WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Two Polish historians are facing a defamation trial for an academic examination of Polish behavior during World War II, a case the outcome of which should determine the fate of independent Holocaust research 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 Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa.
It’s the first major legal test following a 2018 law this 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 coming to power in 2015, the conservative ruling Law and Justice party has sought to discourage investigations into Polish irregularities during German occupation during the war, preferring instead to emphasize almost exclusively Polish heroism and suffering. The aim is to promote national pride – but critics say the government has been covering up the fact that some Poles also collaborated in the German 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 when the verdict approaches, with the Shoah Memory Foundation, based in Paris. describing it on Tuesday as a “witch hunt” and “a pernicious invasion at the very heart of the research.”
The case revolves around a historical work of two volumes and 1,600 pages in Polish, “An Endless Night: The Fate of the Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland”, which was co-edited by Grabowski and Engelking. A short English version will be published in a few months.
Grabowski and Engelking say they see the case as an attempt to discredit them personally and discourage other researchers from investigating the truth about the extermination of Jews in Poland.
“This is a case of the Polish state against freedom of research,” Grabowski told the Associated Press on Monday.
Grabowski, a Polish-Canadian whose father was a Polish Holocaust survivor, faced considerable anti-Semitic harassment by nationalists, both online and in lectures in Canada, France and elsewhere.
The niece of a man in the village of Malinowo, whose behavior during the war is briefly mentioned, is suing Grabowski and Engelking, demanding 100,000 zlotys ($ 27,000) in damages and an apology in the newspapers.
According to the evidence presented in the book, Edward Malinowski, a village elder, allowed a Jewish woman to survive by helping her pass as a non-Jew. But the survivor is also quoted as saying that he was an accomplice in the deaths of several dozen Jews.
Niece Filomena Leszczynska is supported by a group, the Polish League Against Defamation, which receives funding from the Polish government.
The organization argued that the two academics are guilty of “defiling the good name” of a Polish hero, who they claim has no role in harming Jews and, by extension, harming the dignity and pride of all Poles. The lawsuit was filed in court free of charge, as permitted by law 2018.
Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called “Night Without End” a “meticulously researched and obtained book … that details thousands of cases of Polish complicity in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust”.
“The proceedings against these two academics of international reputation are nothing more than an attempt to use the legal system to muzzle and intimidate studies on the Holocaust in Poland,” said Weitzman.
Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of it to Germany and directly governing the rest. Unlike other countries occupied by Germany, there was no collaborative government in Poland. The Polish government and pre-war military fled into exile, except for an underground resistance army that fought against Nazis within the country.
However, some people in Poland collaborated with the Germans in hunting and killing Jews, in many cases people who had fled the ghettos and sought to hide in the countryside.
Grabowski said that “Night Without End” is “multifaceted, and also talks about Polish virtue. Paint a real picture. “
“The Holocaust is not here to help Polish ego and morale, it is a drama involving the deaths of 6 million people – which seems to have been overlooked by nationalists,” he said.
A deputy foreign minister, Pawel Jablonski, described the case as a private matter.
“It is the legal right of everyone to seek such remedy before (one) court feels that their rights have been infringed by (another) person or entity,” Jablonski told the AP in a statement on Monday. “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 Stepinski, director of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.