H eadlines
Poland’s Libel Ruling Worries Scholars
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
SCHOLARS ARE CONCERNED
about a recent Polish court
ruling that compels two
Holocaust historians to apolo-
gize for publishing their
research. “It’s important that anybody
who cares about scholarship,
intellectual inquiry, anybody
who believes that there’s value
to it, should find it really
distressing when a national
government is seeming to
support real impediments
on the freedom of academic
inquiry and exploration,”
said Lila Corwin Berman, a
professor of American Jewish
history at Temple University.

The case has sparked concern
in the international Jewish
community as it is the first
Holocaust-related scholarship case
to be decided since Poland enacted
its controversial 2018 legislation
that makes it a civil offense to
attribute Nazi Germany’s crimes
during the Holocaust to Poland or
its citizens.

The background to the
current libel case, which was
not tried under the new national
law, is this: Barbara Engelking,
a historian with the Polish
Center for Holocaust Research,
and Jan Grabowski, a Polish-
Canadian history professor at
the University of Ottawa, are
the authors of “Night Without
End: The Fate of Jews in Selected
Counties of Occupied Poland,” a
2018 book about the behavior of
Polish people and government
during the Nazi occupation.

In the book, the authors
brief ly mention Edward
Malinowski, the mayor of
Malinowo during the war, and
quote a Holocaust survivor
who said that Malinowski
robbed her and was complicit
in the death of a group of Jews
hiding in the woods. Filomena
Leszczynska, Malinowski’s
niece, believed those statements
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Monika Rice, assistant professor
at the Center for Holocaust Studies
and Human Rights at Gratz College
Courtesy of Gratz College
to be libelous, and in 2019 sued
Engelking and Grabowski.

On Feb. 9, Judge Ewa Jonczyk,
a district judge in Warsaw,
agreed with the 81-year-old
Leszczynska, and issued a
ruling saying the authors must
apologize for publishing incor-
rect information about her
uncle. Lawyers for Leszczynska
had asked Jonczyk to award
Leszczynska $27,000 in damages
and for the apology to describe
Malinowski as “a Jew-saving
hero.” The judge did not award
damages and rejected the
demand for specific wording.

Engelking and Grabowski
plan to appeal.

Though this case was
brought by an individual and
not related to the new national
law governing representation of
Poland during the Holocaust,
it is being seen within the
context of the country’s
increasingly aggressive efforts
to rehabilitate its World War
II-era image. In fact, The
New York Times reported
that the current libel lawsuit
was initiated by the Polish
League Against Defamation, a
partially state-funded organi-
zation dedicated to the “good
name of Poland and that of the
Polish nation.” It was PLAD,
the Times said, that alerted
Leszczynska to the book and
its reference to her uncle, and
then solicited funds to pay for
Michael Steinlauf, professor
emeritus at Gratz College
Courtesy of Michael Steinlauf
her legal representation.

Backlash to Judge Jonczyk’s
recent decision has been swift.

The Conference on Jewish
Material Claims Against
Germany released a state-
ment about the case, saying
that independent scholarly
research “must not be subject
to inappropriate efforts at
pressure by politicians and the
courts.” The Association for Jewish
Studies also issued a statement,
saying, “The use of judicial
pressure against scholars
because their academic work
demonstrates Polish culpa-
bility during the Holocaust
goes against the core values of
academic freedom.”
Yad Vashem and the United
States Holocaust Memorial
Museum also expressed
concern. The Polish government has
denied involvement in the
affair. Monika Rice, an assistant
professor at the Center for
Holocaust Studies and Human
Rights at Gratz College,
provided some context for the
recent decision.

In 2015, the conservative
nationalist Law and Justice
party came to power in Poland
on a wave of populist anger, Rice
said. Its supporters consisted
of a reactionary voting bloc
of nationalists who had been
disappointed by the lack of
economic security in post-
Soviet Poland. The party,
which emphasizes Catholicism,
nationalism and social conser-
vatism, provided a home for
that bloc, and is now the largest
party in the Polish parliament.

One of the party’s messages
was that Polish people should
be “getting off our knees” when
it comes to the Holocaust, and
refusing to accept responsi-
bility for German crimes, Rice
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