“Today, successive generations of Germans are being brought up and live in ignorance of the scale of German crimes from World War II and overestimate German resistance to the Nazi regime. This is the result of negligence in education, but also more broadly of Berlin’s short-sighted historical policy, which mixes empty gestures, complacency and an artificial separation between Germans and Nazis”, wrote the president of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Karol Nawrocki, in the pages of “Everything Most Important’ in an article titled “German Displacement”.

The IPN president recalled that the Institute in 2022 published a comic book, Operation “Codfish”, which told the story of the Polish Underground State’s action during World War II – helping Allied prisoners of war who escaped from German camps. 

„The reader will see here flags with a swastika on public buildings in Poznań and Łódź, because this was the grim reality of the occupation”, writes Nawrocki, adding that the aforementioned comic book raised objections from the headmasters of two primary schools in West Germany. 

An allergic reaction was also aroused by the comic book ‘Major Hubal’ from 2021, telling the story of Major Henryk Dobrzański, who in September 1939 did not take off his uniform and lay down his arms, but decided to continue fighting against the Germans. 

A Polish teacher who wanted to use the IPN publications as a teaching aid was first met with the absurd accusation that they propagate banned symbols, and later – that they echo brutality”, writes the IPN president. The position of the schools was shared by the Directorate of Supervision and Services (ADD) in Koblenz – the equivalent of the Polish education authority. „The teacher was told that the cartoons contain “horrific content” and must not be distributed”, Karol Nawrocki adds.

As the head of the IPN notes, the blocking of the distribution of the comic books in German schools cannot be defended on the merits. „The case smacks of censorship and it is hard to escape the impression that it is not the swastikas or the “horrific content” that is at issue here. Rather, it is about the fear of allowing a narrative about the Second World War slightly different than the prevailing one in Germany”, states Karol Nawrocki.

Adrian Andrzejewski