Prominent Canadian scholar slams Poland’s efforts to stifle Holocaust research

A renowned Holocaust scholar ordered by a Polish court to apologize for suggesting a man helped the Nazis kill Jews said on Tuesday the ruling was a direct blow to sensitive academic research.

The ruling, said Prof. Jan Grabowski, with the University of Ottawa, had to be seen in the context of efforts by Poland’s nationalist government to scrub Polish complicity in the murder of millions of Jews doing the Second World War.

“This is a fairly unprecedented verdict which strikes at the heart of what I as a historian do,” Grabowski said.

“This verdict, if upheld on our appeal, which will follow, means an end to independent research of the history of the Holocaust and, I would argue, of many other parts of Polish history which run contrary to the official myths and legends espoused by the Polish state today.”

Nine researchers, including Grabowski, spent six years writing a 1,700-page book called “Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland,” released in Polish in mid-2018. The tome contradicts the official line that Poles were exclusively victims of wartime atrocities.

“The results of this research have been greeted warmly by academia, and they were greeted with absolute fury by the nationalists governing in Poland right now and of course their electorate,” said Grabowski, who was born and raised in the East European country.

The backlash prompted one nationalist group to back a lawsuit by a woman against the professor and his co-editor, Barbara Engelking. The woman claimed that the book had defamed her uncle by citing a Jewish survivor as saying the man had helped the Nazis find and kill 22 Jews in eastern Poland in 1943.

“I became sort of a face to hate,” Grabowski said. “There are bad people out there, with vast support from different states, who want to write themselves a new history.”

Last week, the judge ordered the editors to make a written apology for “providing inaccurate information'” and “violating his honour.” The judge stopped short of ordering monetary compensation.

Defence lawyers were awaiting the judge’s written reasons before launching an appeal, a process Grabowski likened to diving into a swimming pool without knowing how much water was in it. At the same time, he suggested the deck was stacked, pointing to the avalanche of media criticism of his work, and the minister of justice’s expression of joy at the verdict.

“The damage probably has already been done,” said Grabowski, whose father was a Holocaust survivor. “The authorities in Poland have already won. Their goal was not actually to talk about history, it was to frighten people.” 

Given that Jews in occupied Poland had about a 1.5 per cent chance of survival, the scant witness testimony of those who did survive is crucial to Holocaust research. The court, the professor said, had now pronounced negatively on the validity of such testimony.

An atmosphere of “freezing cold” now permeates through the entire Polish education and academic systems, he said.

The only positive outcome, Grabowski said, has been the immense backing from researchers around the world.

“I’ve never in my life seen such an incredible amount of solidarity and support,” he said. 

Grabowski made his comments on a virtual forum co-organized by the New York-based YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 16, 2021.

Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press