LONDON and MOSCOW: An unusual Holocaust-related defamation case in Poland could affect both the future of academic research and the way the country copes with the treatment of Jews during World War II, advocates say.
The case is the first of its kind brought in Polish courts since a controversial 2018 law by the nationalist government made it a civil crime to make false accusations about Poland’s history in the Holocaust.
Jewish organizations and historians have warned that the outcome, expected on February 9, could be far-reaching, affecting the fate of Holocaust research in the country and posing a “huge threat to free speech.”
The case, against historians Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, is based solely on a paragraph published in the 1,600-page, two-volume collection they co-edited, entitled “The Endless Night: The Fate of the Jews in Certain Counties of Occupied Poland “”. Indiana University will publish an English translation of the book in April.
At the center of the case is the now-dead Edward Malinowski, the village of Malinowo, who in World War II allegedly stole and saved a Jewish woman, Estera Siemiatycka, finding her job as a forced laborer. If the Nazi authorities knew she was Jewish, she would have been executed.
Siemiatycka, also dead, testified in Malinowski’s defense at a 1950 trial for alleged collaboration with Nazi occupiers in Poland and was acquitted of the charges.
In the disputed paragraph, historians based their claims on a later 1996 interview that Siemiatycka gave to the USC Shoah Foundation, which collected oral histories of the Holocaust. Relating this testimony, the paragraph said that Siemiatycka “realized this [Malinowski] he was complicit in the deaths of several dozen Jews who had hidden in the woods and been handed over to the Germans. ” The paragraph also said that his 1950 testimony was “false.”
“After the war, he [Malinowski] He would have been sentenced to death, “Siemiatycka said in 1996.” I saved him, even though he hurt me a lot ”.
“It was this source that I found the most reliable for reconstructing the story of Estera Siemiatycka,” Engelking told ABC News.
Engelking told ABC News that he believed Siemiatycka had a “temporary and emotional” understanding and the book suggested he had testified in support of Malinowski because “she was grateful to him for saving her life, she wanted to pay him good in spite of evil. that she had suffered from him. “
Filomena Leszczyńska, a surviving niece of Malinowski, 81, with the help of the Polish Anti-Defamation League (RDI) – a government-backed organization that aims to “clarify false information” about the Polish past – has stated that the paragraph in the book violated his personal rights by defaming “a Polish hero who hid Jews during World War II.” The RDI argued before the courts that Engelking had confused the village old man with another resident of the same name as Malinowo when referring to commercial dealings between the couple and therefore the basis of his investigation was flawed.
“The paragraph in fact contains an error, that is, the attribution of the trade with Mat to [elder] sołtys Malinowski, but that in no way violates the personal rights of Edward Malinowski or his niece, “Engelking said.” In the field of research, these errors are reported at most in subsequent reviews or publications and if the book has another addition, an amendment is made. “
Leszczyńska presented the case to the Warsaw district court in June 2019 after learning of the allegation on the radio, said Engelking, the founder and director of the Polish Holocaust Research Center. Leszczyńska sued historians for 100,000 Zlotys ($ 27,000) and apologized to several major newspapers last year.
“On the surface, civil litigation at the center of this story involves an old woman who wants to defend her family’s good name, allegedly tainted by the authors of a book‘ The Endless Night, ’” Grabowski told ABC News. “In reality, however, all the demand has been prepared, launched and funded by a nationalist militant right-wing organization funded directly by the Polish state and serving as a representative of the Polish authorities,” he added, referring to the RDI.
Grabowski, a history professor at the University of Ottawa, also denied the scope of the case’s claims.
“Should the lawsuit be successful, the alleged assault on‘ national pride ’or‘ national identity ’can trigger a lawsuit from anyone who considers their‘ national identity ’threatened by an academic,” Grabowski said. “This, in practical terms, would place independent Polish scholars of the Holocaust in an impossible position. Which is precisely the goal the authorities want to achieve.”
Maciej Swirski, the head of R & D & I, told ABC News that the organization does not use government funds in the case, but relies on crowdfunding. He said the case “has nothing to do with avoiding scientific research.”
“The intent of this private lawsuit is to protect the memory of Mrs. Leszczyńska’s ancestor: the late Edward Malinowski, a hero, who rescued Jews during the war,” he told ABC News.
Historians and various Jewish societies in Europe say the case has far-reaching implications.
“Such lawsuits are intended above all to undermine the credibility and competence of defendants to charge them financially, with high penalties and legal costs, and to cause a ‘creepy effect’, ie – in this case – to deter other researchers to investigate and write the truth about the extermination of Jews in Poland, ”Engelking said.
The country has long struggled to cope with its war history. In 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland, but by the end of the war, 90% of them had died, and the remaining 300,000 survivors lived mostly in the Soviet Union, according to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. of POLIN.
This is not the first time that the role of Poland in the Holocaust has been questioned in recent years. There was a diplomatic dispute with Israel over the passage of the controversial 2018 law, which initially made it a crime to make false accusations about Poland’s history in the Holocaust. The law was later amended to make it a civil crime.
The current trial has sparked a tense exchange of letters this month between Polish Ambassador to Israel Marek Magierowski and the Center for Holocaust Survivors Organizations in Israel. Magierowski wrote that the lawsuit was a “civil case” and it would be a “malignant interpretation” to consider the trial “an assault on the freedom of investigation.” The Polish Foreign Ministry did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
There is more at stake in the trial than the freedom to investigate, but control over national identity, critics of the court case say.
The story of complicity and protection, at the heart of Malinowski’s story, picks up on the broader struggles nationalists have had in the country to address Poland’s role in the Holocaust, according to Gabriele Lesser, a journalist and historian specializing in occupation of Poland.
“As Barbara Engelking pointed out – with specific sources supporting her – that the same individual could save Jews and denounce Jews,” she told ABC News. “This complexity is part of the reality of Judeo-Polish relations during the war … The nationalist camp that” defends national pride “does not want to see this complexity. Now judges are in a situation of having to rule on investigations that go beyond their required area of expertise ”.
Mark Wiesenthal, director of government affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based anti-Semitism NGO, said the court proceedings were an “attempt to use the legal system to open and intimidate the Holocaust Scholarship in Poland “. And the Paris-based Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust said the case represented a “pernicious attack on the very center of the investigation.”
“Let’s be frank: 100,000 Polish zlotys ($ 27,000) is a lot of money in Poland,” Zygmunt Stępiński, director of the POLIN museum, told ABC News. “A Holocaust researcher will think twice before researching and publishing his findings in Poland. The new strategy is a form of censorship and intimidation of researchers before publishing their work, fearing persecution and accusing them of legal defense costs. “
The verdict of the trial will be delivered on February 9.