Deciphering Eastern Europe

Name: Professor Piotr Wróbel

Position: Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish History, held since 1995

Affiliation: Department of History

Education: PhD, University of Warsaw

Areas of Expertise: Modern central Europe, Poland, national minorities

Teaching

HIS 353               Poland: A Crossroads of Europe     

HIS 451/1279     World War II in East Central Europe

HIS 433/1287     Polish Jews since the Partition of Poland

Publications

– Poyln: My Life within Jewish Life in Poland, Sketches and Images, ed. with Robert M. Shapiro (2007)

– Peter Brock et al., Nation and History; Polish historians from the Enlightenment to the Second World War  (2006)

– The Devil's Playground: Poland in World War II (2000)

Major Awards & Honours

Director, Polish Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada

Member, Governing Council of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies

Visiting Scholar, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington

What can we learn from Polish history?

Within the story of modern Europe, the history of Poland looms unusually large. Caught between East and West, it has absorbed influences from both and suffered various forms of interference and subjugation at their hands. During the twentieth century, it stood at the centre of Europe’s great wars, particularly the Second World War, when it was convulsed by rival totalitarianisms before falling under the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. The destruction and dispersal of its ethnic minorities — which once included Armenians, Byelorussians, Czechs, Germans, Jews, Karaites , Kashubians, Lemkos, Lithuanians, Roma, Russians, Slovaks, Tartars and Ukrainians — can be read as a précis of the fate of several Eastern European nations.

“Fortune governs human affairs unfairly,” writes Professor Piotr Wróbel, the Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish History, in his introduction to The Devil's Playground: Poland in World War II. “There are countries in Europe, such as Sweden or Switzerland, where dramatic historical events happen rarely [and] countries where disasters strike frequently. Poland belongs to this second, less fortunate group. During the last three hundred years, every generation in Poland [has gone] through either a devastating war, or a bloody uprising, or a merciless occupation and genocide.” Wróbel is an expert on Eastern Europe’s national minorities and has written seven books and more than 75 articles on modern Poland.

Somehow, Poland outlasted its upheavals, preserved its cultural identity and achieved relative political and economic stability after the end of the Cold War. But memories of its historical nightmares remain. “For most East Europeans, including the Poles, the war is a vivid memory,” explains Wróbel, “The emotional wounds are still fresh, and serious consequences, rooted in the World War II tragedy, continue to affect them. This subjective difference in the perception of the past makes East-West dialogue, cooperation and integration difficult.”

The Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish History was endowed in 1995 with contributions from the Canadian-Polish Congress, Toronto’s Polish community and the estate of Konstanty Reynert, a former officer in the Polish Navy. The Chair supports advanced research and teaching in Polish history.

Story by Brendan de Caires
Photo: Diana Tyszko