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On 15 November 2017, the Bundestag received an appeal to erect a monument in honour of Poles, commemorating Polish victims of the German occupation in 1939–1945. The initiative triggered a serious debate in Germany on the importance of Polish victims and their possible uniqueness. The article aims to analyse the arguments used in the discussion about Polen-Denkmal and to look at the significant differences in the perception of the history of World War II by Poles and Germans. The discrepancies result not only from the victim–perpetrator dichotomy, but also from their different approaches to the role of history, the nation-state and additionally to the state of knowledge. The article is based on an analysis of arguments in the intra-German and Polish-German debates, as well as data concerning research on the knowledge of Germans about the victims of World War II.
Joanna Lubecka (Thu,) studied this question.