Poland and Germany: historical confusion.

Recently, there was a 3-day meeting between historians and students from Poland and Germany under the auspices of the two countries' presidents on the painful topic of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

The average foreigner who visits Poland is woefully unaware of what the Warsaw Uprising really was. There are many reasons for this lack of knowledge. Distortions on history made by the communist propaganda after the end of the war is partly to blame. No book on the Warsaw Uprising was published in Germany before the 1960's.

And, according to Norman Davies, a pre-eminent authority on the subject, even by the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising in 1994, no Polish historian had published a serious book about the subject.

Many people in Western Europe and the United States confuse the Warsaw Uprising with that in the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto of 1943. Even the German president, visiting Warsaw in 1994, made the blunder in public.

Both the events of 1943 and 1944 were horrifically evil and tragic events, that have been seared in the Polish consciousness. The rest of us ought never to forget.

[Poland] [Warsaw] [uprising] [rising] [Jewish] [ghetto] [World War II] [Norman Davies]