Robert Strybel, Warsaw Correspondent for Polish American World and other periodicals reported recently on the “Restoration of Forgotten History” project.

The project, the brainchild of Professor Andrzej S. Kaminski of Washington’s Georgetown University and Professor Daria Nałęcz, Rector of Warsaw’s Lazarski School of Commerce and Law, is aimed at correcting the omissions, misinformation, and inaccuracies about Poland as found in textbooks used in the United States.

“American textbooks are issued in millions of copies and used by all students in the U.S.. I have come to the conclusion that 29 years after the end of the cold war it’s high time for the information they contain to be truthful” Kaminski said.

The group has held a series of conferences attended by American authors, publishers and scholars, Their participants have included publishers and historians from Yale, Georgetown, and the University of California, among them British (Welsh) Professor Norman Davies, one of the most prolific non-Polish historians dealing with Polish affairs.

“Our meetings are fairly straightforward. We simply sit down and go through the relevant passages of textbooks page by page, pointing out their shortcomings and errors,” Kaminski explained.

“Corrections have already been introduced into a number of books, and others are being worked on. The program of each meeting also includes an excursion to places of historical interest in such cities as Kraków, Sandomierz or Gdańsk. Our guests are enchanted by our country which they hadn’t known before. One of the biggest impressions on Americans is made by the fact that Poland already had a parliamentary system at the turn of the 16th century, nearly 300 years before America declared its independence.”

A major reason for the present state of affairs has been the relatively low level of interest in Central and Eastern European history among English-speaking historians.

“l do not attribute this to ill-will or sloppy scholarship on the part of American authors,” said Professor Nałęcz. “They are simply unable to check every detail and have to rely on the research of others, preferably sources available in English. The works of Polish authors have not been translated into English that much.”

Professor Nałęcz advises: “We must read what others are writing and alert authors to errors so that new editions get corrected. They usually do. And we must do what other nations are doing: attend historical congresses and conferences as well as holding our own. Such personal contacts are the best way to convey one’s point of view. Unfortunately, we are not all that present at the world’s history salons.”

The title above is taken from a book published by the Czech National Archives: Nothing and Nobody Should Be Forgotten (Aby na nic a na nikoho nebylo zapomenuto).