Yesterday, the Onet.pl portal reported on audits in about 100 units subordinate to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. As the title says: “The Ministry of Culture is cleaning up after Minister Gliński.” Even the survival of individual institutions may depend on the outcomes of the research. “Among the institutions where thorough cleaning can be expected are Zachęta, where the current director has already lost his position, the Pilecki Institute and the Dmowski Institute,” the text points out. In the case of the Pilecki Institute, Onet refers to the opinion of “some historians,” according to which “the Institute is covering up the truth about Polish crimes during the war.”
““The Institute covers up the truth about Polish crimes.”
During the PO-PSL government in 2007-2015, Poland’s historic policy was aptly characterized as ‘pedagogy of shame’. Poland is always ugly, dirty, backward and intolerant, Poles are fierce anti-Semites, and that was also the case during the Second World War
What Onet.pl writes about audits at institutions subordinate to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage suggests that the new authorities may return to this trend. The list includes: Pilecki Institute.
There were signals from many quarters that most of the money was going to places where it was possible for PiS to implement its political intentions through culture. The controversy led, among other things, to activities of the Institute for Solidarity and Courage. Witold Pilecki, founded in 2017. Mission: on the one hand to conduct historical research and archive sources, and on the other hand to commemorate the Polish victims of 20th century totalitarianism. But the Pilecki Institute was criticized for duplicating the tasks to be carried out by the Institute for National Remembrance. On the other hand, some historians pointed out that in their opinion the Institute covered up the truth about Polish crimes during the war
– we read in the text entitled “The Ministry of Culture is cleaning up after Minister Gliński.”
At the same time, millions of zlotys were pumped into the Institute. In 2021, its head, Magdalena Gawin (formerly Deputy Minister of Culture), argued that the PLN 76 million grant for the Institute’s launch in 2017 was “modest” and “one-time” money. But journalists from OKO.press calculated that over six years the Institute invested PLN 268 million in real estate alone.
– emphasized.
As we learn from Monika Waluś’s text, the results of inspections and audits of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in about 100 institutions under the ministry are intended to answer whether the people appointed during the PiS government , have managed them correctly.
And if not, they will lay the foundation for their transformation or liquidation
– indicates the author.
Members of the ruling coalition or the ministry itself do not decide the fate of the Pilecki Institute
– we read on.
“Do you really allow this in Poland?”
The wave of reactions was primarily caused by the fragment about “covering up the truth about Polish crimes.” It is worth noting that this type of formulation appeared at the end of October in a text on OKO.press dedicated to the Pilecki Institute. Significantly, neither Onet nor previously OKO.press indicated who exactly expressed these opinions; only the terms “critics” or “some historians” or “some Holocaust researchers” appear.
The German-Polish portal Onet writes that Colonel Sienkiewicz had, among other things, made the Pilecki Institute a target. As we learn: “The Institute covers up the truth about Poland’s crimes during the war.”
Do you really allow this in Poland?
They actually wrote this about the Pilecki Institute
The Pilecki Institute should be liquidated because it “covers up the truth about Polish crimes during the war.” This institution hurts the Germans the most: its patron is a man who allowed himself to be locked up in a camp to expose their crimes. Poland’s historical policy is now being created in Berlin.
Gawin: We demand correction
The director of the Pilecki Institute, Magdalena Gawin, also responded to Onet’s text.
They combined the subsidies from Ossolineum and the Pilecki Institute. We demand correction
— she wrote on the X platform.
However, it turns out that Onet was not the only ‘free media’ that combined subsidies for both institutions.
Attention! We correct the false information about the amount of the subsidy for the Pilecki Institute, published on @tvn24: according to the draft budget law for 2024, the subjective subsidy for the Pilecki Institute is 71,341,000 PLN. zloty. 1/2
Amount of PLN 104,136 thousand PLN, visible in the annex to the draft budget, is a combined grant for the Pilecki Institute and the Zakład Narodowy im Foundation. Ossoliński family. We kindly request the editors of @tvn24 to read the Sejm documents carefully. 2/2
We are a research institute spanning three entities: in Berlin, Augustów and Warsaw. We digitize foreign archives and build an archive modeled on the best institutions of this type in the world. The Pilecki Institute is supervised by Minister @kultura_gov_pl
READ ALSO: Anniversary of the Wola massacre. The Pilecki Institute invites you to the exhibition. A war crime that is still little known in Germany
This all looks very uninteresting – as if the new government wants to destroy everything created under PiS or anything to do with the previous authorities. Even if the activities of a particular institution are beneficial to Poland. Unless it’s simply about spreading the message about Poles being nasty anti-Semites.
aja/X, Onet.pl
Source: wPolityce