With Holocaust law, Poland imperils reconciliation with its past

The 20th century volume of “Europe, Our History,” being finalized now for release in identical German and Polish editions, is meant to overcome the classical nationalist perspectives so common in school textbooks.

German students will learn more about the understudied events east of its frontier, including the Warsaw Uprising. For their Polish peers, the textbook delves into the messy truths of occupation: while there was no collaboration with Nazi Germany at the state level in Poland, some Poles did collaborate with the occupiers.

Though a small reference point, it is a big marker of how far Poland has come recently in facing some of the darker parts of its wartime history, says Michael Müller, a historian at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and a leader of the joint Polish-German textbook project. “That makes a difference,” he says. “We have worked hard to develop a common narrative, a

The need for introspection‘You cannot regulate collective memory’