What Does it Mean to Be Polish? Polish Identity Building in Culture

This lecture digs into how “Polishness” has become a fiercely contested idea in today’s Poland. It looks at museums, school curricula, films and TV as key battlegrounds where politicians and cultural institutions fight over which past should define the nation’s future. From the quip about “voting for a better yesterday” to the heated debates over Polish roles in the Holocaust, the talk shows how history is selectively remembered, sanitized, or spotlighted to fit a populist agenda.

Along the way, it asks: Who gets included in the story of the nation, who is pushed out, and what happens to a democracy when culture is turned into a weapon in ongoing identity wars?

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