WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Two Polish historians face libel lawsuit for a scientific investigation of Polish behavior during World War II, a case whose outcome is expected to determine the fate of independent Holocaust investigations under the Polish nationalist government .
A verdict is expected in Warsaw District Court on Feb. 9 in the case against Barbara Engelking, a historian from the Polish Holocaust Research Center in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa.
It’s the first major legal test in the wake of a 2018 law that makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The law caused a major diplomatic row with Israel.
Since the conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, took power in 2015, it has sought to discourage investigation of Polish misconduct during the wartime German occupation, preferring instead to focus almost exclusively on Polish heroism and suffering. Its purpose is to promote national pride – but critics say the government has condoned the fact that some Poles also participated in the German murder of Jews.
Israel’s Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem said the legal effort “constitutes a serious attack on free and open investigation.”
A number of other historic institutions have condemned the case as verdict approaches, with the Paris-based Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah describes it Tuesday as a “witch hunt” and “a nefarious invasion at the heart of research.”
The case revolves around a 1,600-page, two-volume historical work in Polish, “Night Without End: The Fate of the Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland,” co-edited by Grabowski and Engelking. A shortened English version will be published within a few months.
Grabowski and Engelking say they see the case as an attempt to discredit them personally and discourage other investigators from investigating the truth about the extermination of Jews in Poland.
“This is a case of the Polish state against freedom of inquiry,” Grabowski told The Associated Press Monday.
Grabowski, a Polish-Canadian whose father was a Polish Holocaust survivor, has faced significant anti-Semitic harassment from nationalists both online and at lectures in Canada, France and elsewhere.
The niece of a man in the village of Malinowo, whose wartime behavior is briefly mentioned, sues Grabowski and Engelking and demands 100,000 zloty ($ 27,000) in damages and an apology in the newspapers.
According to the evidence presented in the book, Edward Malinowski, an elder in the village, allowed a Jewish woman to survive by helping her to continue as a Gentile. But the survivor would also say he was complicit in the deaths of several dozen Jews.
The niece, Filomena Leszczynska, is supported by a group, the Polish League Against Defamation, which receives funding from the Polish government.
That organization argued that the two scholars were guilty of “defiling the reputation” of a Polish hero, who they claim played no part in harming Jews, and by extension the dignity and pride of all Poles. . The lawsuit was filed in court free of charge, as permitted under the 2018 law.
Mark Weitzman, Director of Government Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called “Night Without End,” a “carefully researched and found book … describing thousands of cases of Polish complicity in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.”
“The proceedings against these two internationally renowned scholars are nothing more than an attempt to use the legal system to muzzle and intimidate Holocaust science in Poland,” Weitzman said.
Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexed part of it to Germany and directly controlled the rest. Unlike other German-occupied countries, there was no collaborationist government in Poland. The pre-war Polish government and army fled into exile, with the exception of an underground resistance army that fought against the Nazis in the country.
Still, some people in Poland collaborated with the Germans in hunting and murdering Jews, in many cases people who had fled the ghettos and sought to hide in the countryside.
Grabowski said “Night Without End” is “multifaceted, and it speaks just as much of Polish virtue.” It paints a truthful picture. “
“The Holocaust is not here to help Polish ego and morale, it is a drama about the death of 6 million people – that seems to have been forgotten by the nationalists,” he said.
A Deputy Foreign Minister, Pawel Jablonski, described the matter as a private matter.
“It is everyone’s legal right to seek such remedy in (a) court if they feel their rights have been violated by (another) person or entity,” Jablonski told the AP in a statement Monday. “The government is not involved in the proceedings, it is a private matter for the court to decide.”
But those who fear the case could stifle independent investigation have a different view.
“The involvement in this process of an organization heavily subsidized by public funds can easily be understood as a form of censorship and an attempt to deter scientists from publishing the results of their research for fear of a lawsuit and the resulting costly lawsuits, ”said Zygmunt Stepinski, director of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.