At that, the Russian servicemen are painted exactly as Goebbels described them, barbarian and subhuman. It’s not all. «Our Mothers, Our Fathers» is not anti-Russian only, it is also defiantly anti-Polish… The German director denigrates the two peoples, while lauding the compatriots in fascist uniform.

How does he make the Poles look? Having shot some Hitlerites, they behave like robbers and rush to search the dead men’s pockets, counting the booty on the run, things like watches, gold teeth…

There is mess everywhere the Poles go. If the Germans raise voices they mean business, the Poles just raise hubbub. But the main thing – the Army Krayova (A.K) fighters are shown as inveterate anti-Semites. Having shot German soldiers, who were guarding prisoners, they leave the poor men in closed carriages just because they are Jews, which «are better dead than alive, like the Communists and the Russians».

True, the relations between the Army Krayova and the Jews were tense. The fact is still discussed in Poland. But it’s not the issue here. The German movie is grossly biased; one of its specific features is that the German anti-Semitism is hidden behind the Polish anti-Jewish feelings. For instance, one of the main characters is a Jew, and not all Germans appear to hate him. At the same time, the Poles are ready to do anything nefarious to the Jews, for instance, shooting a German Jew, who was their comrade-in-arms they had been through thick and thin together.

Actually, the Jewish issue is a delicate one in Poland, it is a multifaceted problem. For instance, Berek Joselewicz (1764–1809) was a Jewish-Polish merchant and a Colonel of the Polish Army during the Kościuszko uprising in 1794. As a commander of a Polish cavalry unit Joselewicz fought in various battles of the Napoleonic period, he created the first all-Jewish military formation since the days of Roman Jewish wars in VIII CE. He was killed in the Battle of Kock in 1809 during an encounter with a unit of Austrian hussars, and today his grave has become a popular tourist attraction. Since those days the Polish language is enriched with a proverb «like Berek near Kick» meaning the situation is hopeless, there are no chances to make it through. Many streets of Polish cities and towns are called after his name.

Julian Tuwim is a Polish classical poet. He has written the article called «We, the Polish Jews» devoted to Polish roots and Judaism. The article is a reflection on the Warsaw ghetto uprising where Tuwim’s mother died.

There were pogroms in Jedwabne (1941), Krakow (1945) and Keltz (1946). For a long time it was believed that it was the Germans who did it in Jedwabne. In 2000 Jan Tomasz Gross, a historian published the book called Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne. It went down with a bang. The book is devoted to hardships the Jedwabne Jews had to go through: they were thrown stones at, beaten with sticks and burned alive. The Poland's Institute of National Memory (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej) had to react. It spent four long years (2000-2004) to study this disgraceful page of Polish history. To large extent, the accusations put forward by Gross, were confirmed, though rather mild wording was used this time to describe the events. According to the version offered, it was the fault of Germans who incited anti-Jewish feelings among the Poles and the death toll was not 1500, as Gross affirmed, but only 350.

The same thing happened in relation to the 1945 Krakow pogrom. A story was launched to go around saying it was provoked by People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which, allegedly, wanted to tarnish the Polish anti-Communist opposition. The version was repeated to find justification for the events in Keltz.

But the German anti-Semitism grew to global scale; the extermination of Jews was massive. The film «Our Mothers, Our Fathers» does its best to conceal the fact.

History is the reverse side of politics. Painting the Wehrmacht soldiers as people of high moral standards is an attempt to bring moral alleviation to Germans after many years of repentance for the deeds of their predecessors. The customers and producers of the film have shown to the whole world that the time has come for Germans to raise their heads high and get rid of moral burden of fascism – it’s not easy for Berlin to implement its foreign policy with such heavy load on its shoulders…

Germany is a state which has always felt uncomfortable within its borders. It had political vigorousness and bellicosity to start two world wars, something hardly any other nation could do. Having suffered a devastating defeat in WWI, the blow that few could recover from, they hardly had time to take a breath and get it started all over again!

Another defeat made Germany artificially curtail its ambitions for an uncertainly long period of time. At that, the United States and their allies always turned a blind eye on the fact that SS and Gestapo veterans occupied top positions in the Federal Republic of Germany.

The German Democratic Republic resolutely fought all forms of fascism being close to the Soviet Union, the state against which the West hoped to direct the accumulated hatred of former Nazis.

West Germany and its social and political system was the page to be taken from the book when the unification of the country started. This part of Germany did not fight fascism as unconditionally as it was done in the East. West Germany set the basis for shaping the world and political outlook of Germans influencing the ideological patterns.

The unification of Germany made think the country would not be satisfied with what it had for a long time. It borders on powerful France in the West and relatively weak Poland in the East. The expansionism cannot be directed to the West, so it moves to the East. That’s why the film, which hits the screens today, is about staunch, intellectually refined Germans and primitive Poles, not the French. It’s also a springboard to exert pressure on Russia, a market for exports and a potential ally. It all has remained the same way it has even been, geography is hardly alterable.

Today Silesian separatism gains momentum in Poland. Some call for recognition of the Silesians as a separate nation, some hope Silesia will separate from Poland and join Germany. Silesia makes up for 67.8% of Polish citizens who don’t see themselves as Poles, or 92% of Polish Germans, to be exact.

Józef Kożdońis (1873-1949) is a shining example of stamina and inspiration for those who strive for Silesian autonomy. He was a Czech politician, a collaborator during WWII, an ideologist and ardent supporter of Silesia’s independence, the founder of Silesian People's Bank and of Silesian People's Party.

Berlin sends funds to Silesian pro-German organizations and demands more rights for local Germans, while the Poles in Germany have to do with much less in the sphere of culture. (1) There is a conjecture that some Polish media and organizations broadcasting and spreading information to West Belarus and West Ukraine also exist thanks to German money. Thus, Germany uses the Polish nostalgia for the lost lands to test the ways of establishing information control over Silesia. More often the return of property rights, lost by the Silesian Germans as a result of the Third Reich defeat, becomes an issue coming to the fore.

Germany seeks a more important role in world politics. Gradually but constantly it tries to change the information environment related to such a delicate issue as WWII. Being self-contained and repentant, the nation cannot carry out the tasks set by leaders. It needs self- assurance.

Today it starts with history; tomorrow it will influence the neighbors’ future.

1) «Oberschliesien uber alles…» (Mysl.pl numer 26 (12013)

Germans were expelled from Silesia in the wake of World War II based on a resolution of the Potsdam Conference, and these days, descendants of the deportation survivors mostly reside in Germany. A number of expellee associations, including the Silesian one, came into being in Germany in the late 1940ies as a form of mutual assistance of the newcomers whom the entrenched population occasionally did not welcome amidst the post-war hardships. The West German government patronized the associations, largely because the claims to historic territory staked by former residents of East Prussia, Silesia, and the Sudetes were consonant with Bonn's policy of declining to recognize post-war borders. Nowadays, Germany has no intention to press for the return of any territories or even for compensations to those who lost real estate in Central and East Europe following World War II, but the associations are still there and continue to receive material support from the government.

Geographically, Silesia comprises two parts – Lower Silesia in the west and Upper Silesia in the east. Lower Silesia was completely taken over by Polish settlers after Germans had been displaced, and at present the region's autonomy is not on the agenda. Upper Silesia is at the moment divided between two voivodeships. One of them – the voivodeship known as Silesia proper, with the population of 4.6 million – only partially covers the historical territory of the province. The stated goal of the Movement for the Autonomy of Upper Silesia is to achieve an autonomous status no later than by 2020 within the borders of the 1922-1933 autonomy.

The former autonomy was created in the framework of the overhaul of borders which commenced after World War I. A plebiscite was held in Silesia in 1921 in compliance with the resolutions of the Versailles Conference, with 60% of the population requesting to be integrated into Germany and 40% – into Poland. The disputed province was partitioned as a result. The eventual configuration of the border between the fragments was heavily influenced by three Polish uprisings due to which Poland additionally got the industrialized regions in eastern Silesia with Katowice as the center. According to Jerzy Gorzelik, leader of the Silesian Autonomy Movement since 2003, in that distant epoch residents of Silesia thought of autonomy as a specific privilege of their province, but in today's Silesia autonomy is considered to be one of regional rights guaranteed by the EU. By the way, supporters of the autonomy demand that parts of the adjacent Opole, Malopolska, and Lodz voivodeships be bracketed with Upper Silesia.

As of today, the Silesian Autonomy Movement has for a year been represented in the regional parliament as a minor partner within the coalition formed by Polish premier Donald Tusk's Civic Platform and the Polish Peasants Party. The Movement won 8.5 of the vote in the November, 2010 local elections compared to 4.4% in 2006, meaning that its constituency practically doubled over the term of four years and rose to 120,000. The Movement has three seats in the current legislature, and Gorzelik, who supervises the region's education, cultural affairs, and international relations, prides himself in having the anniversary of the 1945 Upper Silesia tragedy inserted into the voivodeship's official calendar. At the point, one is confronted with the question: which tragedy – perhaps that of the deported Germans – is being commemorated? No doubt, their expulsion is a grim page in the German history. German historians estimate that 7.4 million Germans were driven out of the territories currently belonging to Poland (East Prussia, East Brandenburg, East Pomerania, Silesia, and Danzig, which is referred to as Gdansk in Polish), and that the death toll during the campaign reached 1.7 million people¹.

In Poland, however, the expulsion is not recognized as a tragedy. Erika Steinbach who presides over Germany's Federation of Expellees since 1998 and is known to uphold compensation demands often seems to be the number one enemy from the Poles' perspective. At least, a poll conducted in 2009 by Rzeczpospolitashowed that 38% of the respondents literally feared Steinbach. Rzeczpospolitawrote in 2009 that the compensation claims from former owners of confiscated real estate located in Poland can add up to around Euro 19b. The German government made it clear that it does not back the compensation claims rolled out from the names of individual proprietors by the Prussian Trust, a corporation created specifically for the purpose. In October, 2003, Polish and German presidents penned the Gdansk Declaration on the issue of persons who were displaced, forced to flee and expelled in Europe, in which they renounced any material demands, compensation claims, or accusations in connection with the historical episode. It was stressed in the Declaration, though, that both sides would have the right to commemorate the deportation victims.

When the first meeting supposed to commemorate the Upper Silesia tragedy convened in 2011, some of the participants carried banners welcoming guests from Germany's Silesian association to their historic homeland, but remembrance of the Germans who died in the expulsion never got a line on the program³. Instead, Gorzelik focused in his address on the sufferings the population of Silesia endured … from the Red Army. His statement that thousands (!!!) of people had been sent to Gulag just for being Silesians does not merit scrutiny simply because there is no such nation as Silesians. Gorzelik's bid to have Silesians recognized as a nation was rejected by the Polish court in 2007 and later was brushed off by the European Court of Human Rights, but his priority – pressing the message that the advent of the Red Army and the liberation from fascists was a disaster for Silesia – is in any case unrelated to actual circumstances and numbers. Since the condemnations over Silesia are supposed to reflect a substantially wider agenda, the premier of upper Silesia skipped details and dwelled in his speech exclusively on the plight of the victims of the communist regime. Both addresses were cited in German media. Equating Stalin and Hitler has long become commonplace in Germany. The cover of a 2011 topical issue of Der Spiegel on the anniversary of the German aggression against the USSR, for example, featured the tile: “Hitler Against Stalin. Brothers and Sworn Enemies”.

Poland's ruling circles stick to a yet more radical stance, and in their portrayal “the winter of 1945 tragedy” bluntly overshadows the whole war along with the nightmare of the Nazi occupation of Poland.

The Silesian Autonomy Movement's outpourings of aggressive revisionism meet with virtually no criticism in Poland. The strengthening of the Movement does evoke concern in the country as a potential threat to its unity (even though formally the group is not separatist and calls for either a federative system modeled on the US or an amendment of the Polish constitution aimed at legitimizing regional autonomy). Worries also run high in Poland that the Movement helps spread pro-German influences.

A state-of-the-nation report released in the spring of 2011 by Poland's conservative Law and Justice party ignited heated debates in the country. In particular, it carried the thesis that opting for the Silesian identity is tantamount to reneging on the Polish one. The leader of the Silesian Autonomy Movement was indeed quoted by Die Welt as saying: “I am not Polish, I am Silesian”. Lloyd George, the British premier and signatory to the Versailles Treaty, is believed to have coined the phrase “You can not give a watch to a monkey because the animal will break it”, implying that the watch was Silesia and the monkey – Poland. Oddly enough for a man whose grand-grandfather took part in a 1921 anti-German uprising, Gorzelik explains provocatively that eight decades later it is clear that the monkey did break the watch⁴.

Another assessment contained in the above report is that the adoption of a Silesian identity should be read as a disguised expression of support for a “German initiative”. Interestingly, Germany's Silesian association offers a completely different interpretation of the phenomenon of the increasingly popular Silesian Autonomy Movement. Its co-chair Rudi Pawelka expressed the view that the growing numbers of people registering as Silesians in population surveys in Poland demonstrate that Germans are coming under pressure in the country and that those who lack the courage to admit being Germans introduce themselves as Silesians⁵. Descendants of Silesian Germans who currently live in Germany charge that the activities of the Silesian Autonomy Movement de facto present the German minority with problems in exercising its legitimate rights like the right to install bilingual toponyms.

It should be taken into account that prior to the expulsion of the Germans Silesia was shared by the German and Polish communities, each of them speaking a dialect of their own languages. Estimates of today's numbers of Silesian speakers vary widely as do the criteria based on which it may count as a dialect of the Polish or a particular language. German media ironically cite phrases like “Moja Oma” – a mix of German and Polish – as evidence of the typical level of command of the German language in the region. Gorzelik, on the other hand, is beaming with optimism and, in the meantime, is busy compiling a Silesian language textbook with full confidence that it will some day come handy in the would-be autonomy.

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1. Reichling Gerhard. Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen. 2 Teile, Bonn1986/89. Other authors suggest higher figures: Nawratil Heinz. Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen, Verschleppten, München – Berlin 1987, S. 27-32.

2. Umfrage: Steinbach und Putin jagen Polen Angst ein. Spiegel Online, 30.03.2009.

3. The association is a member of the Federation of Expellees

4. Ganczak Filip.Warschau fürchtet die Autonomie Schlesiens// Welt, 12.04.2011

5. Pawelka Rudi. Autonomiebewegung in Schlesien// Presseinformationen der Landsmannschaft Schlesien – Nieder- und Oberschlesien e.V. 14. April 2011.