WORLD VIEW/Paul Gillespie: "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again." This quotation from George Santayana is inscribed at the entrance to Block 4, devoted to extermination, at the Auschwitz Museum in southern Poland.
The barbarian horrors committed there, involving genocide of 1.1 million Jews and the deaths of another 400,000 people from 19 European countries, is a ghastly reminder of another European project as 29 million Poles vote in a referendum this weekend on joining the European Union.
History weighs heavily on their decision, even if many are distracted by current economic difficulties and political disengagement from participating in the voting. Political trust in an unpopular government and governing elites has fallen sharply, reflecting a prevailing mood of distrust for Poland's transition as a whole, since the collapse of communism in 1989 confirmed the end of the Cold War that followed Nazi rule.
Poland's EU membership is a element in that transition and cannot be understood apart from it. Mr Kazimierz Smolen, an 83-year-old Polish survivor of Auschwitz, told a group of Irish journalists this week that his country had always been a member of Europe and that he would vote Yes in the referendum.
"We can't blame the younger generation of Germans for the deeds of their grandparents. We are responsible for the future, not the past," he said.
In a message to the Polish people on May 18th, a crucial intervention in the campaign, Pope John Paul II said: "Europe needs Poland and Poland needs Europe. Entering the EU structures on equal terms with the other nations is a change for us and for our brother nations. And it is a means of historical justice."
His speech has nonplussed Catholic opponents of EU entry. They have been running a strong and very unpleasant camapign against, affirming traditional Catholic values against Western atheism, abortion and homosexuality, and laced with anti-German and anti-Semitic themes.
They also join a wider set of fears that Poland will lose its national and cultural identity.
"Some will take our soil and others tell us to be quiet," said Father Rydzyk of the ultra-Catholic Radio Maria station, in reference to fears that Germans will purchase land they lost after the war in eastern Poland and to Jacques Chirac's outburst against the letter signed by Poland and other accession states supporting US policy in Iraq. He has had to define the EU as a purgatory rather than a heaven or hell after the Pope's message.
The League of Polish Families, which he supports, and Self-Defence, which appeals especially to workers and farmers who have lost out during the transition, have mounted a vigorous and vocal campaign against EU membership. In opinion polls they have a combined 29 per cent political support, overlapping with the potential 25-30 per cent opposed to membership.
That leaves a solid 76 per cent in favour, reflecting the predominant national feeling that Poland will gain from membership if it plays its cards well in coming years.
In the final stages of the campaign the emphasis has swung back decisively to the big political and historical themes among leading advocates of membership. They hope to persuade an abstentionist trend that threatens a turnout of less than the 50 per cent needed to avoid having the issue decided by the Polish parliament.
That outcome would be much less legitimate domestically and less credible internationally and would probably trigger a general election. But any new government would also be expected to support EU membership.
This is because the basic arguments put forward a decade ago still stand, according to Jan Truszczynski, Poland's chief negotiator. EU membership will provide more, not less, security and growth than not joining.
Crucially, it will allow the country to participate in and influence decision-making about Europe's future, recognising that "where you are interdependent you are structurally linked to the rest of the European economy - and not only to the largest ones." "Poland as an island" is not a realistic or beneficial option.
Prof Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, a leading public opinion researcher, says "The concern is about economics, not politics"; not that Poland would lose sovereignty, but that small firms will lose jobs and small farms will disappear and increase the current 17.8 per cent unemployment.
Her research shows that 10-15 per cent fear losing sovereignty or national identity, a theme that figured prominently in the speeches of the President, Mrs McAleese, about how Ireland avoided that fate over the last 30 years, during her State visit to Poland. She expects a 53 per cent turnout and a 70-30 margin for the Yes side (and it should be renembered that turnout in the 2001 general election was a mere 46.29 per cent).
Many middle-class Poles hope the EU will help them to cope with corruption and inefficiency by depoliticisng institutions. Significantly, the No side did not play the abstentionist card: "If you don't know or think No, don't vote".
Mr Truszczynski points out that Poland is already a de facto EU member, having adapted its economy by two big bangs of privatisation, deregulation and adoption of EU laws.
A senior negotiating colleague, Jaroslav Pietras, argues that they have already made a major contribution to the united Europe which the EU is enlarging to embrace. That came with Solidarity's challenge to the communist system in 1979-81.
It has been combined with Poland's "clear and predictable statement of transatlantic ties", along with its advocacy of a wider Europe including Russia and Ukraine. This will not weaken Poland's commitment to a more unified and coherent EU foreign policy, but strengthen it, he argues.
"Thank God for the Pope," says another leading Yes campaigner, in praise of his intervention and its historical perspective. He calls for greater awareness of Poland's needs by its future partners, to reduce the weakness complex it has inherited from that history and prevent a new periphery of weaker states emerging. That has been one motive for Poland's assertion of its pro-US credentials.
Rosa Thun, a prominent Yes campaigner, believes "a very historical moment is approaching. It is a natural continuation of what we did when we abolished com-munism." But she wishes there was more awareness, in Poland and the EU, of the importance of what is at stake.