Open AccessFROM VOLYN TO BABYN YAR: UKRAINIAN COMPONENT IN THE MUSEUM OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN GDANSK AS A POLISH SITE OF MEMORY
Author(s) -
Ольга Анатоліївна Колесник
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
intermarum: ìstorìâ, polìtika, kulʹtura
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2518-7708
pISSN - 2518-7694
DOI - 10.35433/history.111823
Subject(s) - ukrainian , exhibition , historiography , theme (computing) , population , world war ii , history , ethnic cleansing , ethnic group , ethnology , political science , law , sociology , art history , archaeology , demography , philosophy , linguistics , computer science , operating system
The Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk was opened on the 23rd of March 2017 and one of the main aims of the institution was to represent the history of the war with the focus on the Eastern and Central Europe. However, from the very beginning, when the idea of creating of such museum developed in 2008, it has become the memory battleground for Polish intellectuals as well as for Polish politicians. The overall situation led to the change of the director of the museum and several pieces in the permanent exhibition after its official opening. From this point of view Ukrainian topics in the permanent exhibition do not only represent the Polish vision of the Second World War, but they also show the issues relevant for the Polish-Ukrainian dialogue nowadays. Among the main Ukrainian topics, which are represented in the main exhibition, there are several theme groups: 1) September 17, 1939; 2) occupation and collaboration; 3) violence against the Jewish population; 4) ethnic cleansing in Volyn and Eastern Galicia; 5) forced workers in the Third Reich; 6) deportations and resettlement. The analysis of the aforementioned historical themes shows that the exhibition presents the main events which are being investigated in the current Ukrainian historiography and not all of them have a direct connection with Polish history (for instance, forced labor or mass shootings of the Jews on the pre-war Soviet territory). At the same time, the event like Volyn massacre is represented as ethnic cleansing, while pogroms against the Jews in 1941 in Lviv are put in a wider context of violence at the beginning of the war alongside with other similar pogroms in Jedwabne.