“We had to rewrite history”: how Poland is using games to shape historical memory

By Weronika Strzyżyńska

Poland’s tumultuous and tragic twentieth century history is never far from the surface – not only as a past to be commemorated, but also as something that shapes government policy and international relations today.

This year, the appointment of Germany’s new ambassador to Poland was delayed for months as Warsaw complained of the “historical insensitivity” of Berlin appointing the son of a Wehrmacht officer who had served in Hitler’s bunker. The government’s contested overhaul of the judiciary is justified on the basis of “decommunisation” – removing those who served under the communist regime.

The new education minister announced last month that, as part of his efforts to fight against “the dictatorship of left-liberal views” in schools, he would introduce more teaching about 20th-century Polish history. As an example of a figure children should know more about, he cited one of the “cursed soldiers” who resisted the imposition of communist rule after the Second World War.

“The most important thing is for schools to teach who we are, where we come from, and whom we have to thank for living in a free country,” said the minister.

Shaping historical memory

At the centre of what the government calls its “historical policy” is the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state body whose remit covers not only documenting, researching and educating on Poland’s 20th-century history, but also leading prosecutions against those responsible for historical crimes.

This role came to wider international attention during the crisis caused in 2018 by the government’s introduction of what became known in English as the “Holocaust law”. More accurately, the legislation was an amendment to the Act on the IPN. It expanded the institute’s powers to allow criminal prosecutions – and potential jail terms – for anyone who falsely accused the Polish state or nation of responsibility for Nazi-German crimes.

Another important task undertaken by the IPN is shaping historical memory among young Poles. The institute has done this by producing animated videos and mobile apps, but also by creating games, both online and also more traditional board games.

The IPN began experimenting with child-friendly games and toys in 2010. Łukasz Pogoda from the institute’s educational department recalls how his predecessor managed to persuade its directors to take a leap of faith and allow the department to produce board games as a more interactive alternative to the institute’s usual books and museum displays.

The gamble paid off in 2011, when the IPN released Kolejka (Queue), a game in which players are transported back to the communist-era Polish People’s Republic (PRL) and tasked with shopping for goods and groceries.

The timing of the release could not have not been better. It was not only the beginning of a board game resurgence across Europe, but also the height of the so-called “PRL-nostalgia” in Poland. Websites such as retro.pewex, where users reminisced about Frania washing machines and the iconic communist-era Polish Fiat 126 cars, were enjoying their heyday. Milk bars, once symbols of food shortage and poverty, were being resurrected – complete with chained cutlery and Soviet posters – catering to the ironic tastes of young hipsters.

IPN’s Kolejka, which allowed parents to indulge their childhood memories while teaching their own children valuable lessons about consumer goods shortages and other dangers of socialism, was a hit.

The initial run of 20,000 copies was soon sold out and the IPN struggled to keep up with demand. By 2014, when the institute sold the game’s licensing rights, it had been translated into eight languages and its creator, Karol Madaj, had been awarded a Gold Cross of Merit by the then president, Bronisław Komorowski. Nine years after its release, the game has sold half a million copies and is still prominently displayed in shops.

Patriotic education

Though Kolejka was not the IPN’s first attempt at a board game, it was the institute’s first major success at harnessing the power of pop culture. Today, the institute’s impressive gaming portfolio consists of 30 titles, while its YouTube channel could easily belong to one of Poland’s many flourishing animation start-ups.

Pogoda stresses that the board games produced by IPN “simply show our history, which is not influenced by who happens to be in power at the time”. However, under the current national-conservative government – which appointed a new IPN director, Jarosław Szarek, in 2016 – the institute has become involved with its right-wing memory politics, including working more closely with the education ministry on delivering new teaching programmes.

The games, videos and apps published over the last five years tend to have a more militaristic theme. The recently released Miś Wojtek (“Wojtek the Bear”) takes its name from a Syrian brown bear which accompanied the Polish II Corps during the Second World War. Aimed at children aged six and above, the game begins by “deporting” players to prisoner camps in the Soviet Union. They then have to follow the war trail of the corps, racing each other to the Battle of Monte Cassino and finally Edinburgh, where the real Wojtek lived out his years in the city’s zoo.

“Martyrdom is inscribed into our modern history – we cannot speak of Polish history without speaking about Poland’s victims,” Pogoda explains. “We cannot speak about Polish history selectively.”

“Yes, we did have to rewrite history”

The sentiment is echoed by IPN’s director. “The IPN has often been accused of the so-called ‘re-writing of history’,” he remarked at a conference held jointly by IPN and the education ministry last year, at which a new game, The Polish Underground State (also available in English), was unveiled.

“Yes, we did have to rewrite history, because after the communist period many myths and misrepresentations remained in the social consciousness,” Szarek continued. The then education minister, Dariusz Piontkowski, nodded in approval.

Szarek’s remarks succinctly summarise PiS’s approach to history politics, which have always constituted an important element of the party’s identity.

When it was founded in the early 2000s, PiS pledged its commitment to a patriotic vision of history and declared war on “manipulations” that had created the image of Poles as perpetrators. Party leader Jarosław Kaczyński has often condemned this as a “pedagogy of shame”, which he suggests is designed to suppress the Polish nation.

Today, PiS’s history politics are not losing steam. Since returning to power the party has taken to decisive steps to “protect Poland’s good name”. Through the “Holocaust law” and other measures, it has crusaded against the phrase “Polish death camps”, a problematic wording to describe German-Nazi camps in occupied Poland which some foreign journalists and officials, including Barack Obama, have used in the past, usually out of ignorance rather than malice.

Domestically, the party has also taken an active interest in the country’s museum scene. This has resulted in, among others, the directors of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk and POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews losing their positions. Though these actions have earned the party international criticism, they validated the national feelings and identity of many of its voters.

In its most recent party programme, PiS has again declared its commitment to “eradicating all instances of antipolonism and history falsification, especially in relation to the Second World War”. The party has also promised to revitalise “patriotic and civic attitudes” in schools, putting particular emphasis on Polish history and literature.

State-sponsored games, apps, and animated videos – all boasting high production values and often available in English – have proven an effective way of making good on these promises, at least in their voters’ eyes.

“War can be cool”

Despite their visual appeal, the IPN’s games and videos have been met with some criticism. “The IPN under the guise of an institution – which was once a serious research institution hiring distinguished Polish historians – sells this pulp stylised as pop culture, and especially children and young people are served the same stale old fare,” says Paweł Dobrosielski, a researcher at the University of Warsaw specialising in cultural studies and collective memory.

As an example, Dobrosielski cites The Unconquered, a video produced by the IPN in 2017 to be shown at the Second World War museum in Gdańsk.

“First, Germany attacks. Then, Soviet Russia,” the actor Sean Bean intones in the film’s English-language version, as we see a Polish soldier trapped between two merging walls reminiscent of those from the memorable Star Wars trash compactor scene. “We don’t give up, despite being left on our own,” the narration continues.

“The Unconquered sells this vision of heroic young Polish men who have to face the whole world and are themselves immaculate, and in the end they win,” Dobrosielski comments.

“This animation has similar overtones as I imagine the [IPN’s] board games do. ‘The war is an adventure. The war can be cool. Sure, some civilians die – some women maybe, and maybe some Jews – but generally that’s not a problem because it shapes your character and it shapes a true Polish man’, and so on.”

The film has found its appeal. Today, videos with titles such as “A German reacts to Unconquered” or “An African reacts to Unconquered” have amassed hundreds of thousands of views in the Polish corner of YouTube. A similar “reaction” video by a Polish-Australian duo Jet-Crew (in which the Polish Youtuber is shown tearing up) boasts over 2.5 million views.

A longer-term trend

However, Pogoda is right to point out that IPN’s games were first produced before PiS’s rise to power. In many ways, the games and videos seem to be reflective of broader trends within Polish history education, rather than echoing a narrative fully constructed by the ruling party.

The 2014 game Polak Mały (“The Little Pole”) takes its title from the poem Catechism of the Polish Child by Władysław Bełza. The game is aimed at pre-schoolers and consists of a number of puzzles which introduce the youngsters to national symbols. The pack is concluded by Bełza’s original 1900 poem, which reminds children of their duty to give their lives up for the homeland. This would hardly raise many Polish eyebrows, given that the poem is commonplace in textbooks and can be recited by most Poles.

“History education over the last thirty years has not changed much, it seems somehow petrified, on the systemic level at the very least. It focuses on the nation, on ‘Polishness’,” says Dobrosielski, who has been involved in a recent large-scale research project on this issue.

His findings seem to confirm a previous study from 2018, which surveyed Polish history teachers. It concluded that most educators believed it is the purpose of history lessons to foster patriotism amongst pupils. In fact, many teachers were found to view the current curriculum as not patriotic enough and wanted Polish military successes to receive more attention.

History and patriotism have long been intertwined in Polish culture. Throughout the years of the communist regime, as during the partition era and the Second World War, history education was often subject to state censorship.

During the Stalinist period, translations of Soviet history textbooks were used in schools, while a commission of appointed party historians continued to review the compliance of Polish textbooks with the “correct Marxist interpretations” long afterwards. Consequently, teaching children obscured facts about Polish history, such as the Katyn massacre, became seen by some teachers and parents as a form of resistance.

Today, as many continue to feel that Polish heroism and sacrifices are purposely undermined by Western politicians and scholars, PiS promises to reintroduce Poland’s past in its full glory to both classrooms and the international scene. The IPN’s attractive output, which is often available in English, is meant to serve both purposes.

Main image credit: IPNtvPL/YouTube (screenshot)

Weronika Strzyżyńska

A journalist for The Guardian, she has also written for The New Statesman, Prospect, and Notes from Poland. Previously studied journalism at Goldsmiths as a Scott Trust Bursary recipient.