The report presents results of the experimental study on relationships between arousal of emotions and commitment, and an effectiveness of the government’s remembrance policy. In measurements, the team manipulated emotions inspired in a narrative (neutral vs. positive vs. negative) and participants’ commitment to popularization of a narrative (no commitment vs. low commitment), and it observed how different conditions influenced independent variables: memorization of information, attitude change and real-life behavior. Besides presentation of collected data, the report also includes brief introduction to the theoretical background of the study (especially theoretical hypotheses which verification was project’s objective) and a short discussion of final results.

Historical politics as a form of construction of the image of Polish in international arena

Article raises the issue of the importance of historical policy, also known as the politics of memory, as a category, which in recent years is the subject of heated debate. This is because, through the tools of historical policy, the authority has the opportunity to shape the expected vision of the state and nation in the international arena. This remains controversial due to the fact that the possibility of an arbitrary silence inconvenient facts and events. The main aim of this article was to show the importance of historical policy as a tool to build the country’s image in the international arena, not evaluating the policy pursued by the authorities. This issue is discussed in a wide range in the pages of various publications and at scientific conferences or debates historians. Analysing the literature and the press reports and official documents of institutions and government agencies have been in the paper a short review of selected policy definitions historical aspects of its tools and its implementation and postulates policy history in the future.
Historical policy should be implemented by the Polish state as part of the construction of the position of the State in the international sphere, but mainly as an element of education of the next generations of Poles.
I have no doubt that in the international, worldwide, all reasonable state, who understand their needs, and above all, to have a sense of their statehood and dignity, pursue an active policy of history.

It is difficult to speak of a historical dispute in the case of Greek compensation claims for losses suffered during WWII by Nazi Germany. This is because the German side has repeatedly taken responsibility for the harm done to the Greek people. Germany is also a country that has paid over 75 billion in damages by 2016 with various categories of victims from different countries, including Greece (Barcz & Kranz, 2019, p. 155). In the discourse on Greek demands against Germany, metaphors of the Cold War (Kalpouzos, 2015) or a symbolic battlefield (Christodoulakis, 2014, p. 20) appear, suggesting primarily a significant importance of this issue for internal political decisions made at the Acropolis and the local historical awareness. Despite this, since the “outbreak” of this “Cold War” in Germany, both on the political and expert’s levels, and primarily in historical research, many efforts have been made to constructively “resolve the dispute”. In author’s opinion, both terms coined during Greek-German historical controversy characterize duality of position of the contemporary states in discussion about impact of the past on current relations between nations in general. On the one hand, ‘Cold War’ term refers to political and economic levels (compensations demand) of the contemporary historical conflicts. On the other hand, ‘symbolic battlefield’ suggests moral superiority or righteousness on one side.

How does Yad Vashem Institute presents the stories of the youngest participants in the war? What role do children play in its narrative? Do the authors of the exhibition devote separate exhibition to them – or are the children’s fates ‘inscribed’ in the overall message about history? Is the death of victims or the death of heroes at the centre of the message? Is the museum presentation dedicated to specific, individual figures or rather to communities of anonymous participants in wartime events? The author of the article addresses those questions by analysing the narrative line of the Holocaust History Museum (Yad Vashem) in Jerusalem. The research conducted show that the Holocaust story presented in this place focuses on the loss and suffering that resulted in interrupted lives. The perspective of the victims dominates the exhibition analysed. The civilian victims of occupation and Genocide are at the centre of the exhibition.

The Remembrance Policy in Poland: the System Between the Constitutional Obligation and the Instrumentalization of Law

The paper analyzes relations between the law and the system of politics of memory in Poland, integrating legal and political research. The main objective is a discussion of co-dependencies between the law – including the constitutional law – and the government’s involvement in the politics of memory. The paper summarizes the legal status, the remembrance system’s formal framework and political decisions executing the constitutional obligation of commemorating the past. Considering the complexity of the remembrance policy system in Poland, its foundation in the legal system, and the dynamics of policymaking, the Authors present that the seeming servitude of law to politics is an apparent complex interdependence based on the constitutional bases of memory politics.