The paper describes the activities, structures and tasks of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, one of the most important remembrance institutions and the most important Holocaust Memorial in Poland. The short outline of the camp’s wartime history is followed by sections concerning the post-war site’s use and commemoration, the forming of the Museum, concepts of its shape, and contemporary challenges to its activities. The selected Museum’s structures were discussed: the archives, exhibitions, research, collections, conservation and visitor services departments.

The article aims to present concisely and chronologically the most critical stages of the formation and evolution of the Germans’ historical consciousness and identity after the end of the World War II. This process was based on how German society dealt with the National Socialist dictatorship (the focus of this paper) and the communist dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED). Multiple factors have, over the years, contributed to how the Germans’ have dealt with their past and to the increasing awareness of this nation of its initially ineffaceable guilt and responsibility for the memory of World War II, as well as its homicidal role in this war. Among them were the post-war acceptance and integration of the “expellees” in both German states, the gradual confrontation of German society with the subject of the Holocaust itself and its mass-scale nature (for instance through touting the Nuremberg and following trials of war criminals and their assistants), and holding public debates on challenging issues related to the past (not imposed from above, but resulting from the needs of German society-for example some disputes between historians, the Walser-Bubis debate). Literary works often inspired the latter (for example, Günter Grass’s “Crabwalk,” Jörg Friedrich’s “The Fire”) and exhibitions presented in Germany (for example, on the crimes of the Wehrmacht). These considerations are a form of introduction to the second part of this article presenting the most important conclusions from an analysis, conducted by the author in 2014, of public speeches of prominent German (and Polish) politicians from the period 1989–2011 on subjects related to history. Its results confirmed that prominent German politicians are conscious of the guilt of Germans’ fathers and grandparents-not only for the outbreak of World War II, but above all for the Holocaust and crimes committed against a number of national, ethnic, and other groups-and they admit it. However, it is noticeable that the Germans’ knowledge about the criminal occupation of Central and Eastern Europe and the role of Poland in the overthrow of communism and the reunification of Germany is low and insufficient from the Polish perspective, among others.

The following paper reviews the schemes of memory behind the shaping of the contemporary vision of the Czech’s own history and the forms they take while materialising in the contemporary Czech Republic. Among the “great narratives” to have built up the picture of Czech history, a leading role was assumed by a traditional model, that sees the Czechs as a nation on the border of Slavic and Germanic superethnoses. Simultaneously, attention was drawn to its reformation and modernisation potential and Slavic character, the latter of which intensified after having confronted the Germanic world. The Czech post-1989 settlement with its communist past has only slightly impaired this idiom of memory; Soviet domination, especially the Warsaw Pact intervention in 1968, has to a great extent depreciated the value of “Slavicness” as an element of identification of the Czechs. Also, a Czech sense of nationality has faded to the benefit of a sense of “citizenship”-with the latter understood in a broad sense. Czech state institutions have only to a limited extent been committed to researching some details of the politics of history. Among these organisations have been, for example, the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, ÚSTR), the Military History Institute (Vojenský historický ústav, VHÚ) and some other bodies, including the Czech National Museum (Národní muzeum). When analysing the responsibilities shouldered by the above institutions, one may observe an influential yet financially inadequate role of some NGOs, such as Pamět národa (The Memory of Nation) whereas a typical narrative pattern of Czechness has found its place in the educational system. As for the legal perspective, the Czech Republic managed to settle accounts with its communist past by passing both the Lustration Act and the Act on the Period of Lack of Freedom.

The aim of this article is to describe and analyse the politics of history in Slovakia after the Velvet Revolution and gaining independence. Although the Slovak authorities do not have a compact vision of the politics of history, in many aspects and fields it is conducted both by central institutions and other players in public life. This study delivers a synthetic analysis of the Slovak debate on identity, changes in symbolics, lustration, “de-communisation” and education. It defines points of fundamental dispute and disagreement on history in Slovak society. The overview presented in the paper shows the complex nature of the politics of history in Slovakia.

This article summarises the concepts behind the direction of Polish politics towards Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus and Russia in placing Poland’s new international relations in Central and Eastern Europe due to its historical ties with the countries of the region. A significant verbal role was played by the reception in Polish politics of the doctrine of Mieroszewski and Giedroyc-the so-called ULB (Ukraine–Lithuania–Belarus). It assumed the establishment of special relations with these countries, and, at the same time, waiving claims to territories lost by Poland after 1939. The application of this idea was conditioned by the internal political dynamics of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Lithuania, and their mutual relations that determined the effectiveness of this doctrine. A key role in shaping Poland’s policy towards these countries was played by an “historical factor”-the exchange of mutual declarations concerning the past; this sometimes included the transmission of documentation-for instance the Katyn massacre evidence documents were transferred to Poland in 1990 by the Russian authorities. These actions served as tools of political rapprochement, and they sometimes resulted in opening the way to re-examine previous historical interpretations (especially in Polish–Lithuanian and Polish–Ukrainian relations). The question of investigating the crimes of the USSR against Poles, including above all the Katyn massacre (1940), played an important role in the rapprochement in Polish–Russian relations in the early period of President Yeltsin’s rule. One of the repercussions of implementing this concept and its conciliar priorities in Polish foreign policy and in its internal formal discourse was the suppression of some recently recreated areas of collective memory and currents of historical discourse; this especially concerned Polish–Ukrainian relations, in the context of, among others, the massacre in Volhynia in 1942–1943. Another result was transferring possible settlements to the responsibility of the state and the Polish community-a particular example of which was a resolution of the Polish Senate concerning Operation “Vistula” (Akcja “Wisła” in 1947) that was adopted in 1990.

The article discusses the current position of Hungarian historiography towards the role of recent history in the Hungarian identity and its relationship to domestic policy. The democratic transition after 1989 contributed to a substantial change in historical scholarship through the dismissal of censorship, the opening of archives and the lifting of the ideological pressure on research. However, the change of the historical self-portrayal of Hungary after the fall of the communist regime was an element of the democratic transition. The author describes the process of the use of historical arguments in forming national attitudes and self-identity by several political circles in Hungary over the last three decades, with special attention paid to the activities and ideas of József Antall and Victor Orbán. The experiences of the 1956 revolution were initially focused on as an anchoring point for national identity after the fall of communism. In the course of these years, the centre of political attention shifted to the proposed anti-communist and anti-left wing interpretation of Hungarian history from March 1944 to May 1990, and, as author points out, it is aligned with the attitude of the ruling circles. The author notes the substantial state’s initiatives in the field of the politics of memory in recent years, especially in the early formation of the 1956 Institute (est. 1991), then the Institute of the 20th Century (XX. Század Intézet, est. 1999), the House of Terror Museum (Terror Háza Múzeum, est. 2002), the Institute for the Research on Communism (Kommunizmuskutató Intézet, est. 2011), the Research Institute and Archives for the History of Regime Change (Rendszerváltás Történetét Kutató Intézet és Archívum, RETÖRKI, est. 2013), the VERITAS Research Institute for History (VERITAS Történetkutató Intézet, est. 2013), the Committee of National Remembrance (Nemzeti Emlékezet Bizottsága, NEB, est. 2013), and the Institute of National Heritage (Nemzeti Örökség Intézete, NÖRI, est. 2013).

This article discusses the institutional attempts to deal with the archival legacy of the Romanian communist security police, Securitate (1945–1989), during the democratic transition in post-communist Romania. The first part draws a short outline of Securitate’s history and activities as one of the main power instruments of the communist dictatorship. The second part of the article shows the development of political attitudes towards institutional attempts to deal with the communist past in the post-communist Romania. This paper describes the reluctant attitude of the ruling circles in the 1990s towards the opening of the Securitate archives and the lustration attempts. The formation of the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității, CNSAS, legally established 1999) hardly changed the general situation: the archives of the Securitate were transferred to CNSAS with significant delays, and the 2008 ruling of the constitutional court limited its lustration competences. The establishment of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (Institutul de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului şi Memoria Exilului Românesc, IICCMER, established 2005) and formation in 2006 of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania led by renowned political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu together with the research and legal activities of CNSAS contributed to a broader evaluation of the communist regime (although its impact seems to be limited). The paper refers also to the public debate, sparked by the activity and the final report published by Tismăneanu’s commission.

Overview: Paweł Śpiewak. 2005. Pamięć po komunizmie [Memory of Communism]. Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria. 270 pp. ISBN 8374536004.

Overview: Wojciech Materski. 2017. Od cara do “cara”. Studium rosyjskiej polityki historycznej [From the Tsar to the “Tsar”. A Study of the Russian Politics of History]. Warsaw: Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. 371 pp. ISBN 9788364091889.