LONDON and MOSCOW – An unusual case of defamation in Poland concerning the Holocaust has the potential to affect both the future of academic research and the way the country faces the treatment of Jews during World War II, defenders say.
The case is the first of its kind taken to Polish courts since a controversial 2018 law by the nationalist government considered it a civil crime to make false accusations about Poland’s Holocaust history.
Jewish organizations and historians have warned that the result, expected on February 9, could be far-reaching – affecting the fate of Holocaust research in the country and poses a “huge threat to freedom of expression”.
The case, against historians Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, depends on just one paragraph published in the two-volume, 1,600-page collection they co-edited, entitled “An Endless Night: The Fate of the Jews in Selected Counties in Occupied Poland. ”An English translation of the book will be published by Indiana University in April.
At the center of the case is the now deceased Edward Malinowski, the elder of the village of Malinowo, who in World War II allegedly stole and saved a Jewish woman, Estera Siemiatycka, when she found her job as a forced worker. If the Nazi authorities knew that she was Jewish, she would have been executed.
Siemiatycka, also deceased, 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 Shoah Foundation at USC, which collected oral histories of the Holocaust. Relating this testimony, the paragraph says that Siemiatycka “realized that [Malinowski] he was an accomplice in the death of several dozen Jews who were hiding in the forest and were handed over to the Germans. ”The paragraph also said that his 1950 testimony was” false “.
“After the war was over, he [Malinowski] would have received the death penalty, “said Siemiatycka in 1996.” I saved him, even though he did me a lot of harm. “
“It was this source that I found most reliable for reconstructing Estera Siemiatycka’s history,” Engelking told ABC News.
Engelking told ABC News that she believed that Siemiatycka had a “temporal and emotional” perception and the book suggested that she had testified in support of Malinowski because “she was grateful to him for saving her life, she wanted to give back to the good, despite all the harm she suffered from him. “
Filomena Leszczyńska, 81-year-old surviving niece of Malinowski, with the help of the Polish Anti-Defamation League (RDI) – a government-backed organization whose aim is to “clear up false information” about Poland’s past – said the paragraph in the book violated her rights personal by defaming “a Polish hero who hid Jews during World War II.” RDI argued in court that Engelking mistook the village elder for another Malinowo inhabitant with the same name when referring to the trade negotiations between the pair and, therefore, the basis of his research was flawed.
“The paragraph really does contain an error, namely the assignment to negotiate with Estera to [elder] sołtys Malinowski, but this in no way violates the personal rights of Edward Malinowski or his niece, “said Engelking.” In the research field, these errors are reported at most in reviews or in subsequent publications and if the book has another appropriate addition, changes are made. “
Leszczyńska opened the case in the Warsaw district court in June 2019 after hearing about the allegation on the radio, said Engelking, founder and director of the Polish Holocaust Research Center. Leszczyńska sued historians for 100,000 Zloties ($ 27,000) and demanded an apology in several major newspapers last year.
“Superficially, the civil litigation at the heart of this story involves a lady wanting to defend her family’s good name, allegedly tainted by the authors of a ‘Night Without End’ book,” Grabowski told ABC News. “In reality, however, the whole process was prepared, launched and financed by a militant right-wing nationalist organization funded directly by the Polish state and serving as a representative of the Polish authorities,” he added, referring to RDI.
Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa, also criticized the scope of the claims in the case.
“If the process is successful, the alleged attack on ‘national pride’ or ‘national identity’ can trigger a lawsuit by anyone who considers their ‘national identity’ to be threatened by any scholar,” said Grabowski. “This, in practical terms, would put Polish independent scholars of the Holocaust in an impossible position. Which is precisely the goal that the authorities want to achieve.”
Maciej Swirski, the head of RDI, told ABC news that the organization is not using government funds in the case and instead relies on crowdfunding. He said the case “has nothing to do with preventing scientific research”.
“The intent of this private process is to protect the memory of Ms. Leszczyńska’s ancestor – the late Edward Malinowski, a hero, who rescued Jews during the war,” he told ABC News.
Historians and several Jewish societies across Europe say the case has far-reaching implications.
“Actions of this type aim, above all, to undermine the credibility and competence of the people prosecuted to financially burden them, with high penalties and court costs, and to cause an“ inhibiting effect ”, that is, in this case, to discourage other researchers from investigating and write the truth about the extermination of Jews in Poland, ”said Engelking.
The country has struggled hard to face its war history. In 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland, but at the end of the war, 90% of them died, with the remaining 300,000 survivors living mainly in the Soviet Union, according to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
This is not the first time that Poland’s role in the Holocaust has been questioned in recent years. There followed a diplomatic dispute with Israel over the passing of the controversial 2018 law, which initially considered it a crime to make false accusations about Poland’s Holocaust history. The law was later amended to make it just a civil crime.
The current trial sparked a tense exchange of letters this month between the Polish ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski, and the Center for Holocaust Survivors’ Organizations in Israel. Magierowski wrote that the case was a “civil case” and would be an “evil interpretation” to consider the trial “an attack on freedom of research”. Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to ABC News’s request for comment.
There is more to the trial than freedom of investigation, but control over national identity, critics of the case say.
The story of complicity and protection, at the heart of Malinowski’s story, sums up the broader struggles that nationalists in the country have had to deal with Poland’s role in the Holocaust, according to Gabriele Lesser, a journalist and historian specializing in Poland’s occupation.
“As Barbara Engelking has pointed out – with specific sources supporting it – that the same individual could both save Jews and report Jews,” she told ABC News. “This complexity is part of the reality of Jewish-Polish relations during the war … The nationalist camp that ‘defends national pride’ does not want to see this complexity. Judges are now placed in a situation of having to decide on research that goes beyond their required area of expertise. “
Mark Wiesenthal, director of government affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based anti-Semitism NGO, said the lawsuit was an “attempt to use the legal system to muzzle and intimidate studies on the Holocaust in Poland. “And the Shoah Memory Foundation, based in Paris, said the case represented a” pernicious attack on the core of the research. “
“Let’s face it: 100,000 Polish zloties ($ 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 charging them for defense costs. “
The verdict of the trial will be given on February 9.