‘Germany has a fraught relationship with Poland, there is a sense of shame’

As a six-year-old boy, Adam Soboczynski (1975) emigrated from Poland to West Germany with his parents. There would be oranges, his parents promised him, chocolate in abundance and German cars on a German Autobahn.

Soboczynski is now a literature editor at the weekly magazine The time and author of novels and non-fiction books. He published last month about leaving Poland and arriving in Germany Dreamland. In the book he outlines what a paradisiacal image many Poles had of West Germany, the nearest free country, how he ended up in the somewhat stuffy German province of the 1980s, and how he learned over the years how indifferent Germans actually were. look at Poland.

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Olaf Scholz (right) receives Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Berlin in February 2022.” class=”dmt-article-suggestion__image” src=”https://images.nrc.nl/TR6MgnXTp0Gf05WBY0n7PiWzezU=/160×96/smart/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data106414006-d8cd19.jpg”/>

Next week, on October 15, there will be elections in Poland. For the ruling party PiS (Law and Justice), a large part of their campaign consists of denigrating Germany. “They feed anti-German resentment,” Soboczynski said. Since PiS first came into government in 2005, “relations have become much worse,” he says.

How is Poland viewed in Germany?

“Poland was attacked by Germany and treated brutally. The Second World War still plays an important role between the countries. There is a tense relationship, in Germany people have a somewhat strange feeling about Poland. A feeling of shame. At the same time, Poland was ignored as much as possible.

“When the Wall fell in 1989, it was much easier to travel east. Many did that at the time, but by far the most were ‘Displaced people’ (Germans who had to leave their hometown in Poland, the Baltic States or elsewhere in Central Europe after 1945, ed.) who returned to their old house or village. There were also a few intellectuals who showed interest in Poland, but they were not many.

“There were many clichés about Poland, for example that they would steal cars. And in German something is called ‘Polish’ if something doesn’t work or is broken. A Polish economy, for example, is a poorly performing economy. There is also a certain arrogance about Poland. Everyone has had to deal with a Polish handyman or a Polish domestic worker, like my mother. Many Poles migrated to Germany, and they initially started working below their level, a typical phenomenon.

“For a number of years now we have had a right-wing populist government that wants to score among voters by fueling anti-German resentment from early morning to late at night. So besides the fact that most Germans do not show much interest in Poland, there is now also a slight irritation.”

If there is shame in Germany about the crimes in Poland, wouldn’t it make sense to concern yourself with the country?

“If you are ashamed of something, it makes sense to avoid it as much as possible. In my book I also write, somewhat polemically, that in Germany people prefer to learn abstractly from the school book about the war crimes of their grandfather, rather than travel to the places of their crimes. I know a lot of people here in Berlin who have never been to Poland. While it is only an hour or two’s journey.”

You suggest that Poles see themselves as the ‘realer’ Europeans, more real than the Germans.

“In my book I quote an idea from the author Ivan Krastev that he describes in his book Failing light. In communism people felt trapped in the wrong life, because everything that was Western was suppressed: capitalism, religion, bourgeois family life. When the Wall fell, it soon became apparent that the West was developing in a different direction, in which religion and family no longer played a major role at all. The West oriented itself towards social liberalization and discussed themes such as sexual identity. And the nation state also turned out to no longer be worth much here. But in the east there was no desire to immediately adopt these new values. No country wants to simply be a copy of another country.”

You write emphatically that economic conditions cannot be seen as a factor for the success of the PiS party.

“The reasoning is often that people vote on the right because they are poor or because they have a bad time. I think that is a misconception. Since 1989, prosperity in Poland has continued to increase. It is rather the other way around: many Poles now own a home, a much higher percentage than in Germany. People now own something for the first time, and they want to prevent anything or anyone from outside from coming to disrupt or take it away at all costs.”

Adam Soboczynski: Dreamland. The West, the East and me. Velcro cotta, 170 sheets, €20,-

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