LONDON and MOSCOW – An unusual libel case in Poland related to the Holocaust could affect both the future of academic research and how the country comes to grips with the treatment of Jews during WWII, proponents say.
The case is the first of its kind to be brought before Polish courts since a controversial 2018 law by the nationalist government made it a civil offense to make false accusations about Poland’s history in the Holocaust.
Jewish organizations and historians have warned that the outcome, expected on February 9, could be far-reaching – affecting the fate of Holocaust research in the country and posing a “huge threat to freedom of expression.”
The case, against historians Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, hinges on just one paragraph published in the 1,600-page two-volume collection they co-edited entitled ‘Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland . An English translation of the book will be published by the University of Indiana in April.
At the center of the case is the late Edward Malinowski, the village elder of Malinowo, who is said to have robbed and saved a Jewish woman, Estera Siemiatycka, in World War II by finding her job as a forced laborer. If the Nazi authorities had known she was Jewish, she would have been executed.
Siemiatycka, who is also deceased, testified in defense of Malinowski in a 1950 trial for alleged collaboration with the Nazi occupiers of Poland, and he was acquitted of the charges.
In the disputed paragraph, historians based their claims on a later 1996 interview that Siemiatycka gave to the Shoah Foundation at USC, which collected oral histories about the Holocaust. The paragraph related that testimony, saying that Siemiatycka “realized that [Malinowski] was complicit in the death of several dozen Jews hiding in the woods and handed over to the Germans. The paragraph also said her 1950 testimony was “false.”
‘After the war was over, he [Malinowski] would have been sentenced to death, “said Siemiatycka in 1996.” I saved him even though he did me much harm. “
“It was this source that I found the most reliable for reconstructing Estera Siemiatycka’s story,” Engelking told ABC News.
Engelking told ABC News that she believed Siemiatycka had a ‘temporary and emotional’ realization and the book suggested she gave testimony in support of Malinowski because ‘she was grateful to him for saving her life, she told him despite all the good things. wanted to pay back. angry that she had suffered from him. “
Filomena Leszczyńska, Malinowski’s 81-year-old surviving niece, with the help of the Polish Anti-Defamation League (RDI) – a government-backed organization that aims to ‘clarify false information about Poland’s past’ – has claimed that the paragraph in the book violated her personal rights by slandering “a Polish hero who hid Jews during WWII”. The RDI argued in court that Engelking had mistaken the village elder for another Malinowo resident of the same name when referring to trade relations between the couple, and that the basis of their investigation was therefore flawed.
“The paragraph does indeed contain an error, namely the attribution of dealing with Estera to [elder] sołtys Malinowski, but this is by no means contrary to the personal rights of Edward Malinowski or his niece, “Engelking said.” In the field of research, such errors are reported at most in reviews or subsequent publications, and if the book has any other addition, an appropriate change has been made. “
Leszczyńska brought the case to the Warsaw court in June 2019 after hearing the allegation on the radio, said Engelking, the founder and director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research. Leszczyńska sued the historians for 100,000 Zloties ($ 27,000) and demanded an apology in several major newspapers last year.
At first glance, the civil lawsuit at the heart of this story involves an old lady trying to defend her family’s good name, allegedly tainted by the authors of a book ‘Night Without End’, Grabowski told ABC News. “In reality, however, the entire lawsuit has been prepared, initiated and funded by a militant right-wing, nationalist organization directly funded by the Polish state and serving as plenipotentiary for the Polish authorities,” he added, referring to the RDI.
Grabowski, a history professor at the University of Ottawa, also denounced the range of claims in the case.
“Should the lawsuit succeed, the alleged attack on ‘national pride’ or ‘national identity’ could lead to a lawsuit against anyone who believes their ‘national identity’ is threatened by a particular scholar,” said Grabowski. This would, in practical terms, put independent Polish scholars of the Holocaust in an impossible position. That is exactly the goal that the authorities want to achieve. “
Maciej Swirski, the head of the RDI, told ABC News that the organization is not using public money in the case, and is instead relying on crowdfunding. He said the case had “nothing to do with the occurrence of scientific investigation.”
“The purpose of this private case is to protect the memory of Ms. Leszczyńska’s ancestor – the late Edward Malinowski, a hero who saved Jews during the war,” he told ABC News.
Historians and various Jewish societies in Europe say the case has potentially far-reaching consequences.
Such lawsuits are primarily intended to undermine the credibility and competence of the people who are taken to court to burden them financially, with severe penalties and legal costs, and to produce a “chilling effect”, ie – in this case – discouraging other researchers from investigating and writing the truth about the extermination of Jews in Poland, ”Engelking said.
The country has long struggled to come to grips with its war history. In 1939, 3.3 million Jews were living in Poland, but by the end of the war, 90% of them had died, while the remaining 300,000 survivors lived mainly in the Soviet Union, according to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
This is not the first time that Poland’s role in the Holocaust has been questioned in recent years. A diplomatic row ensued with Israel over the passage of the controversial 2018 law, which initially made it a criminal offense to make false accusations about Poland’s history in the Holocaust. The law was later amended to make this a civil offense only.
The current trial this month has given rise to a tense exchange of letters between the Polish Ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski, and the Center of Holocaust Survivor Organizations in Israel. Magierowski wrote that the lawsuit was a “civil case” and that it would be a “malicious interpretation” to view the trial as “an attack on freedom of inquiry”. Poland’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to ABC News’s request for comment.
More is at stake in the trial than freedom of inquiry, but control over national identity, critics of the lawsuit say.
The history of complicity and protection, which is at the heart of Malinowski’s story, encompasses the wider struggles that nationalists in the country have had when dealing with Poland’s role in the Holocaust, said Gabriele Lesser, a journalist and historian specializing in the occupation of Poland.
“As Barbara Engelking noted – with specific sources supporting it – that the same person can both save Jews and expose Jews,” she told ABC News. “This complexity is part of the reality of Jewish-Polish relations during the war … The nationalist camp that ‘defends national pride’ does not want to see this complexity. Judges are now placed in a situation where they have to decide on investigations beyond their required expertise. “
Mark Wiesenthal, director of government affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based NGO fighting anti-Semitism, said the legal process was an “ attempt to use the justice system to gag and gag the science of the Holocaust. to intimidate. Poland. ”And the Paris-based Foundation for the Remembrance of the Shoah said the case was a“ pernicious attack at the heart of the investigation ”.
“Let’s face it: 100,000 Polish Zloties ($ 27,000) is a lot of money in Poland,” Zygmunt Stępiński, the director of the POLIN Museum, told ABC News. “A Holocaust investigator will think twice before investigating and publishing his / her findings in Poland. The new strategy is a form of censorship and intimidation of researchers before they publish their work, for fear of prosecution and charging them with legal costs. “
A verdict in the trial will be handed down on February 9.