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Jan Grabowski

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For other uses, see Jan Grabowski (disambiguation).

Jan Grabowski
Jan Grabowski 2018.jpg
Grabowski in 2018
Born1962 (age 58–59)
Warsaw, Poland
NationalityPolish-Canadian
OccupationHistorian
AwardsYad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research
Academic background
EducationUniversité de Montréal (PhD, 1994)[1]
Thesis'The Common Ground. Settled Natives and French in Montréal 1667–1760' (1993)
Academic work
Era
InstitutionsUniversity of Ottawa
Notable worksHunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (2013)
WebsiteHomepage, University of Ottawa

Jan Grabowski (born 1962) is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specializing in Jewish–Polish relations in German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust in Poland.[1]

Co-founder in 2003 of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, in Warsaw, Poland, Grabowski is best known for his book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (2013), which won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize.[2]

Early life and education

Grabowski was born in Warsaw to a Roman Catholic mother and Jewish father.[3] His father,  [pl], a Holocaust survivor and chemistry professor[4] from Kraków, fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.[5]

While at the University of Warsaw, Grabowski was active in the Independent Students' Union between 1981 and 1985, where he helped to run an underground printing press for the Solidarity movement. He received his M.A. in 1986,[6] and in 1988 he emigrated to Canada.[5] Travel restrictions had been eased by Poland's communist government. If he had known the regime would fall a year later, he would have stayed, he told an interviewer: "When I left in 1988 I thought there was no future for any young person in Poland. It felt like you were looking at the world through a thick wall of glass. It was sort of an un-reality ... the rules were oblique, strange, inhuman even. Then after one year the system seemed to collapse like a house of cards."[6] He received his Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal in 1994 for a thesis entitled The Common Ground. Settled Natives and French in Montréal 1667–1760.[7]

Academic appointments

Grabowski became a faculty member at the University of Ottawa in 1993.[5] In 2016–17 he was an Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he conducted research into the Polish Blue Police for a project entitled "Polish 'Blue' Police, Bystanders, and the Holocaust in Occupied Poland, 1939–1945".[8][9] He received a grant for the project (2016–2020) from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.[10]

Research

Hunt for the Jews

Main article: Hunt for the Jews

Grabowski is best known for his book Hunt for the Jews, first published in Poland in 2011 as Judenjagd: Polowanie na Żydów 1942–1945.[11] In 2013 a revised and updated edition was published by Indiana University Press as Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland,[12] and in 2016 a revised and expanded edition was published in Hebrew by Yad Vashem.[13][5]

Awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize in 2014,[2] the book describes the Judenjagd (German: "Jew hunt") from 1942 onwards, focusing on Dąbrowa Tarnowska County,[14] a rural area in southeastern Poland.[15] The Judenjagd was the German search for Jews who had escaped from the liquidated ghettos in Poland and were trying to hide among the non-Jewish population.[16] Grabowski relied on Polish court records from the 1940s, post-war testimony collected by the Central Committee of Polish Jews, and records gathered in Germany during investigations in the 1960s.[17] In a 2015 interview, he described the mechanics of the "hunt":

The German policy was based on terror. Poles faced the death penalty for any help they gave to Jews. Also, the Germans created a so-called "hostage" system among the Poles. In every community they designated people who would be rotated every couple of weeks. They were responsible for informing the Polish police, or the Germans, about Jews hiding in their towns. If a Jew was discovered that had not been reported, the so-called hostages would be harshly punished. So everyone was highly motivated to get rid of the Jews.[3]

According to Grabowski, most Jews in hiding were given up by local people to the Polish Blue Police or directly to the Germans. He said that Poles were "directly or indirectly" responsible for most of the deaths of over 200,000 Jews, not counting victims of the police; he explained that by "most", it could be 60 percent or as high as 90 percent.[5][a]

The book sparked a heated public debate in Poland.[17]

The Polish Police

Grabowski's book The Polish Police: Collaboration in the Holocaust (2017), published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is based on his 2016 Ina Levine Annual Lecture on the Blue Police.[9]

Dalej jest noc

Further information: Dalej jest noc

In 2018 Grabowski and Barbara Engelking co-edited a two-volume study, Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night without End: The Fates of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland). Published by the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, the study focused on nine counties in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust, giving a detailed account of the fate of the area's Jews and of the question of Polish collaboration with the German occupiers. Grabowski contributed a chapter on Węgrów County. He told a newspaper that the work "talks about Polish virtue just as much. It paints a truthful picture."[20]

Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said it was "meticulously researched and sourced".[20] Polish historian Jacek Chrobaczyński commended its authors for deconstructing political myths that persist in Polish history, journalism, church, and politics.[21]

However, scholars associated with Poland's Institute of National Remembrance alleged that the study used unreliable sources, selectively treated witness statements, presented rumor as fact, and underestimated the draconian nature of the German occupation.[22][23][24]

The Polish League Against Defamation funded a civil case against Grabowski and Engelking in Poland, brought by the 81-year-old niece of a Polish villager who was accused in the book by witness testimony of having betrayed Jews to the Germans. In February 2021, a Warsaw court ruled that Grabowski and Engelking must apologize for their claims about the villager, but it did not order them to pay compensation.[25][26] In response to the court ruling, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Yad Vashem, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center released statements expressing their concerns about the ruling's effects on academic freedom and freedom of speech.[27][28] The POLIN Museum stated that the suit had been "an attempt to frighten scholars away from publishing the results of their research out of fear of a lawsuit and the ensuing costly litigation."[29][30]

In August 2021, an appeals court overturned that ruling and dismissed the claims against the historians.[31]

Views

Summary

In 2016 Grabowski published a paper criticizing what he called "the history policy of the Polish state", and arguing that "the state-sponsored version of history seeks to undo the findings of the last few decades and to forcibly introduce a sanitized, feel-good narrative".[32] He has deplored plans for a monument to rescuers of Jews, to be located at Grzybowski Square, which was part of the wartime Warsaw Ghetto; he sees it as an attempt to inflate the role of the rescuers, whom he describes as a "desperate, hunted, tiny minority", the exception to the rule. The ghetto site should be dedicated, he argues, to Jewish suffering, not to Polish courage.[33][34]

Poland's embassy in Ottawa criticized Grabowski in 2016 for "groundless opinions and accusations" after he wrote an article for Maclean's about Poland's controversial amendment to its Act on the Institute of National Remembrance.[35] The amendment would have penalized, with imprisonment for up to three years, anyone defaming Poland by accusing it of complicity in the Holocaust,[36] with exceptions for "freedom of research, discussion of history, and artistic activity".[37][38]

The Markowa Ulma-Family Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews in World War II, in Markowa, Poland, March 2019

In July 2017, Grabowski criticized the Ulma-Family Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews in World War II, which opened in Markowa in 2016. The garden will have plaques identifying the 1,500 towns in which the nearly 6,700 Poles lived who helped Jews and were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.[39] In Grabowski's view, the museum should provide more information about the Polish neighbours of the Ulma family and others who aided Jews.[40]

Grabowski co-wrote a Haaretz opinion piece in December 2018 criticizing Israeli historian Daniel Blatman, professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for accepting the post of chief historian at the newly formed Warsaw Ghetto Museum in Warsaw, Poland, and thus agreeing to be "the poster boy of [Polish] state authorities bent on turning back the clock and distorting the history of the Holocaust".[41] In January 2019 Blatman responded in Haaretz that, while scholars at the Center for Holocaust Research had provided valuable insights into involvement in the Holocaust by parts of the Polish population, they did not give due weight to the terror and violence perpetrated by the Germans against Poles under German occupation.[42]

Responses

Since publication of Hunt for the Jews, Grabowski has become subject to significant criticism in Poland, particularly from groups associated with Polish right-wing spectrum. Some of them[which?] attempted to have him fired from his academic position, and he has faced harassment and death threats, leading to increased security patrols in his department at the University of Ottawa.[43][44][45]

On 7 June 2017 the Polish League Against Defamation released a statement signed by 134 Polish scientists protesting Grabowski's "false and wrongful image of Poland and Polish people".[46][47][45] The statement was sent to the University of Ottawa and to the publishers of his books and articles.[48] It referred to German efforts to exterminate the Polish population, which made its occupation of Poland different from western Europe's occupation; to numerous examples of Poles' assistance to Jews; and to Poland's international protests at the plight of the Jewish population. It alleged that assistance by Poles was often hindered by Jews' low proficiency in Polish, by mistrust created by Jews' affiliation with Soviet authorities, and by Orthodox Jews' mistrust of non-Jews.[46]

In response, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research issued a statement of its own a few days later, entitled "In defence of Jan Grabowski's good name". Signed by seven of its members, including Barbara Engelking, Jacek Leociak and Dariusz Libionka, it called the criticism "as brutal as it is absurd".[49] The Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa also expressed its full support for Grabowski, referring to his "highly respected scholarship".[45]

On 19 June 2017, some 180 Holocaust historians and other historians of modern European history signed an open letter in Grabowski's defence, addressed to Calin Rovinescu, Chancellor of the University of Ottawa. Describing the campaign against Grabowski as "an attack on academic freedom and integrity", the letter said that "[h]is scholarship holds to the highest standards of academic research and publication", and that the Polish League Against Defamation puts forth a "distorted and whitewashed version of the history of Poland during the Holocaust era". Signatories included Yitzhak Arad, Omer Bartov, Yehuda Bauer, Michael Berenbaum, Doris Bergen, Randolph L. Braham, Richard Breitman, Christopher Browning, Deborah Dwork, Michael Fleming, Mary Fulbrook, Christian Gerlach, Peter Hayes, Deborah Lipstadt, Antony Polonsky, Dina Porat, Alvin H. Rosenfeld and Robert Jan van Pelt.[47] Grabowski filed a lawsuit in Warsaw against the Polish League Against Defamation in November 2018. The suit asked that each of the 134 Polish scientists who signed the 2017 statement buy a copy of Dalej jest noc and donate it to a Polish high school.[50][18]

Selected works

  • (2001). Historia Kanady. Warsaw: Prószyński i S-ka. ISBN 978-8372550446 OCLC 169635941
  • (2004). "Ja tego Żyda znam!": Szantażowanie Żydów w Warszawie 1939–1943. Warsaw: Wydaw. ISBN 978-8373880580 OCLC 937072035
  • (2008). Rescue for Money: Paid Helpers in Poland, 1939-1945. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. ISBN 978-9653083257 OCLC 974380257
  • (2010, with Barbara Engelking). Żydów łamiących prawo należy karać śmiercią! "Przestępczość" Żydów w Warszawie, 1939-1942. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 839268317X OCLC 750651880
  • (2011, with Barbara Engelking). Zarys krajobrazu: wieś polska wobec zagłady Żydów 1942–1945. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 978-8393220243 OCLC 761074409
  • (2011). Judenjagd: Polowanie na Zydow 1942–1945. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 978-8393220236 OCLC 715338569
    • (2013). Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-02-53010-74-2 OCLC 900191796
    • (2016). ציד היהודים; בגידה ורצח בפולין בימי הכיבוש הגרמני. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. ISBN 978-9653085312 OCLC 993142125
  • (2014, with Dariusz Libionka, eds.). Klucze i kasa: o mieniu żydowskim w Polsce pod okupacją niemiecką i we wczesnych latach powojennych, 1939–1950. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 978-8363444358 OCLC 892600909
  • (2017). "The Polish police: Collaboration in the Holocaust". Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Ina Levine annual lecture, 17 November 2016).
  • (2018, co-edited with Barbara Engelking),\. Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night without End: The Fates of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland). Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów (Polish Center for Holocaust Research), 2 volumes (1,640 pp.). ISBN 978-8363444648 OCLC 1041616741
  • (2020). Na posterunku. Udział polskiej policji granatowej i kryminalnej w zagładzie Żydów (On Duty: Participation of Blue and Criminal Police in the Destruction of the Jews). Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec. ISBN 978-8380499867
  • (2021). Polacy, nic się nie stało! Polemiki z Zagładą w tle (Poles, Nothing Happened! Polemics with the Holocaust in the Background), Wydawnictwa Austeria.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "From among the approximately 250,000 Polish Jews who had escaped liquidations of the ghettos and who had fled, about 40,000 survived. We have thus more than 200,000 Jews who fled the liquidations and who did not survive until liberation. My findings show that in the overwhelming majority of cases, their Polish co-citizens were – directly through murder, or indirectly by denunciation – at the root of their deaths."[18]

    "So –... 200,000 Jews were murdered while hiding on the Aryan side?" – "Yes, and based on detailed analysis of the circumstances in which they perished, I formulated a research hypothesis that the majority – though at this stage of research I am not able to say whether it was 60 or 90 percent – lost their lives at the hands of Poles or with their complicity." (Original: "A więc –... ok. 200 tys. Żydów zostało zamordowanych, gdy się ukrywali po aryjskiej stronie?" – "Tak, i na podstawie szczegółowej analizy tego, w jakich okolicznościach ginęli, sformułowałem hipotezę badawczą, że większość – choć nie jestem na tym etapie badań w stanie powiedzieć, czy było to 60, czy 90 proc. – straciła życie z rąk Polaków albo przy ich współudziale.")[19]

References

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b "Jan Grabowski", University of Ottawa.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b "Professor Jan Grabowski wins the 2014 Yad Vashem International Book Prize", Yad Vashem, 4 December 2014.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b Snyder, Donald (12 January 2015). "The Summer Polish Jews Were Hunted" (interview with Jan Grabowski). The Forward.
  4. ^ "Zbigniew Ryszard Grabowski" (in Polish). nekrologi.wyborcza.pl. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Aderet, Ofer (11 February 2017). "'Orgy of Murder': The Poles Who 'Hunted' Jews and Turned Them Over to the Nazis". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 1 May 2018. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b Lough, Shannon (26 February 2014). "Twenty-five years since the fall of communism in Poland". davidmckie.com.
  7. ^ "The Common Ground. Settled Natives and French in Montréal 1667-1760". Université du Québec à Montréal.
  8. ^ "Fellow Dr. Jan Grabowski". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  9. ^ Jump up to: a b Grabowski, Jan (April 2017). "The Polish Police Collaboration in the Holocaust" (PDF). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 February 2018.
  10. ^ "Funded Research Projects", Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa.
  11. ^ Grabowski, Jan (2011). Judenjagd: polowanie na Żydów 1942-1945: studium dziejów pewnego powiatu. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 978-8393220236. OCLC 715338569.
  12. ^ Grabowski, Jan (2013). Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253010742. OCLC 868951735.
  13. ^ Grabowski, Jan (2016). ציד היהודים; בגידה ורצח בפולין בימי הכיבוש הגרמני. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. ISBN 978-9653085312 OCLC 993142125
  14. ^ Grabowski 2013, p. 3.
  15. ^ Tzur, Nissan (18 October 2013). "Holocaust writer Grabowski faces Polish fury". Jewish Chronicle.
  16. ^ Grabowski 2013, p. 1.
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b Fleming, Michael (April 2016). "Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland". European History Quarterly. 46 (2): 357–359. doi:10.1177/0265691416637313r. S2CID 147420141.
  18. ^ Jump up to: a b Lungen, Paul (22 November 2018). "University of Ottawa holocaust historian sues Polish group for libel", CJN
  19. ^ Maciorowski, Mirosław (17 March 2018). "Prof. Jan Grabowski: Pomagaliśmy Niemcom zabijać Żydów". Gazeta Wyborcza.
  20. ^ Jump up to: a b "Fears rise that Polish libel trial could threaten future Holocaust research". The Guardian. 3 February 2021. Retrieved 8 February 2021.
  21. ^ Chrobaczyński, Jacek (2018). "Osaczeni, samotni, bezbronni ... Refleksje po lekturze książki Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski ("Cornered, alone, defenseless... reflections on reading the book Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski). Res Gestae. 6, pp. 266–301.]
  22. ^ Domański, Tomasz (2019). Korekta obrazu? Refleksje źródłoznawcze wokół książki "Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski" ("A Corrected Picture? Reflections on Use of Sources in the Book Night without End: The Fates of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland"). Institute of National Remembrance. Polish-Jewish Studies.
  23. ^ Golik, Dawid (2018). "Nowatorska noc. Kilka uwag na marginesie artykułu Karoliny Panz" ("Innovative Night: A Few Remarks Relating to Karolina Panz's Article"). Zeszyty Historyczne WiN-u, 47, pp. 109–134.
  24. ^ Borkowicz, Jacek (10 February 2019). "Wraca spór o udział w zagładzie" ("Dispute over Participation in the Holocaust Returns"). Rzeczpospolita.
  25. ^ "Polish court tells two Holocaust historians to apologise". BBC News. 9 February 2021. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  26. ^ Charlish, Alan; Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Anna (9 February 2021). "Polish court orders historians to apologise over Holocaust book". Reuters. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
  27. ^ "Fears rise that Polish libel trial could threaten future Holocaust research". Guardian. 3 February 2021. Retrieved 31 July 2021.
  28. ^ "U of O Holocaust scholar ordered to apologize in Polish libel case". CBC. 9 February 2021.
  29. ^ Gera, Vanessa (4 February 2021). "Future of Holocaust research in Poland hinges on libel case". The Associated Press.
  30. ^ Glanville, Jo (12 February 2021). "'A gift for Holocaust deniers': how Polish libel ruling will hit historians". The Guardian.
  31. ^ "Polish appeals court dismisses claims against Holocaust book historians". Reuters. 16 August 2021. Retrieved 16 August 2021.
  32. ^ Grabowski, Jan (6 January 2017). "The Holocaust and Poland's 'History Policy'". Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. 10(3), pp. 481–486.
  33. ^ Snyder, Don (17 April 2013). "Poland Plans Monument to Righteous Gentiles on Site of Warsaw Ghetto". Forward.
  34. ^ Snyder, Donald (27 April 2014). "Poland's Dueling Holocaust Monuments to 'Righteous Gentiles' Spark Painful Debate". Forward.
  35. ^ Grabowski, Jan (20 September 2016). "The danger in Poland's frontal attack on its Holocaust history". Maclean's.

    "The Polish Embassy in Ottawa responds to Jan Grabowski". Macleans, 30 September 2016.

  36. ^ Zieve, Tamara (20 February 2018). "Polish historian: Penalties for new Polish law resemble pre-war punishment". Jerusalem Post.
  37. ^ "Communique of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on amendment of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance". Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Poland.
  38. ^ Aderet, Ofer (19 February 2018). "Polish Historian: Entering Dialogue With Poland on Holocaust Bill Is 'The Last Thing' Israel Should Do". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 24 August 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2018.

    Stoffel, Derek (20 February 2018). "Canadian historian joins uproar in Israel over Polish Holocaust law". CBC News.

  39. ^ Gieroń, Aneta (21 July 2017). "Przy Muzeum Ulmów w Markowej powstaje Sad Pamięci". Biznesistyl.
  40. ^ Aderet, Ofer (22 March 2016). "Polish Museum Honoring Poles Who Saved Jews Arouses Controversy", Haaretz.
  41. ^ Grabowski, Jan; Engelking, Barbara; Haska, Agnieszka; Leociak, Jacek (24 December 2018). "Why Is This Israeli Jewish Scholar a Willing Poster Boy for Poland's Brutal Distortion of the Holocaust?". Haaretz.
  42. ^ Blatman, Daniel (4 January 2019). "Warsaw Ghetto Museum Historian: A Tale of History, Force and Narrow Horizons". Haaretz.
  43. ^ Thorne, Stephen J. (14 February 2018). "The truth about Poland". Legion Magazine.
  44. ^ "A Polish Historian's Accounting of the Holocaust Divides His Countrymen". The Chronicle of Higher Education, 25 June 2012
  45. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Statement on Attacks against Professor Jan Grabowski". University of Ottawa. Archived from the original on 23 August 2018.
  46. ^ Jump up to: a b "The standpoint of Polish scholars affiliated with the Polish League Against Defamation on the activities of Jan Grabowski" (PDF). Polish League Against Defamation. 7 June 2017.
  47. ^ Jump up to: a b "Solidarity with Jan Grabowski". michael-wildt.de. 19 June 2017. Archived from the original on 23 August 2018.
    Gera, Vanessa (20 June 2017). "International historians defend Ottawa scholar who studies Poland and Holocaust", The Associated Press.

    Perkel, Colin (20 June 2017). "University of Ottawa scholar says he's a target of Polish 'hate' campaign". The Canadian Press.

  48. ^ "PLAD publishes a statement concerning the activities of Jan Grabowski" (PDF). Polish League Against Defamation. 7 June 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 August 2018.
  49. ^ "In defence of Jan Grabowski's good name" (PDF). Polish Center for Holocaust Research. 10 June 2017. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 August 2018.
  50. ^ Markusz, Katarzyna (18 November 2018). "Holocaust researcher sues Polish group that accused him of falsifying history". Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Further reading

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