WAR EXHIBIT FURTHER STRAINS GERMAN-POLISH RELATIONS
By Mark Landler
The New York Times
August 31, 2006 Thursday
Late Edition – Final
To say there is baggage in the German-Polish relationship does not
begin to account for the scars left by the war, bloodshed, persecution
and humiliation of the last century — a stream of abuse that Germans
acknowledge has flowed mainly from west to east. So it is perhaps no
surprise that a new exhibit here, devoted to the suffering of more
than 12 million Germans expelled from Poland and other countries
at the end of World War II, has touched a raw nerve with Poles,
straining a relationship that had already fallen into disrepair.
"Nothing good will come out of it for Poland, Germany or Europe," said
the Polish prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who marked the exhibit’s
opening this month by visiting the site of a Nazi concentration camp
in Poland.
True, he said, ethnic Germans who were driven from their homes in
Eastern Europe endured great hardship. But it is important to remember
"who was the perpetrator and who was the victim," he added.
Such talk has been common during this summer of suspicion. From a
dispute last month over a satirical article in a German newspaper about
Mr. Kaczynski and his twin brother, Lech, who is Poland’s president,
to a spat last week over German naval maneuvers that encroached on
Polish waters, Poland and Germany cannot seem to avoid antagonizing
each other.
"Ordinary Poles feel more resentful and suspicious toward Germany,"
Marek Ostrowski, an editor at the weekly magazine Polityka, said.
"The Polish government has put this issue high in people’s minds."
German officials say they have tried to take the high road, but
privately they express deep frustration with Warsaw, which they
contend is exploiting anti-German sentiment to fuel a new wave of
Polish nationalism.
While there are a few genuine conflicts between these neighbors —
Poland was outraged by Germany’s deal with Russia to build a gas
pipeline under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Poland — the friction
between Berlin and Warsaw is mostly about how to treat their painful
shared past.
In Germany, many people defend the exhibit as part of an overdue
effort to honor the wartime suffering of their grandparents. In Poland,
however, some see a shift in the German national conscience, away from
an acceptance of unqualified culpability for the evils of that time.
The privately financed exhibit, called "Forced Paths," does not seem
intended as a provocation. Its organizers say it is designed to offer
an overview of the phenomenon of expulsion in 20th-century Europe.
In addition to focusing on dispossessed Germans, it documents the
plight of Poles and Jews deported by the Nazis, Armenians slaughtered
by Ottoman Turks, Greeks and Turks displaced by the conflict in Cyprus,
and Muslims and Croats persecuted by Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Critics in Poland contend that this equal-opportunity approach suggests
a moral equivalence between the methodical persecution undertaken by
the Nazis and the woes of Germans in a war they started.
In such a toxic atmosphere, what could have been a civilized debate has
degenerated into a tiff. The mayor of Warsaw, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz,
a former prime minister, canceled an unrelated visit to Berlin,
saying his presence would have been misconstrued and exploited.
Polish institutions that lent artifacts to the exhibit demanded them
back, under pressure from their government. The most prominent is a
bell recovered from the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German liner
that sank in the Baltic Sea in January 1945 after being torpedoed by
a Soviet submarine.
At least 9,000 people, most of them German refugees, were killed
in what ranks as the deadliest maritime disaster in history. Gunter
Grass, the Nobel laureate, memorialized the tragedy in his 2003 novel
"Crabwalk." The bell, which has not been returned, had sat in a Polish
seafood restaurant until it was lent to the exhibit.
A Warsaw museum asked for and obtained the return of a book taken
from a Polish family by a German soldier, and an identification card
issued to a child by the Polish authorities.
"It frightens me that in a modern European Union country, independent
cultural institutions can be intimidated in this way by their
government," Wilfried Rogasch, the curator of the exhibit, said.
Mr. Rogasch and his colleagues said that after some initial resistance,
they had received good cooperation from Polish institutions while
they were researching the exhibit. They said they took suggestions
from the Poles on how to bolster the Polish section of the exhibit.
"We’ve reached out to Poland with both hands," said Erika Steinbach,
the leader of the Federation of Expellees, a group that lobbies for
Germans forced out of Eastern European territories and that sponsored
the exhibit. "That’s why I don’t understand the Polish reaction."
The involvement of Ms. Steinbach, however, is a major part of the
problem. Her ultimate goal is to establish a permanent research
center in Berlin devoted to victims of expulsion. Many Poles fiercely
oppose the idea because they fear it would further muddy the issue
of responsibility.
The German government has said it is open to Ms. Steinbach’s
proposal. She has a seat in Parliament and belongs to Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Mrs. Merkel has brushed aside
Polish criticism of the exhibit, saying, "Germany is aware of its
historical responsibility."
Domestic politics play at least as big a role in Poland’s sulfurous
reaction. The Kaczynski brothers, analysts say, are exploiting
antipathy toward Germany to shore up their still shaky government.
When the German paper Die Tageszeitung published a column lampooning
the twins as "young Polish potatoes," Jaroslaw Kaczynski demanded
that Berlin crack down on it. Lech Kaczynski then skipped a summit
meeting with Mrs. Merkel and the president of France, Jacques Chirac.
With local elections this fall, "it will be relatively easy for them to
play this anti-German card," Mr. Ostrowski, the editor from Polityka,
said. "They will say they were not personally offended, but that the
Polish people were offended."
Amid the chill, there were a few signs of a thaw. Poland sent the
speaker of its Parliament to meet his German counterpart this week.
Polish leaders also resisted a tempting target: the recent disclosure
by Mr. Grass that as a young man he had joined the military branch
of the SS.
"They have been silent about this," said Adam Krzeminski, a columnist
for Polityka. "That already means something."