History policy of the Law and Justice party

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The program of the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party has chapters on "identity" (tożsamość) and "history policy" (polityka historyczna, which has sometimes been translated "literally" as "politics of history").^[2] The implementation of the PiS history policy consists in promoting, in Poland and internationally, a version of history based on a policy of memory that focuses on protecting the "good name" of the Polish nation.^[3][4]

In the opinion of critics, this policy produces a narrative that Poles were victims and heroes during World War II and the communist era, and victims of crimes comparable to the Holocaust against Jews.^{[1][4][5][6][7][8][9]} Discussion of events that does not fit this narrative (such as of antisemitism in Poland) is labelled as "pedagogy of shame."^[10] "Pedagogy of shame," they argue, aims at dividing/polarizing and thus weakening the nation. It is also argued that at its core it is an effort to accomplish extracting money from Poland (a victim of Nazi Germany), by Jewish people and/or the State of Israel, which is labelled as an absurd proposition. According to the PiS party, this should be replaced with a "pedagogy of pride" which focuses on positive aspects of Polish history.^[11] The party's history policy has divided historians, with some working with PiS to establish a history policy, seeing it as important to building a shared positive identity and historical truth and justice, while others see it as politicizing history and distorting historical facts.^[4][12][13]