MALINOWO, Poland – From a forest on the edge of this small town in eastern Poland, a distant and mostly forgotten local horror echoes widely. The 30 villagers living nearby have reached a courtroom in Warsaw, and it is now radiating worldwide distress over the rewriting of Holocaust history.
The case has its origins in the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II, when terrified Jews hid in the woods and, according to a survivor quoted in a recent Polish study of the Holocaust, were killed there after the war mayor of Malinowo , a Pole, told the Nazis about their refuge.
However, the horror has now resurfaced, revived by a defamation case against two scholars who edited the study and who are accused of inciting the honor of the long-dead mayor and the Polish nation. A verdict in the case, handed down by the mayor’s elderly nephew with the support of bodies partially funded by the Polish government, is expected on Tuesday.
The targets of the libel are Jan Grabowski, a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa, and Barbara Engelking, a historian of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research. Together they edited ‘Night Without End’, a 1700-page 2018 study on the role individual Poles played in aiding Nazi assassination.
“In a normal world, this case would have been rejected long ago,” Professor Grabowski said in an interview. “But Poland can no longer be considered a normal democracy,” he added, accusing the ruling party for law and justice of initiating a “reconquest of history” by relying on Poland’s own suffering during the war. focus and disregard the complicity in Nazi crimes against Jews.
The Polish government denies any involvement in the defamation case. But it helped make this possible by amending the law in 2020 to waive court costs for all cases related to ‘the Polish Nation’s struggle against Nazism and Communism’.
In a sign that the libel case is not an isolated incident, police in Eastern Poland recently summoned the editor of an online website about Jewish life to ask why she ‘insulted the Polish nation’ by writing that ‘Polish participation in the Shoah a historical fact. ”
Before it was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe. As the war escalated and Hitler used his former Soviet ally, conquered Polish lands became the focus of the Nazis’ final solution, with about three million Jews – half the total number killed across Europe – killed in Poland, mostly in death camps like Auschwitz. and Treblinka.
But Poland has never installed a co-operative government and is proud of it record of fierce resistance against the Nazis.
However, this pride has gained an aggressive, intolerant lead since the rule of law and justice in 2015. He sought to criminalize any question of the Polish war period and poured money into research groups and museum projects representing Poland as the eternal Europe. and completely blameless victim, a “Christ of Nations” repeatedly crucified by foreign powers.
Walentyna Golaszewska, a 64-year-old Malinowo resident, said she grew up hearing stories about how her grandparents took food to Jews hiding in the woods. She was shocked to learn that the then mayor, Edward Malinowski, was now accused of aiding and abetting their murder.
‘I thought this whole thing would disappear with my grandfather’s generation. It all happened over 70 years ago and everyone is dead now. “None of us can really know the truth,” she said.
She recently ordered a copy of the study compiled by Professor Grabowski because she wanted to learn more about events that have been obscured for so many years by family legend and gossip.
“It’s very difficult to explain why one person helps and kills another,” she said.
It is also difficult to explain, she added, why the mayor’s niece, Filomena Leszczynska, decided to marry Professor Grabowski and me. To sue Angel for defamation and damages of about $ 27,000.
The cousin, who is almost blind and lives on the edge of town next to her family’s farm, did not want to be questioned. A young family member said she was too ill to talk.
Professor Grabowski and his supporters believe the case originated with nationalist groups close to the government, such as the Polish League against Defamation, which receive money from the state.
In a telephone interview, Maciej Swirski, the head of the League Against Defamation, denied that he acted on behalf of the state or the Law and Justice Party. But he admitted that he helped start the defamation case. He said he had traveled to Malinowo and to me. Leszczynska said he found errors in the book, proving that her uncle was maligned.
Swirski said his organization raised money from private donors to pay Leszczynska’s lawyers and fund her case.
The defamation charge alleges that the scholars maliciously smeared the mayor as a murderer when he ‘hid Jews and acted absolutely selflessly’. His niece, the complaint says, was ‘very hurt’ and wanted to ‘keep alive the memory of her heroic uncle’.
Critics of the action see it as a struggle to silence independent historical science. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and research center, condemned it as “a serious attack on free and open research” and said it was “unacceptable” to restrict academic study by judicial or political pressure. ‘
Professor Grabowski admits that the study is wrong by merging the history of two former Malinowo mayors of the same name, Edward Malinowski. But, he said, this mistake sets me. Leszczynska’s uncle in a better light because it was attributed to him by his younger namesake acts of kindness towards Jews.
In 2012, shortly before his death, the younger Edward Malinowski was invited by Jewish groups to attend a ceremony in the Malinowo Forest that adorned a stone memorial with a star of David.
“The war ended 75 years ago, but it is still alive and well. It will last forever, “said Zygmunt, son of Mr. Malinowski, recalled on Saturday during a visit to the memorial.
According to him, Poland must admit that it was not only Nazis who killed Jews. But in eastern Poland, “Poland suffered no less than the Jews,” he said.
The defamation case received extensive favorable coverage from media controlled by the Party Law and Justice party and the book in the middle of the case was condemned by the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body that led to the restriction of history . , patriotic path. The institute has prosecuting powers to enforce which has been an official mission since 2018 that includes protecting the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation.
The fact that Poland suffered terribly during the Nazi occupation and sometimes helped Jews is a foregone conclusion, said David Silberklang, senior historian at Yad Vashem in Israel.
“No scholar with any credentials will say that Poland is evil, that Poland is completely indifferent to the fate of Jews,” he said. Silverklang said in a telephone interview. “It was a very complex situation.”
Of the 27,712 people classified by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations – non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust – more than 7,000 are Polish, far more than from any other country.
However, Polish heroism coexists with sometimes monstrous acts of violence, a fact that the Law and Justice Party and nationalist outfits have struggled to obscure. In one episode in July 1941, villagers in Jedwabne, northeast of Warsaw, locked more than 300 Jews, neighbors with whom they had previously lived peacefully, in a barn and set it on fire, killing everyone.
The government caused international outrage in 2018 when it enacted legislation that would make it a criminal offense to accuse the Polish nation of complicity in the Holocaust. The law was amended to replace criminal penalties with less severe civil sanctions.
The defamation case against Professor Grabowski and Mrs. However, Engelking has raised concerns that the government and its allies are now taking offense instead of trying to institute a wart-free, patriotic version of history.
“There is a coordinated campaign going on to change history in a way that is comfortable for the government,” he said. Silberklang, the historian of Yad Vashem, said.
The current mayor of Malinowo, Grzegorz Zaremba, a dairy farmer, said he first heard of the anger over the killings last month.
“Suddenly everyone was talking about our town,” he said. Zaremba said, ‘but no one really knows the truth about what happened here. Those who do are all dead. ”
Anatol Magdziarz reported on Warsaw.