Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day… Yesterday the Polish Parliament approved a controversial draft law outlawing the term “Polish extermination camp” and criminalizing discussion of any Polish crimes relating to the Holocaust. However, you cannot just legislate uncomfortable historical facts away:
Archive for Poland
“Yes, some Poles were Nazi collaborators”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Holocaust, legislation, perpetration, Poland on 27 January 2018 by delclem“Tragic massacre(s) in Volyn remembered”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags massacre, occupation, Poland, Second World War, Ukraine, UPA, Volyn, war crimes on 20 July 2013 by delclem
“Ukrainians call it a tragedy, for Poles it was a massacre. Between February 1943 and February 1944, units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) killed up to 100,000 Poles in Volyn and eastern Galicia, former Polish territories now in western Ukraine. (…) Around 20,000 Ukrainians also died at the hands of Poles or Ukrainians who saw them as too close to the hated occupiers.”
>full article (c) THE ECONOMIST, 2013
“In the Dark Depths of the Unconscious”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Austria, exhibition, Poland, review, the Fantastic, Vienna, Visual Arts, Zdzisław Beksiński on 10 June 2013 by delclem
“Emaciated bodies, skeletons, phantom-like apparitions and post-apocalyptic landscapes – all of these are motifs that the Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński (1929-2005) captured on canvas. All of these paintings have something ephemeral, other-worldly, something difficult to capture. Even if you take a closer look it is difficult to get a clear idea of what you are seeing.” Exhibition to be seen at the Phantastenmuseum in Vienna until 22 June >review & photos
(c) WIENINTERNATIONAL.AT 2013
“And Europe Will Be Stunned”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags film, Israel, Poland, review, The Netherlands on 23 June 2012 by delclem
“And Europe Will Be Stunned is a deeply stirring and contentious film trilogy by the Dutch-Israeli artist Yael Bartana, soon to open in Britain on its European tour. Each film is enough to disturb; together they are peculiarly subversive. I do not know exactly what they might mean to Jewish, Israeli or Palestinian viewers, still less to a Polish audience watching some of the scenes unfolding on the site of the Warsaw Ghettoitself. But my sense is that an anxious concern for other people’s reactions is at least part of the trilogy’s content.” >full review (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2012
Photo (c) Yael Bartana/Marcin Kalinski
The Khatyn Massacre in Belorussia Revisited
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Belorussia, Germany, Katyn, massacre, Poland, Second World War, Soviet Union, Stalinism on 5 April 2012 by delclem
The brutal March 1943 massacre in the Belorussian village of Khatyn, commemorated in a 1969 memorial, has come to symbolize the horrors of the German occupation. Given the continuing centrality of the massacre to Belarusian memory politics, the details of the event remain under-studied. For political reasons, Soviet authorities and Ukrainian diaspora nationalists alike had an interest in de-emphasizing the central role of collaborators in carrying out the massacre. Using German military records, Soviet partisan diaries, and materials from Belorussian and Canadian legal cases, the author of this article revisits one of the most infamous, yet least understood war crimes committed on Soviet territory. > Article by Per Anders Rudling. Photo: statue of Iosif Kaminskii at Khatyn memorial site, Belorussia, ca. 1981. (c) Michael Gelb.
“The Mill and the Cross”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags film, Flanders, Lech Majewski, Pieter Bruegel, Poland on 12 March 2012 by delclem
“In his new film The Mill and the Cross Polish director Lech Majewski explores the life and work of painter Pieter Bruegel.” Interview (c) wieninternational.at, 2012
Museum boom in Kraków
Posted in Uncategorized with tags art, aviation, history, museum, Poland on 8 February 2012 by delclem
“Three museums have recently opened in Kraków that will be of interest to aviation, history and art enthusiasts. The city is rediscovering many of the things that were suppressed or deliberately ignored under the Communists, including contemporary art.” >Article (c) wieninternational.at, 2012
Andrzej Stasiuk: 9
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Andrzej Stasiuk, Literature, Poland, review, Warsaw on 10 November 2011 by delclem
A review of Stasiuk’s great Warsaw city & crime novel “9”
by Tom Tomaszewski (c) THE INDEPENDENT, 2008
“Vanished Kingdoms”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Galicia, Poland, Prussia, review, Soviet Union, Vanished Kingdoms on 25 October 2011 by delclem
Warsaw in the 1950s
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Communism, France, homosexuality, Michel Foucault, philosophy, Poland, Warsaw on 24 September 2011 by delclem“Based on the stay of Michel Foucault in Warsaw in the late 50’s, Foucault’s Room is a visual exploration of the post-war architecture of Warsaw over a text riddled with innuendos about erotic encounters under scrutiny by the Communist authorities.”
Objet trouvé on MadForFoucault, 2011
delirium clemens 