ABSTRACT
This chapter argues the cautious formulation can be understood as an attempt to integrate contradicting interpretations of positions towards Poland's more recent past that were prevalent in Polish society. Poland and Germany began bilateral schoolbook talks in which a committee comprising historians from both countries tried to work out a common interpretation of Polish-German history. The forced transfer of ethnic Germans after the end of World War II remained a difficult topic in German-Polish relations. In the decades after World War II, Polish historiography was predominantly shaped by the narrative constructed by the country's Communist leadership. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski's speech was issued after a political dissonance between Poland and Germany in the context. The theoretically incomplete formulation of Bartoszewski's statement can be understood, when it is considered as the result of the competing societal narratives on the Polish past that turn a public apology into a particularly difficult business.
