Two Polish historians are facing a defamation trial over a book that examines the behavior of Poles during World War II, a case whose outcome is expected to determine the future of independent research on the Holocaust under Poland’s nationalist government.
A verdict is expected in the Warsaw district court on February 9 in the case against Barbara Engelking, a historian at the Polish Holocaust Research Center in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, professor of history at the University of Ottawa. Although the case is a libel trial, it follows a 2018 law that makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The law caused a major diplomatic fight with Israel.
Since gaining power in 2015, the ruling Law and Justice party has sought to discourage investigations into Polish irregularities during the Nazi occupation, preferring to emphasize almost exclusively Polish heroism and suffering. Critics say the government has been covering up the fact that some Poles also collaborated in the murder of Jews.
The Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem said the legal effort “constitutes a serious attack on free and open research”.
A number of other historic institutions have condemned the case as the verdict approaches, with the Paris-based Shoah Memory Foundation describing it on Tuesday as a “witch hunt” and a “pernicious invasion of the core of the research ”.
The case revolves around a historical work of two volumes and 1,600 pages, Night without end: the fate of the Jews in selected counties of occupied Poland, which was co-edited by Grabowski and Engelking. An abridged version in English is expected to be published later this year.
Grabowski and Engelking say they see the case as an attempt to discredit them personally and to discourage other researchers from investigating the truth about the extermination of Jews in occupied Poland. “This is a case of the Polish state against freedom of research,” Grabowski told the Associated Press on Monday.
Filomena Leszczyńska is suing Grabowski and Engelking over part of the book that mentions her uncle, Edward Malinowski, the former mayor of the village of Malinowo. According to the evidence presented in the book, Malinowski, who is no longer alive, allowed a Jewish woman to survive by helping her pass as a non-Jew. But the book also cites witnesses who accused Malinowski of being an accomplice in the deaths of several dozen Jews in the city.
Malinowski was acquitted of collaborating with the Nazis in a post-war trial.
Leszczyńska is demanding 100,000 zlotys (£ 19,600) in damages and an apology in the newspapers. It is supported by the Polish League Against Defamation, a group that receives funding from the Polish government. That organization argued that the two scholars are guilty of “defiling the good name” of a Polish hero and, by extension, damaging the dignity and pride of all Poles. The lawsuit was filed in court free of charge, as permitted by the 2018 law.
Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called Night Without End a “meticulously researched and acquired book … which details thousands of cases of Polish complicity in murdering Jews during the Holocaust.”
Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of it to Germany and directly governing the rest. The Polish pre-war government and the military fled into exile, except for an underground resistance army that fought against the Nazis within the country. Still, a small number collaborated with the Germans in hunting and killing Jews, in many cases people who fled the ghettos and sought to hide in the countryside.
Grabowski said that Night Without End was “multifaceted and talks about Polish virtue in the same way. Paint a real picture. “
He added: “The Holocaust is not here to help Polish ego and morale, it is a drama involving the death of six million people – which seems to have been overlooked by the nationalists.”
Poland’s deputy foreign minister, Paweł Jabloński, described the case as a private matter. “It is the legal right of everyone to seek such an appeal before (one) court feels that their rights have been infringed by (another) person or entity,” Jabloński told AP. “The government is not involved in the process, it is a private matter to be decided by the court.”
However, those who fear that the case may stifle independent research have a different view.
“The involvement in this trial of a heavily subsidized organization with public funds can easily be interpreted as a form of censorship and an attempt to scare academics so that they do not publish the results of their research for fear of legal action and the expensive litigation that is taking place. Follow”. said Zygmunt Stępiński, director of the Polish Jewish History Museum POLIN in Warsaw.