Israel and Poland Confront Holocaust Memory

Historians and diplomats are not natural bedfellows. Governments do not usually incorporate historical expertise into their diplomatic negotiations and only rarely include historians in peace negotiations.¹ Nor are history or historians usually included in track II diplomacy, the practice of non-governmental, informal, and unofficial contacts between private citizens or groups of individuals. If it is considered at all, history is left to academics and the organizations of civil society. This stems from the belief that the past cannot be changed and therefore has to be accepted as given rather than addressed or negotiated. But while it is true that history.