WARSAW, Poland (AP) – A Warsaw court ruled on Tuesday that two prominent Holocaust researchers should apologize to a woman who alleged that her deceased uncle had been slandered in a historic work, citing alleged inaccuracies that suggested the Pole helped to kill Jews during World War II.
Filomena Leszczynska’s lawyers, 81, argued that academics wrongly damaged her good name and that of her family, violating her uncle’s honor. The family says he saved Jews during the German occupation of Poland during World War II.
The Warsaw District Court, however, did not decide that they should be forced to pay her 100,000 zlotys ($ 27,000), as her lawyers had demanded.
The case was observed closely because it was expected to set a precedent in the field of Holocaust research. The decision was not final, however, and Barbara Engelking, the author of the passage in question, said her side planned to appeal.
At stake here was Polish national pride, according to the plaintiffs, and according to the defendants, future independent research on an extremely sensitive issue.
Judge Ewa Jonczyk ruled that scholars, Engelking and Jan Grabowski, must submit a written apology to Leszczynska for “providing inaccurate information” about her uncle, Edward Malinowski. He was described in the testimony of a Holocaust survivor saying that he stole it during the war and contributed to the death of 18 Jews hiding in a forest near the village of Malinowo.
The judge highlighted discrepancies in the testimony, given at different times, by the Jewess whose testimony was the basis for the description of Malinowski’s behavior.
Malinowski was acquitted in a communist court in 1950 of being an accomplice to the 1943 murder of German Jews.
It is mentioned in a brief passage from a 1,600-page historical work, “An Endless Night: The Fate of the Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland”, which was co-edited by Grabowski and Engelking. They researched and wrote parts of it, along with other researchers.
Leszczynska is supported by the Polish League Against Defamation, a group that fights against harmful and lying representations of Poland.
Grabowski, professor of Polish-Canadian history at the University of Ottawa, and Engelking, founder and director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, are among the most prominent Polish Holocaust researchers.
They see the case as an attempt to discredit their general findings and discourage other researchers to investigate the truth about Polish involvement in the mass murder of German Jews.
Jewish rights organizations expressed dismay at the decision, arguing that any errors in academic papers should be left to other scholars to stand up for in a process of revisions and revisions. Mark Weitzman of the Wiesenthal Center said he feared this would have an “inhibiting effect” on academics and “open the door to other cases”.
The judge rejected the request for financial compensation, saying that such a value could have a negative effect on future scientific research.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Monika Brzozowska-Pasieka, denied that there was any attempt to stifle the research or the speech. She said that Leszczynska has not decided to appeal, but “the indemnity was not the most important claim of this action for the plaintiff. The apology was and is of the utmost importance. “
Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany during the war and its population was subjected to mass murder and slave labor. While 3 million of the country’s 3.3 million Jews were murdered, so were more than 2 million Christian Poles. Poles resisted the Nazis at home and abroad and never collaborated as a state with the Third Reich. Thousands of Poles have been recognized by Yad Vashem in Israel for risking their own lives to save Jews.
However, amid more than five years of occupation, there were also Poles who betrayed Jews to the Germans. The topic was taboo during the Communist era and each new revelation of Polish irregularities in recent years has generated an adverse reaction.
The defamation case raised concerns internationally because it comes amid a broader state-backed historic offensive, which critics say has largely masked Poles’ irregularities.
Poland’s conservative authorities do not deny that some Poles did harm to Jews, but believe that the focus on Polish transgressions obscures the fact that most of these deaths occurred under German orders and terrorists.
The Polish League Against Defamation is ideologically aligned with the country’s ruling party, and scholars believe the case is part of an effort supported by the government to promote its historical narrative.
“Night Without End” focuses on the fate of the Jews who escaped while the Nazis were “liquidating” ghettos and sending inhabitants to extermination camps. It documents cases of Jews who went into hiding, with those who survived thanks to the help of the Poles. It also presents extensive evidence of individual Poles who collaborated in betraying Jews to the Nazis.
At the center of the case was the testimony given in 1996 by a Jewish woman, born Estera Siemiatycka, to the USC Shoah Foundation, a Los Angeles-based group that collects oral histories from the Holocaust era. When she spoke, she changed her name to Maria Wiltgren.
Wiltgren, who is no longer alive, described Malinowski, the oldest in the village of Malinowo, as someone who helped her survive under an alleged “Aryan” identity, placing her in a group of Poles sent to work in Germany after she bought fake papers. But she also said that he stole her money and possessions. Two of her children testified that she considered him a “bad man”.
The book claims that Wiltgren “realized that he was an accomplice in the killing of several dozen Jews who had hidden in the forest and were handed over to the Germans, but she gave false testimony in her defense in her post-war trial. ”
The judge said Wiltgren gave a different narrative, more favorable to Malinowski, in other depositions.
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Associated Press researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed.