In 2009 Pentor Research International, acting on behalf of the Museum of the 2nd World War in Gdańsk, organized impressive research into the knowledge and memory of the war in Poland. The comprehensive results are published in the book Między codziennością a wielką historią (Between everydayness and monumental history) by Piotr T. Kwiatkowski and others (Warsaw, Gdańsk 2010). The author of the present article comments on this research. He is mostly astonished by the regional differences in memory of the war in a country like present day Poland that is relatively homogenous. He proposes differentiating between what he calls „a stable memory” and a „momentaneous memory”. The latter appears strong but in fact it depends on what the TV says the last week before the research is done.

Given the whole spectrum of doubts and controversies that arise in discussions about laws affecting historical memory (and their subcategory of memory laws), the question of assessing them in the context of international standards of human rights protection – and in particular the European system of human rights protection – is often overlooked. Thus this article focuses on the implications and conditions for introducing memory laws in light of international human rights standards using selected examples of various types of recently-adopted Polish memory laws as case studies. The authors begin with a brief description of the phenomenon of memory laws and the most significant threats that they pose to the protection of international human rights standards. The following sections analyse selected Polish laws affecting historical memory vis-à-vis these standards. The analysis covers non-binding declaratory laws affecting historical memory, and acts that include criminal law sanctions. The article attempts to sketch the circumstances linking laws affecting historical memory with the human rights protection standards, including those entailed both in binding treaties and other instruments of international law.