that he learned about the scale of Jewish life in Nowy Sacz and in Poland. With a thousand years of Jewish history, the country was home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of the United States at the start of World War II.
The Big Idea: Battling history
Governments rewrite history to further their political goals. School boards insist on rewritten history textbooks to elevate elite groups or privilege favored narratives. But unsavory motives are only one aspect of the rewriting history project. Other impulses are noble, idealistic, and sincere.
All are significant and will impact our politics, international relations, social understandings, economic arrangements. This project will look at specific battles over history — but it’s never really about history.
It’s always a fight over the present.
Popiela was floored when he read the details of how Jewish residents from his town were transported to the neighboring Belzec death camp. Many spent their final night in Nowy Sacz huddled on the riverbank exactly between the two bridges where he had paddled in his canoe so often.
“They saw this same view. They heard the same river voices and sounds,” Popiela said when we stood by the riverbank this past May. Running through some of the most picturesque scenery in southern Poland, the Dunajec river flows through steep gorges, pine forests and fields of tall grass growing right up to its fast-moving waterline. Popiela pointed to families cycling by and couples walking along the river path. “Half of the city disappeared and you have no memory,” Popiela said, shrugging his shoulders. “How is that possible?”
Resistance is building to a populist bid to center Polish heroism and to put the country’s Jewish history back in the “freezer”
For years Olympic slalom canoeist Dariusz Popiela, 36, trained on the Dunajec river in southern Poland. During his twenties, he paddled every day on a churning stretch between two bridges in his hometown of Nowy Sacz. He never thought that this place so familiar to him would become the source of what can be called his memory rebellion. Popiela has always been fascinated by history. He grew up quizzing his grandfather about his childhood memories of life in Nazi-occupied Poland.
But there was an enormous chapter that his grandfather had ripped out of his mental storybook of recollections: the nearly 12,000 Jews who lived in Nowy Sacz before 1939 — about a third of the town’s pre-war population. They had disappeared from the town’s memory. Absent from lessons at school, it wasn’t until Popiela began his own research that he learned about the scale of Jewish life in Nowy Sacz and in Poland. With a thousand years of Jewish history, the country was home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of the United States at the start of World War II.
The Big Idea: Battling history
Governments rewrite history to further their political goals. School boards insist on rewritten history textbooks to elevate elite groups or privilege favored narratives. But unsavory motives are only one aspect of the rewriting history project. Other impulses are noble, idealistic, and sincere.
All are significant and will impact our politics, international relations, social understandings, economic arrangements. This project will look at specific battles over history — but it’s never really about history.
It’s always a fight over the present.
Popiela was floored when he read the details of how Jewish residents from his town were transported to the neighboring Belzec death camp. Many spent their final night in Nowy Sacz huddled on the riverbank exactly between the two bridges where he had paddled in his canoe so often.
“They saw this same view. They heard the same river voices and sounds,” Popiela said when we stood by the riverbank this past May. Running through some of the most picturesque scenery in southern Poland, the Dunajec river flows through steep gorges, pine forests and fields of tall grass growing right up to its fast-moving waterline. Popiela pointed to families cycling by and couples walking along the river path. “Half of the city disappeared and you have no memory,” Popiela said, shrugging his shoulders. “How is that possible?”
