WARSAW – A Polish judge on Tuesday ordered two Holocaust scholars to issue a public apology for including “inaccurate information” in a two-volume academic study that investigated the role played by individual Poles in the killing of Jews during World War II Worldwide.
The order came at the end of a closely followed defamation trial brought by the niece of a wartime village mayor who, according to a Jewish survivor cited in a 2018 study co-edited by scholars, was complicit in the murder. of 18 Jews who took shelter from the Nazis in a forest in eastern Poland.
But the judge, Ewa Jonczyk, rejected a claim for $ 27,000 by niece Filomena Leszczynska, who was supported in her lawsuit by a partially state-funded organization dedicated to protecting the “good name of Poland and the Polish nation.”
Judge Jonczyk said she decided against the compensation because the court’s decisions “should not have a refreshing effect on scientific research”. She also rejected the requirement that the apology describe the mayor of Malinowo village, Edward Malinowski, as a “Jewish savior hero”. The book portrayed him as a thief and a Nazi collaborator.
The defamation case has caused alarm among Jewish groups and academics around the world, who fear that the nationalist government in Poland, led since 2015 by the conservative Law and Justice party, wants to restrict independent research on the Holocaust. The government has denied any involvement in the case.
Jan Grabowski, a professor of Polish-Canadian history at the University of Ottawa and a defendant in the case, told Wyborcza Gazeta, Poland’s leading liberal newspaper, that “I find it difficult to accept this particular decision.” He said he would appeal.
The second defendant is Barbara Engelking, a historian at the Polish Holocaust Research Center. “I don’t feel guilty,” she said after the verdict in a video statement.
Professor Engelking said that the questions “for which we must apologize have no basis in fact” She said that her account of the mayor’s actions during the war, which included helping and betraying Jews, was based on the postwar testimony of a Jewish woman whom he helped and also stole.
“This case shows that in the history of the Holocaust, there are no black and white situations,” said Professor Engelking.
The two scholars edited “Night Without End”, a 1,700-page study of Polish behavior under Nazi occupation from 1939 to 1945. During that time, about three million Jews were killed in conquered Polish territory, mainly in extermination camps Nazis, but also sometimes by their Polish neighbors.
The book infuriated nationalists by describing the complicity of individual Poles in the murder of Jews. This is something that patriotic versions of Poland’s history, which emphasize Polish suffering during World War II, have tried to avoid.
“The conclusion drawn from the numbers is bleak: two out of three Jews seeking ransom have died – most often because of their Christian neighbors,” wrote the scholars in the introduction.
Although he refused to award damages, the judge’s order for academics to post an apology on the website of Mrs. Engelking’s research center and send a written apology to Mrs. Leszczynska, the mayor’s niece in wartime , scored a victory for the Polish League Against Defamation, the driving force behind the case, and other nationalist clothing.
Maciej Swirski, the head of the League, welcomed the court’s decision, posting a message on Twitter that Mrs. Leszczynska is “fighting for all of us so that we don’t have to endure the stigma that historians attribute to us as perpetrators of the Holocaust”.
Jewish groups condemned the verdict.
“The history of the Holocaust requires independent academic research that should not be subject to inappropriate efforts by politicians and courts,” said a statement from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, a major sponsor of historical research on the Holocaust, and the World Jewish Restitution Organization.