WARSAW, Poland (PA) – Two Polish historians face a libel lawsuit for a scientific examination of Polish behavior during World War II, a case whose outcome is expected to determine the fate of independent Holocaust research under the nationalist government of Poland.
A verdict is expected in the district court in Warsaw on February 9 in the case against Barbara Engelking, a historian at the Polish Holocaust Research Center in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, a history professor at the University of Ottawa.
It is the first major legal test following a 2018 law which makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The law provoked a major diplomatic spit on Israel.
Since gaining power in 2015, the ruling Conservative Party, Law and Justice, has tried to discourage investigations into Polish wrongdoing during the German war occupation, preferring to focus almost exclusively on Polish heroism and suffering. The aim is to promote national pride – but critics say the government has whitewashed the fact that some Poles also collaborated in the German killing of Jews.
The Israeli Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, said the legal effort “is a serious attack on free and open research.”
A number of other historic institutions have condemned the case as the verdict approaches, with the Foundation for the Holocaust in Paris. describing it as a “witch hunt” and a “dangerous invasion at the heart of research” on Tuesday.
The case focuses on a 1,600-page, two-volume historical work in Polish, “Endless Night: The Fate of Jews in Selected Countries in Occupied Poland,” which was co-edited by Grabowski and Engelking. An abbreviated English version is due out 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 the freedom of research,” Grabowski told The Associated Press on Monday.
Grabowski, a Polish-Canadian whose father was a survivor of the Polish Holocaust, faced considerable anti-Semitic harassment by nationalists, both online and at lectures in Canada, France and elsewhere.
The niece of a man from the village of Malinowo, whose war behavior is briefly mentioned, is suing Grabowski and Engelking, demanding damages of 100,000 zlotys ($ 27,000) and an apology in the newspapers.
According to the evidence presented in the book, Edward Malinowski, an old man from the village, allowed a Jew to survive by helping her pass as a non-Jew. But the survivor is also quoted as saying that he was complicit in the deaths of dozens of Jews.
Her niece, Filomena Leszczynska, was supported by a group, the Polish Anti-Defamation League, which receives funding from the Polish government.
This organization claimed that the two scholars are guilty of “defiling the good name” of a Polish hero, which they claim has no role in harming the Jews and, by extension, harms the dignity and pride of all Poles. The lawsuit was filed in court for free, in accordance with the 2018 law.
Mark Weitzman, Director of Government Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called “Endless Night,” a “meticulously researched and obtained book … detailing thousands of cases of complicity by Poles in killing Jews during the Holocaust.”
“The proceedings against these two internationally renowned researchers are nothing more than an attempt to use the legal system to clog and intimidate the Holocaust scholarships in Poland,” Weitzman said.
Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of it and directly governing the rest. Unlike other German-occupied countries, there was no collaborative government in Poland. The pre-war Polish government and the army fled into exile, with the exception of an underground resistance army that fought the Nazis inside the country.
However, some people in Poland collaborated with the Germans in hunting and killing Jews, in many cases people who fled the ghettos and sought to hide in the countryside.
Grabowski said that “Endless Night” is “multifaceted and talks just as much about Polish virtue.” It makes a true picture. ”
“The Holocaust is not here to help the Polish ego and morale, it is a drama involving the death of 6 million people – which seems to be forgotten by nationalists,” he said.
A deputy foreign minister, Pawel Jablonski, described the case as a private matter.
“It is everyone’s legal right to seek such an appeal before the court (a) if it considers that their rights have been violated by (another) person or entity,” Jablonski said Monday AP in a statement . “The government is not involved in the proceedings, it is a private matter to be decided by the court.”
However, those who fear that the case could stifle independent research have a different view.
“The involvement of a publicly funded organization in this process can easily be interpreted as a form of censorship and an attempt to scare researchers from publishing the results of their research for fear of a lawsuit and costly litigation that follows.” said Zygmunt Stepinski, director of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.