Can totalitarian system undergo historical judgment? The crimes committed by the Nazis and Communists cannot be undone or erased. At the moment there are various attitudes in the public awareness around the world towards the heritage of totalitarianism, experienced directly or indirectly. To this day, many countries are also struggling, despite the increasing distance in time, with the settlement of the past, which influences sometimes very clearly the current political and social life. Attempts of similar settlements were taken both immediately after the war, as well as to a limited extent after 1956.

The concept of the conference was created on the basis of two time orders. The first is the time of the crimes committed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II and the communist authorities from the period after the war until 1956, when there was a partial departure from Stalinist oppression. The second and more important time order covers the entire post-war period of the European and world history until the present day. During that period settlement with these crimes took place and the social consciousness of the totalitarian heritage developed.

The duality of the time orders is reflected in the theme structure of the conference. Therefore, it would be desirable that the consideration and analysis planned for each module, starting from the chronological and geographical logic, are routed to the present situation.

The main aim of the conference is to establish the characteristics of the settlement of crimes committed by the Nazi Reich and the Soviet Union. However, those two countries will not become the only object of analysis. For obvious reasons, the crimes committed by them affected other countries from the Baltic States to France. In comparison, it would be tempting to signal the settlement of the military past of the regimes, which were closer to authoritarianism than totalitarianism like Japan and Italy.

Implementation of the abovementioned issues will require an interdisciplinary approach, possible by the completion of an international team of researchers of various specialties: historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists.

P R O G R A M

 2 October 2014

9.00–9.10 – Opening of the conference

Societies and Nazi crimes

9.10–10.50 – German Context, Part I

Chair: Dr Tomasz Łabuszewski

• Kirsten Goetze (Germany) – Dictatorship's Long Shadow: German Society and German Justice 1933–1945
• Dr Jane Lenzina (Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Dictatur, Germany) – Settlement with the Nazi Past in West Germany: Reflections on the Sources of Continuity and Change in Postwar Collective Memory
• Dr Paweł Kosiński (Institute of National Remembrance, Poland) – Reception of the Nuremberg Trials in the German Society
• Daria Czarnecka (National Archives in Katowice, Poland) – Trials in Dachau: Victorious Justice or Justice of the Winners?
• Discussion

10.50–11.10 – Coffee break

 11.10–12.05 – German Context, Part II

Chair: Dr Kazimierz Krajewski

• Joanna Lubecka (Institute of National Remembrance, Poland) – How to Understand the Nazis: Rationalisation and Understanding Issues in the Postwar Trials and Psychological Research
• Helena Anna Jędrzejczak (Warsaw University, Poland) – Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Forgotten (?) Thoughts on Guilt and Punishment in the Context of Fight with Nazi Regime
• Discussion

12.05–13.00 – Polish Context

Chair: Dr Kazimierz Krajewski

• Łukasz Jasiński (Museum of the Second War World, Poland) – Selected Aspects of the Activity of the Commission for the Examination of German Crimes in Poland
• Dr Dariusz Burczyk (Institute of National Remembrance, Poland) – The Activity of Special Penal Court in Gdańsk (1945–1946) as an Attempt to Settle the Nazi Crimes Committed in Pomerania, Mazuria and Warmia Regions

13.00–14.00 – Lunch break

14.00–15.40 – Central and Eastern Europe: The Balkans

Chair: Dr Patryk Pleskot

• Olga Tsadko (European Humanities University, Lithuania) – Transformation Processes in Collective Memory of "Hornung" Punitive Action Victims in 1943
• Dr Ruslana Martseniuk (Ukraine) – Heroes or Traitors: The Problem of (Non-) Recognition of Waffen SS Soldiers in Ukraine and Latvia
• Agata Biernat (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland) – Responsibility of the Ustaša Crimes during the World War II
• Prof. Piotr Żurek (University of Bielsko-Biała, Poland) – Liberation Front and "Anti-Communist collaboration": Contemporary Slovenia towards its own Second World War History
• Discussion

15.40–16.00 – Coffee break

16.00–17.40 – International Context

Chair: Dr Patryk Pleskot

• Georgia Kipouropoulou (University of Western Macedonia, Greece) – The German Occupation in Greece: Economic, Political and Social Consequences
• Prof. Wichert ten Have (Holland) – Post-Second World War Views on War-Time Paradoxes in the Netherlands
• Prof. Jacek Tebinka (University of Gdańsk, Poland) – The British and the Americans towards German Crimes Committed during the Warsaw Uprising: Heinz Reinefarth's Case
• Dr Krystyna T. Zamorska (USA) – The Second World War and the Cold War: Post-War Americanization of German Crimes in Poland
• Discussion

17.40–18.00 – Coffee break

Societies and Soviet crimes

 18.00–19.30 – Russian Context

Chair: Dr Patryk Pleskot

• Prof. David Rich (Catholic University of America, USA) – My Terror-State, Your Terror-State: Soviet Justice for Soviet Collaborators 1944–1956
• Prof. Karol Karski (Warsaw University, Poland) – International Criminal Law as the Basis of Penalisation of Soviet Criminals: Wasyl Kononov's Case behind Latvian Courts and Strasbourg Tribunal
• Prof. Oxana Petrowskaja (Russian Institute of Strategic Research, Russia) – Stalin's National Policy during the Second World War in the Contemporary Russian and Belarusian History Course Books
• Discussion

3 October 2014

9.00–10.30 – Polish Context

Chair: Dr Robert Spałek

• Barbara Padło (Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression/Warsaw University, Poland) – Responsibility of Stalinist Judges for the Crimes Committed in the Past
• Prof. Joanna Wojdon (Wrocław University, Poland) / Dr Marcin Dyś (Wrocław University, Poland) – The Settlement of Stalin's Policy in the Polish History Course Books
• Dr Tomasz Łabuszewski (Institute of National Remembrance, Poland) – The Settlement of Stalinist Crimes in Poland: Facts and myths
• Discussion

10.30–10.50 – Coffee break

10.50–13.00 – Eastern Bloc Context

Chair: Dr Patryk Pleskot

• Prof. Bernd Schaefer (Woodrow Wilson International Center, USA) – Post-1990 United Germany and Communist Crimes
• Dr Ihar Melnikau (redactor of the portal "Historical Truth", Belarus) – Contemporary Official Belarusian Historiography towards the History of "Unification" of Western Belarus with Soviet Union in September 1939
• Dr Csilla Kiss (University of Western Hungary) – Reckoning with Stalinism: Politics, History and Memory in Hungary
• Dr Teon Dzingo (Institute of National History, Macedonia) – Goli Otok: The Island of Death
• Bedrudin Brljavac (University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina) — Dictatorship under the Tito's Era in Yugoslavia: The Sense of National Identity
• Discussion

13.00–14.00 – Lunch break

 "Peripheries" of totalitarisms

 14.00–15.00 – Japanese War Crimes

Chair: Dr Tadeusz Ruzikowski

• Dr Katarzyna Starecka (Warsaw University, Poland) – Japan towards the Tokyo Tribunal's Sentences
• Dr Łukasz Stach (Pedagogical University, Poland) – Crime without Punishment? Japanese War Crimes: Its Course, Settlement and Impact on the Contemporary Relations between Japan and Asian and Pacific Countries
• Discussion

15.00–16.00 – Italy During the War

Chair: Dr Tadeusz Ruzikowski

• Dr Krzysztof Strzałka (Jagiellonian University, Poland) – Should We Punish the Fascists? The Question of Guilt and Settlement in Post-War Italy's Political Situation
• Giuseppe Perri (Ministry of Education, Italy) – War Internment and Treatment of Foreign Jews in the Second World War by the Italian Fascist Regime
• Discussion

16.00–16.20 – Coffee break

16.20–17.20 – Assessment of the Collaboration in the West

Chair: Dr Patryk Pleskot

• Katarzyna Nuckowska-Cherek (Institute of National Remembrance, Poland) – Directions of the Norwegian Policy towards the Post-War Germany 1945–1955
• Prof. Jerzy Eisler (Institute of National Remembrance, Poland) – The State of Vichy
• Discussion

17.20–18.20 – Unfinished Neutrality?

Chair: Dr Patryk Pleskot

• Prof. Paweł Jaworski (Wrocław University, Poland) – Swedish Settlement of the Strategy of Neutrality from the Second World War Period
• Dr Paweł Duber (Poland) – Switzerland during the Second World War from the Perspective of Independent Experts Commission (Bergiers' Report)
• Discussion

18.20–18.30 – Conclussion of the Conference