DARIUSZ STOLA, the owlish director of Polin, the museum of Jewish life in Warsaw, remembers when Jewish sections first started to appear in bookshops in Poland. “I thought it would fade out,” he says. It didn’t. Instead, over the past two decades Poland has become a place where the nation’s past, in particular its relationship to the 3m Polish Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, is debated more vigorously by politicians, intellectuals and ordinary people. Many bookshops now have a section on Polish-Jewish history; since it opened in 2013, Polin has become one of the capital’s most popular museums.

This debate may now be under threat. The Polish government, led by Law and Justice, a radical nationalist party, appears intent on politicising historical discussion—and even criminalising it. In February Patryk Jaki, the deputy minister for justice, proposed banning the phrase “Polish death camps” on pain of a fine or three years’ imprisonment.

Poles detest this phrase, since it inaccurately suggests that Poles, not Germans, ran concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka on Polish soil. When Barack Obama used it in a speech in 2012, Poland’s previous government slapped him on the wrist. (He apologised.) Poles have long preferred the formulation “Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland”.

Many Poles are frustrated by what they perceive to be a portrayal of Poland as a collaborator with Germany, says Michael Schudrich, the country’s chief rabbi. Many also point out that, alongside the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, some 3m non-Jewish Poles died too. For Maciej Swirski, the head of the Polish Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns for the “good name of Poland”, the phrase “Polish death camps” is a form of Holocaust denial, as it underplays German responsibility.

But criminalising it is something new. Previously, when journalists used it, ambassadors would dispatch angry letters. The proposed law is a blunt instrument. It would, among other things, punish anyone, domestic or foreign, who publicly ascribes responsibility to the Polish nation or state for “crimes committed by the Third German Reich”, even inadvertently.

Alongside this, Andrzej Duda, the president, has threatened to strip Jan Gross, a historian at Princeton University, of an Order of Merit after he asserted last year that more Jews than Germans were killed by Poles during the war. And when “Ida”, a film released in 2013 depicting Polish complicity in the deaths of some Jews, was shown on public television (which was taken over by pro-government managers in January), it was accompanied by a 12-minute clip in which three critics slammed the film. One spoke of a conflict between Polish and Jewish “sides” of the story.

In isolation, these incidents are embarrassing for Poland. Together, they are alarming. They indicate the ferocity of Law and Justice’s obsession with the past. They also suggest that the party sees political gain in stirring up historical resentments. It plays up the most glorious aspects of Poland’s history, such as the anti-Nazi resistance. At the same time, it portrays the country and its people as victims, then and now.

The party and its divisive leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, are preoccupied with the country’s allegedly botched transition after 1989, which they contend left the communist-era elite manipulating the reins of power, just in a different guise. This leads them to denigrate Poland’s post-communist success. The previous government emphasised the country’s economic recovery, with GDP per head almost doubling since joining the European Union in 2004. By contrast, Law and Justice portrays Poland as a nation bullied by Brussels and its refugee-loving, secular leaders.

Unlike the previous, Europhile government (Donald Tusk, the former prime minister, is now the head of the European Council), the current one shrugs at what outsiders think of it. Since coming to power in October, as the first party to win an outright majority in over three decades, Law and Justice has thumbed its nose at the EU’s liberal ideals. It has made heavy-handed changes to the constitutional court, security services and public media. In January the European Commission launched a formal assessment of whether these moves breach the rule of law. On April 4th Moody’s, a credit-ratings agency, warned that the constitutional tussle may dent Poland’s attractiveness to foreign investors.

Forget about it

Law and Justice’s core supporters do not seem to mind. Many of them are old, socially conservative voters who live far from big cities like Warsaw. The proposed law would play to their sense of victimisation. This is a shame. Law and Justice is not anti-Semitic, and its leaders are firmly pro-Israel. But introducing criminal penalties into intellectual debate is no way to deal with historical resentments. Indeed, in trying to whitewash the past, the government may stir up prejudice instead. Those with anti-Semitic views may feel vindicated, or even emboldened, when they hear politicians deny that Poles bear any responsibility for crimes against Jews. This will leave Polish Jews feeling persecuted, and kick off a new cycle of recrimination.

Some of Law and Justice’s politicians seem to be aware of this. In March, Mr Duda spoke out against anti-Semitism at the launch of a museum which commemorates a Polish family killed by German forces for hiding Jews. Strikingly, he acknowledged that the war had seen cases both of Polish heroism and of Polish infamy, with some Gentile Poles betraying their Jewish neighbours and those who helped them. His statement surprised many—especially as his threat to strip the state decoration from Mr Gross, who has written extensively about the less creditable aspects of Poland’s past, is still up in the air. It hinted that, despite the populist bluster, the party may eventually let its misguided proposals slide. But not before they have damaged Poland’s reputation, and its own attempt to come to grips with its history.

Clarification: An earlier version of this article stated that 3m non-Jewish Poles died in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Although a significant proportion of Polish victims died in camps, not all did. We are happy to make this clear