Artur Bartkiewicz: Nawrocki’s troubling Westerplatte speech shows history is happening now

Listening to Karol Nawrocki at Westerplatte, one could almost think Poland had returned to 1989. The president’s speech focused on the ledger of Polish-German grievances, even as he acknowledged that the two countries are now allies.

Nawrocki accused Poland’s western neighbor of anti-Polish attitudes rooted in the 19th century. He argued that Germany did not need Adolf Hitler to hold Poland and Poles in contempt. For Artur Bartkiewicz, those words were troubling because they placed the weight of the speech on inherited hostility rather than on the relationship Poland and Germany have built since then.

A great deal of time has passed since 1989. Poland and Germany are members of the same European Union and work together within it. Under the vision of “NATO 3.0,” they are also expected to help defend Europe against the empire that changed its name but, in Bartkiewicz’s description, remains no less bloodthirsty.

The contrast is especially sharp at Westerplatte, a site bound to the memory of the outbreak of World War II. Nawrocki turned toward the painful Polish past, while Donald Tusk called for conclusions that could guide the future.

Bartkiewicz’s warning is not to abandon history, but to avoid becoming so absorbed in it that the present disappears. History, he writes, is not only something Poland remembers. It is still being made in front of everyone’s eyes.