As the Russian invasion of Ukraine had stopped all air travel to the country, my journeys to Kyiv in the autumn of 2022 and again in the summer of 2023 passed through Warsaw. With events in Ukraine very much on my mind, I took the opportunity to visit a couple of the monuments to the resistance in Poland during the Second World War.
The Warsaw Uprising Monument commemorates the battle of Poland’s resistance to seize control of the capital from the retreating German occupiers before the arrival of the advancing Soviet forces. The uprising, which began on 1 August 1944, was both heroic and tragic, as the Soviet army stopped short of the city and waited while the Germans brutally suppressed it and then destroyed the city in its aftermath. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died, as Stalin refused to allow any meaningful supplies to the resistance. The uprising may be seen as the beginning of the Cold War, as the Polish Home Army’s vision of a pro-Western Polish state clashed with the Soviets’ determination to crush any independent Polish spirit and to subsume the country into its expanding empire of proxy states in central Europe. The people of Warsaw paid the price for the Nazi brutality and Soviet callousness.
The monument depicts Home Army soldiers in action amid the ruins of the shattered city, as well as a group emerging from the sewers, which had been an important way for the insurgents to move around. It was only erected in 1989, at the very end of communist rule in Poland. Until then communist Poland had downplayed and distorted the importance of the uprising. Home Army veterans were disparaged and, in the immediate post-war period, even arrested. No commemorations of the Home Army or the uprising were permitted. The cynicism with which the Soviet army stood back and watched as the Germans destroyed Warsaw meant that the uprising was an uncomfortable event for the communist regime.
The Warsaw Rising Museum opened in 2004, to mark the 60th anniversary of the uprising. A big, sprawling museum over a number of floors, it is packed with artefacts, weapons, photographs, displays, videos and audio. The subdued lighting and a loud background noise, like a beating heart, produced a forbidding atmosphere. The museum was crowded, with large school parties rushed around. Disturbing impressions were thrown at me, but the thread of events through that terrible two months was hard to follow. I picked up some printed flyers that seemed randomly distributed around the museum, but which explained the course of events. I left with the feeling that they had tried to pack in too much, and that coherence had been lost along the way.
Another monument commemorating the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was unveiled in 1948, in the area where the ghetto had been. It consists of a large stone wall representing both the walls of the ghetto and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, with two large menorahs to either side. Inset in the wall are, on one side, insurgents of the uprising, and, on the other, a depiction of the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people. Next to the monument is the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which was opened in 2013. This striking postmodern building has become a considerable landmark in Warsaw. The name Polin means both “Poland” in Hebrew, as well as “rest here”, which relates to the legend about the first Jews’ arrival in Poland. The museum relates a thousand years of Jewish history in Poland, once the largest Jewish community in the world, from its beginnings in the Middle Ages up to the holocaust and beyond.
The museum’s layout draws visitors through the different phases of Jewish history in Poland. That Poland attracted such a large Jewish community reflected its exceptional tolerance among European states. Although Poland was not immune to antisemitic violence, its Jews were in general protected by the Polish Kings, who valued their contribution to the economy of their realm. As elsewhere, Jews in Poland thrived as traders. The Polin museum does not shy away from presenting uncomfortable aspects of Jewish history in Poland, including their engagement in the slave trade. It explains that, despite the Catholic Church’s objections to the enslavement of Christians, Poland’s kings were loath to act against it, because they profited from the trade. Catholic clergy in general opposed the tolerance shown towards Jews, but their objections were largely ignored by the country’s rulers.
With my mind on Ukraine, an especially striking section of the museum concerned the Bohdan Khmelnytsky rebellion of 1648. Ukraine was at the time part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Khmelnytsky’s Cossack rebellion against Polish rule especially targeted Jews, as well as Polish landowners and Catholic priests. Jews were seen as allies of the Polish landed aristocracy as they frequently acted as tax collectors. Tens of thousands of Jews were massacred. The museum explained how, for the Jewish community in Poland-Lithuania, the Khmelnytsky rebellion was a cataclysmic event that ended their feeling of safety and security in Poland. Furthermore, from a Polish perspective, the Khmelnytsky rebellion was an important stage in the weakening of the Commonwealth, leading to its eventual demise and partition among the neighbouring states. For Poland’s Jews, the demise of the Commonwealth was also negative, as it meant that they lost the protection Poland had offered them, and were left at the mercy of rising antisemitism in the Russian and Austrian empires.
In Ukraine, Khmelnytsky has usually been seen as a positive historical figure. One of the country’s regions is named after him. A banknote bears his image. And there is an equestrian statue of him in the centre of Kyiv. However, some Ukrainians have seen him unfavourably, especially because, with his rebellion failing, after initial success, he turned to the Russian Tsar for support, which led to the incorporation of eastern and central Ukraine into imperial Russia. For Russia, Khmelnytsky was seen as a heroic figure, for his role in, according to the Russian view, uniting Russian lands. Indeed, the statue in Kyiv was erected in the 19th century, under Tsarist rule.
Since independence, Ukrainians have been reassessing their history, a process that has been accelerated by Russia’s aggression. There is a widespread feeling that Ukrainian history has for too long been written from a Russian perspective. This feeling has considerable justification. The point is relevant for western historians as well, who all too often had a largely Russo-centric view of imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, which did not give sufficient weight or importance to the non-Russian peoples under Tsarist and Soviet rule. But in addressing their history, Ukrainians need to take a critical look at uncomfortable episodes and historical Ukrainian figures whose records were far from unblemished. Polish-Ukrainian relations, as well as the treatment of the Jewish community, present difficult topics, and Ukrainians need also to consider the perspectives of others on their shared histories. As the Polin museum makes clear, Khmelnytsky is far from a heroic figure for some of Ukraine’s neighbours.
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