WARSAW, POLAND (AP) – Two Polish historians face defamation lawsuit over academic review of Polish behavior during World War II, a case that is expected to result in the fate of independent research on Holocaust under the Polish nationalist government.
A verdict is expected in Warsaw District Court on February 9 for the case against Barbara Engelking, a historian at the Polish Holocaust Research Center in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa. .
It is the first major legal test following a 2018 law this makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The law provoked a major diplomatic rift with Israel.
Since gaining power in 2015, the Conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, has tried to discourage investigations into Polish misdeeds during the German war occupation, rather than preferring to emphasize almost exclusively Polish heroism and suffering. The aim is to promote national pride, but critics say the government has whitewashed the fact that some Poles also collaborated in the German murder of Jews.
The Israeli Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, said the legal effort “constitutes a serious attack on free and open investigation.”
Several historic institutions have condemned the case as the verdict approaches, with the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust based in Paris. describing it on Tuesday as a “witch hunt” and a “pernicious invasion at the very heart of the investigation.”
The case focuses on a 1,600-page, two-volume historical work in Polish, “The Endless Night: The Fate of the Jews in Certain Counties of Occupied Poland,” which was co-edited by Grabowski and Engelking. An abbreviated English version will have to be published in a few months.
Grabowski and Engelking say they see the case as an attempt to discredit them personally and discourage other investigators from investigating the truth about the extermination of Jews in Poland.
“This is a case of the Polish state against the freedom of research,” Grabowski told The Associated Press on Monday.
Grabowski, a Polish Canadian whose father survived the Polish Holocaust, has faced considerable anti-Semitic harassment by nationalists, both online and at conferences in Canada, France and elsewhere.
The niece of a man from the village of Malinowo, whose warlike behavior is briefly discussed, sues Grabowski and Engelking, demanding 100,000 zlotys ($ 27,000) in damages and apologies to the newspapers.
According to the evidence presented in the book, Edward Malinowski, an elder of the village, allowed a Jewish woman to survive by helping her pass as a non-Jew. But the survivor is also quoted as saying he was complicit in the deaths of several dozen Jews.
The niece, Filomena Leszczynska, has been supported by a group, the Polish Anti-Defamation League, which receives funding from the Polish government.
This organization argued that the two scholars are guilty of “desecrating the good name” of a Polish hero, who according to them had no role in harming the Jews and, by extension, harmed the dignity and pride of all Poles. The lawsuit was filed in court for free, as permitted by the 2018 law.
Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called “The Endless Night,” a “meticulously researched and obtained book … detailing thousands of cases of Polish complicity in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.”
“The proceedings against these two internationally renowned academics are nothing more than an attempt to use the legal system to jam and intimidate Holocaust studies in Poland,” Weitzman said.
Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of it to Germany and directly governing the rest. Unlike other German-occupied countries, there was no collaborationist government in Poland. The pre-war Polish government and military fled into exile, except for a clandestine resistance army that fought the Nazis inside the country.
However, some people in Poland collaborated with the Germans in hunting and killing Jews, in many cases people who had fled ghettos and tried to hide in the countryside.
Grabowski said “The Endless Night” is “multifaceted and speaks equally of Polish virtue. It draws a truthful picture.”
“The Holocaust is not here to help Polish ego and morale, it is a drama that kills 6 million people, which nationalists seem to forget,” he said.
A Deputy Foreign Minister, Pawel Jablonski, described the case as a private matter.
“It is everyone’s legal right to seek this appeal before (a) a court if it considers that (another) person or entity has violated their rights,” Jablonski told the AP in a statement Monday. “The government is not involved in the proceedings, it is a private matter for the court to decide.”
However, those who fear the case could stifle independent investigation have a different view.
“Participating in this trial of a heavily publicly funded organization can easily be interpreted as a form of censorship and an attempt to scare academics into publishing the results of their research for fear of a lawsuit and costly litigation that it is derived “. said Zygmunt Stepinski, director of the POLIN Museum of Polish Jewish History in Warsaw.