Marian Turski: Man must not submit to the terror of memory

Former Auschwitz prisoner, journalist and historian, Marian Turski met with participants of the Poland of the Future Campus in Kortowo, Olsztyn, on Saturday. He recalled seeing posters in “many important places in Warsaw” with “a picture of a child's face” and a few words. – I, Józefina Michalska, was 12 years old. Germany They tortured me. Next to it is a poster: I, Józef Tomaszewski, was 13 years old. The Germans tortured me in Auschwitz. And so on, in sequence – he said.

– It seems to me that if a person wants to live, live normally, think about the future, they must not succumb to the terror of memory. Often, memory can terrorize a person. You must not stick to memory alone. Which does not mean that you can deny that Michalska, or Tomaszewski, or others were tortured to death, murdered. No – he emphasized.

– Look, we could ask ourselves whether and to what extent Ukrainians should never forget that in the interwar years in the territories that were our borderlands, but were western Ukraine and now they belong to Ukraine, our government destroyed 130 Ukrainian churches. Will we still want them to remember that? – asked Turski.

He repeated that “we cannot forget about it, that it is part of our history, but we must not succumb to the terror of memory”. – We must look at what is most important today – he appealed. At the same time, he emphasized that due to what is happening on our eastern border, Poland “must think about its future, it must have friends”.

– Where to find them, if not in Europe? Where to find them, if not among the Germans? Yes, among the Germans, who are aware – at least some of them, not all – of the wrongs done to Poland and therefore, sooner or later, to a greater or lesser extent, they also try to secure something for Poland, for example in Ukrainian matters – assessed the historian.

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– As you know very well, there was no love between Poles and Ukrainians – recalled the Holocaust survivor.

As he said, “it was hatred towards Russians, towards Russian aggression that made us love Ukrainians”. – Let's tell ourselves the truth, that's how it happened – he emphasized.

He assessed that “in view of this, we must continue to think about this – when Ukrainians are dying, and so that the war does not come closer to us – so that we have a strong base, a European base”. – In the European base, Germany plays, whether we like it or not, a powerful role in terms of economy and armaments – Turski noted. And he summed up: – In view of this, we cannot, I say, we cannot always succumb to the terror of memory.

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Turski also spoke about his time in the concentration camp, the death marches and the deportation of people in railway cars. He said that as a prisoner he regained his dignity for the first time after arriving at one of the next camps, where the German guarding the prisoners said that no one here would beat the prisoners unless one stole bread from another.

– Throughout my time in the camps, I never cried. It was the first time I had tears in my eyes – he admitted.

When asked how to reduce evil between people, he admitted that he could not answer this question, but that we should start by trying to “remove the language of hatred”. This – as he said – may be the first step on the path to understanding and then empathy towards another person.