A court in Warsaw on Tuesday ruled that two historians had tarnished the memory of a Polish villager in a book on the Holocaust, and had to apologize, in some cases where academics warned that they were conducting impartial research on Poland’s actions during the World War II can be daunting.
More than seven decades later, the conflict remains a lively political issue in Poland, where ruling nationalists say studies indicating that some Poles were involved in the murder of Jews by Nazi Germany are an attempt to disgrace a country who suffered terribly in the conflict.
The court ruled that Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, editors of the two-volume work “Night without an end. Fate of Jews in Selected Provinces of Occupied Poland”, should apologize for saying that Edward Malinowski gave the Jews to the Nazis -German gave up.
But it stopped paying them to pay compensation.
“The court’s ruling may not have a cooling effect on academic research. According to the court, the advanced amount of 100,000 zlotys ($ 27,017) would be such a factor,” Judge Ewa Jonczyk said.
Polish academics and Jewish organizations such as Israel, Yad Vashem, have expressed concern that the trial could undermine the freedom of research, and Engelking said the case was intended to have such an effect.
“It’s undoubtedly an attempt to create a freezing effect, to show academics that there are issues that are not worth focusing on,” she said.
The World Jewish Congress said in a statement that it was “upset” by the ruling.
Engelking and Grabowski plan to appeal Tuesday’s ruling.
The case was brought by Malinowski’s 81-year-old cousin Filomena Leszczynska and funded by the Polish League against Defamation, which contradicts allegations of Polish involvement in the murder of Jews.
Leszczynska’s lawyer, Monika Brzozowska-Pasieka, argued that Engelking and Grabowski did not follow the correct research methodology during the compilation of the book, an accusation that Grabowski denied.
“Filomena is very pleased with this verdict,” Brzozowska-Pasieka said after the trial. “The question of compensation from the beginning was a secondary matter.”
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It is understood that nearly all of the 3.2 million Jews in Poland died during more than five years of Nazi rule, making up about half of the Jews estimated to have died in the Holocaust. A further 3 million non-Jewish citizens also died during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
An important study indicates that although thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews, thousands also took part in the Holocaust. Many Poles do not accept such findings.
In 2018, an international setback forced Poland’s ruling party (PiS) to drop a law that would make it a crime to suggest that Poland bears any responsibility for Nazi atrocities.