November 28, 1962 - June 11, 2010
"It is they who, deliberately, convert history into a handmaid of current political interests of equally morally and intellectually cheap ruling elites. Finally, it is they who decide which fact or historical figure to make prominent, and about which to keep silent to the death. Of course, they do it from the angle of current political usefulness….
Everywhere half-truths, lies, propaganda. But it is not at all madness, but a method leading to the destruction of historical consciousness, to the cutting off from the truly Polish historical heritage, without which the nation cannot exist. A nation is, after all, past, present, and future generations. If we break the first element of the triad, the whole starts making no sense. And that is where the “creativity” of the politically correct correctors of history is leading.
If there is an uninvestigated historical fact, I investigate it, whether somebody likes it, or not. If there is a problem which requires at least reporting about, or expounding, I report about and expound it. Regardless of whether they accuse me, for instance, of breaking the law. Because of this, I am an easy target for attacks. Such is the lot of a man not caring about censorship (the communist one before, and the politically correct one today). Good God, I didn’t become a historian to write between lines. A historian has one basic role to perform. It is to reach the truth. In essence, truth is a historian’s only friend. A historian ought to know that truth has no hues; truth is always clear, and one.
Professor Ratajczak’s death was ruled a ‘suicide,’ but skeptical people, perhaps bearing in mind the recent arrest of a Mossad assassin operating in Poland, are asking how a person in an advanced staged of composition was able to drive to a public parking lot and park a car?
In the preface to his prescient treatise, “Dangerous Topics” Professor Ratajczak opined:
“Writing about Polish – Jewish relations is a risky activity. Especially for the Pole, who believes that these relations should be presented on the basis of truth. It’s easy then – paradoxically – to be exposed to charges of extreme nationalism, xenophobia and Anti-Semitism. The consequences are often sad: a social boycott (everyone has those friends they deserve), racial and publishing blacklisting. In the end-occupational death.”
Unfortunately, and certainly unforeseen by Professor Ratajczak, ‘occupational death’ transformed into physical extinction."