Cyryl Ryzak works as a researcher for a trade union. He lives in New York City.
European authorities accuse Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko of mounting “hybrid warfare” by letting thousands of migrants amass at the Polish border. But Poland’s nationalist government is also using the crisis to crack down on migrants — with the EU’s blessing.
Today, Poland’s hard-right government uses the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 for generic nationalist pageantry. But the real insurrectionaries against the Nazis were sharply divided between those who worked to restore the old elite and those who sought real social change.