JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem said on Thursday that it was “deeply disturbed” by the implications of a defamation case in Poland in which two prominent Holocaust researchers were forced to apologize to a woman for allegedly slandering his uncle about his actions during the war.
Filomena Leszczynska’s lawyers, 81, argued that scholars slandered her late uncle, Edward Malinowski, by suggesting that he helped kill Jews during World War II. The family says he saved Jews during the German occupation of Poland.
His supporters portray the controversial case as a defense of Polish national pride, while critics say it threatens the future of independent research on the Holocaust at a time when authorities are advancing a nationalist narrative at odds with conventional studies.
In a separate development, the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw criticized the appointment of a former member of a radical right-wing group to a position at the country’s state historical institute.
In a statement on the defamation case, Yad Vashem emphasized the importance of academic freedom and said that any attempt to limit it through political or legal pressure was “unacceptable”.
He defended the two researchers, Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, and the book they co-edited and partially wrote: “An Endless Night: The Fate of the Jews in Selected Counties in Occupied Poland”.
“As with all research, this volume on the fate of Jews during the Holocaust is part of an ongoing discussion and, as such, is subject to criticism in the academy, but not in the courts,” said Yad Vashem.
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.
The University of Ottawa issued a statement promising its “unwavering support” to Grabowski and reiterating its commitment to academic freedom.
Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany during the war and its population was subject 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 Polish Poles. Poles resisted the Nazis at home and abroad and never collaborated as a state with the Third Reich. Thousands of Poles were recognized by Yad Vashem 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.
Leszczynska was supported by the Polish League Against Defamation, which is ideologically aligned with Poland’s ruling party. Scholars believe the case is part of a government-backed effort to promote an impeccable narrative of heroism in the face of the occupation.
Stanislaw Zaryn, a spokesman for Poland’s secret services, accused the media of “slandering Poland in the international arena” and undermining the country’s “information security” by reporting the case.
The Israeli Embassy, however, said it was “surprised” to learn that Tomasz Greniuch, the newly appointed head of the Wroclaw section of the National Memory Institute, “sees nothing wrong with raising his hand in the Nazi salute”.
According to Polish media, Greniuch has already raised his hand in a Nazi salute and organized demonstrations to commemorate anti-Semitic disturbances before World War II. The state institute defended the nomination, saying he was young at the time.
“In Poland, in a country that has suffered so much from the Nazi occupation, there should be no place for the use of Nazi symbols,” said the embassy.
He urged Greniuch to visit the Auschwitz Museum in the former extermination camp, where German Nazi forces killed 1.1 million people in occupied Poland.
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Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.