More than seven decades later, the conflict remains a topical political issue in Poland, where the ruling nationalists say that studies showing some Poles’ complicity in the murder of Jews by Nazi Germany are an attempt to dishonor a country that suffered greatly from the conflict.
The court ruled that Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, editors of the two-part work “Night without end. The fate of Jews in selected counties of occupied Poland”, should apologize for the fact that Edward Malinowski had ceded Jews to the Nazi regime. Germans.
But it stopped ordering them to pay compensation.
“The court ruling should not have a cooling effect on academic research. In the opinion of the court the requested sum of 100,000 zloty ($ 27,017) would be such a factor,” said Judge Ewa Jonczyk.
Polish academics and Jewish organizations such as Israel’s Yad Vashem had expressed concerns that the process could undermine freedom of inquiry, and Engelking said the case was aimed at having such an effect.
“There is no doubt that this is some sort of attempt to create a freezing effect, to show academics that there are issues that are not worth focusing on,” she said.
The Jewish World Congress said in a statement it was “appalled” at the ruling.
Engelking and Grabowski plan to appeal the verdict on Tuesday.
Fight for the past
The case was filed by Malinowski’s 81-year-old niece, Filomena Leszczynska, and funded by the Polish League Against Defamation, which opposes claims of Polish involvement in the murder of Jews.
Leszczynska’s lawyer, Monika Brzozowska-Pasieka, argued that Engelking and Grabowski did not follow proper research methodology when compiling the book, an accusation that Grabowski denied.
“Filomena is extremely pleased with this verdict,” Brzozowska-Pasieka said after the trial. “The issue of compensation from the outset was a secondary issue.”
Almost all 3.2 million Jews in Poland are said to have died during more than five years of Nazi rule, accounting for about half of the Jews estimated to have died in the Holocaust. Another 3 million non-Jewish citizens also died under the Nazi occupation of Poland.
A significant amount of research suggests that while thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews, thousands also participated in the Holocaust. Many Poles do not accept such findings.
In 2018, an international backlash forced the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party to repeal a law that would have made it a crime to suggest that Poland had some responsibility for Nazi atrocities.
Grabowski told Reuters before Tuesday’s ruling that the case covered similar ground to the proposed law by attempting to establish an infringement of national dignity as grounds for prosecuting such claims in the future.
Brzozowska-Pasieka denied that the case was aimed at introducing new lawsuits, but was simply trying to protect her client’s personal rights.