LONDON and MOSCOW – An unusual blasphemy case in Poland over the Holocaust could affect the future of academic research, as well as the way the country experiences its treatment of Jews during World War II, lawyers say.
The case is the first of its kind to be brought before the Polish courts, as 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, which could affect the fate of Holocaust research in the country, and pose a “huge threat to freedom of speech.”
The case, against historians Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, depends on only one paragraph published in the two-volume 1,600-page volume they compiled, entitled ‘Night Without End: The Fate of Jewish 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 now deceased Edward Malinowski, the village elder of Malinowo, who allegedly robbed and saved a Jewish woman, Estera Siemiatycka, during World War II by finding her job as a forced laborer. If the Nazi authorities knew she was Jewish, she would have been executed.
Siemiatycka, who also died, testified at a trial in 1950 in defense of Malinowski for alleged cooperation with the Polish Nazi occupiers and he was acquitted of the charges.
In the disputed paragraph, the historians based their claims on a later interview that Siemiatycka gave to the Shoah Foundation at USC in 1996, which collects oral history from the Holocaust. In the paragraph the evidence is told and it is said that Siemiatycka ‘realized this [Malinowski] was an accomplice in the deaths of several dozen Jews who hid in the woods and were handed over to the Germans. The paragraph also stated that her testimony from 1950 was ‘false’.
“After the war ended, he [Malinowski] would have received the death penalty, ‘Siemiatycka said in 1996.’ I saved him, even though he did me a lot of damage. ‘
“This was the source I found most reliable for the reconstruction of the story of Estera Siemiatycka,” Engelking told ABC News.
Engelking told ABC News she believes Siemiatycka realized a ‘temporary and emotional’ and the book suggested that she testified to support Malinowski because she was grateful that he saved her life, and that she saved him despite wanted to compensate all the goods. evil 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 aiming to “clarify false information” about Poland’s past – claims that the paragraph in the book violated her personal rights by blaspheming ‘a Polish hero who hid Jews during World War II’. The RDI argued in court that Engelking had mistaken the village elder for another Malinowo resident of the same name when referring to trading activities between the two, and therefore the basis of their research was flawed.
“The paragraph indeed contains an error, namely the attribution of trade with Estera to [elder] sołtys Malinowski, but it does not in any way violate the personal rights of Edward Malinowski or his niece, “said Engelking. In the field of research, such errors are reported at most in reviews or in subsequent publications, and if the book has another addition, an appropriate amendment is made. “
Leszczyńska brought the case to the Warsaw District Court in June 2019 after hearing on the radio about the allegation, said Engelking, the founder and director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research. Leszczyńska sued the historians for 100,000 zlotys ($ 27,000) and apologized in several major newspapers last year.
“At first glance, the civil lawsuit at the heart of this story involves an old lady who wants to defend the good name of her family, who was allegedly attacked by the authors of a book ‘Night Without End’,” Grabowski said. told ABC News. “In reality, however, the whole matter was prepared, launched and funded by a militant right-wing, nationalist organization funded directly by the Polish state and serving as a proxy for the Polish authorities,” he added, referring to the RDI.
Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa, also did not rule out reaching the claims in the case.
“If the lawsuit is successful, the alleged assault on ‘national pride’ or ‘national identity’ could result in a lawsuit from someone threatening their ‘national identity’ by a given scholar,” Grabowski said. “In practical terms, this would put independent Polish scholars of the Holocaust in an impossible position. That is exactly the goal that the authorities want to achieve.”
Maciej Swirski, head of the RDI, told ABC News that the organization does not use state funds in the case, and rather relies on crowdfunding. He said the case had “nothing to do with preventing scientific research.”
‘The intent of this private lawsuit is to preserve the memory of Ms. “To protect Leszczyńska’s ancestor – the late Edward Malinowski, ‘a hero who saved Jews during the war’, he told ABC News.
Historians and various Jewish societies across Europe say the case could have potentially far-reaching consequences.
‘Such’ lawsuits are primarily intended to undermine the credibility and ability of the people sued to tax them financially, with high fines and legal costs, and to evoke a ‘cooling effect’, ie – in this case – to discourage other researchers from investigating. and to write the truth about the extermination of Jews in Poland, ”Engelking said.
The country has long struggled to master its wartime history. In 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland, but by the end of the war, 90% of them had died, while the remaining 300,000 survivors lived mostly 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 battle with Israel ensued over the adoption 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 it only a civil offense.
The current trial this month led to a tense correspondence between the Polish ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski, and the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel. Magierowski wrote the lawsuit is a ‘civil case’ and it would be a ‘malicious interpretation’ to view the trial ‘as an assault on the freedom of research’. The Polish Foreign Ministry did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
There is more at stake than freedom of inquiry, but control over national identity, say critics of the court case.
According to Gabriele Lesser, a journalist and historian specializing in the occupation of Poland, the history of complicity and protection, at the heart of Malinowski’s story, is the broader struggle of nationalists in the country for the role of Poland in the Holocaust. to handle.
“As Barbara Engelking remarked – with specific sources supporting it – that the same individual could save Jews as well as 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 rule on research that goes beyond their required area of expertise. ”
Mark Wiesenthal, director of government affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Simon Wiesenthal Center, a non-governmental organization that fights anti-Semitism in Los Angeles, said the court proceedings are an “attempt to use the legal system to bring science about the Holocaust into. to intimidate and intimidate the mouth. Pole. And the Paris-based Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah said the case was a ‘pernicious attack at the heart of research’.
“Let’s be honest: 100,000 Polish zlotys ($ 27K) is a lot of money in Poland,” Zygmunt Stępiński, director of the POLIN Museum, told ABC News. ” A Holocaust researcher will think twice before examining and publishing his / her findings in Poland. The new strategy is a form of censorship and intimidation of researchers before they publish their work, because they fear out of prosecution and defend themselves with legal costs. “
A verdict in the trial will be delivered on February 9.