Holocaust scholar says he’s a target of ‘hate’ campaign
An eminent Canadian historian whose writings on the Holocaust in Poland have attracted death threats said Tuesday that fierce criticism of his research is an unjustified attack on academic freedom.
In an interview, University of Ottawa Prof. Jan Grabowski, 55, said he would not allow the “campaign of hate” to distract him from delving into what he called an ugly, but littletold, piece of history.
“I feel personally attacked but this is for me a much more dangerous and general problem that has to be dealt with,” Grabowski told The Canadian Press from Ottawa. “It’s a pure and simple attack on basic academic freedoms, which we take for granted here in Canada. I’m dismayed.”
The history professor, who has spent years studying the Holocaust in Poland, maintains many Poles who killed Jews were not simply forced to collaborate with the Nazis, who occupied the country during the Second World War.
“They were realizing their own dream of a Jew-free Poland,” Grabowski said. “At the same time, they were very ardent opponents of the German occupation. Nothing is simple here.”
While no stranger to controversy over his views, what’s changed recently is that his critics are no longer content to denounce him in Poland. Now, he said, they have brought their criticism to Canada by writing directly to the university where he has worked for almost 25 years to accuse him of lying and fabricating historical evidence.
In two letters this month, the Polish League Against Defamation says Grabowski’s views are damaging to Poland.
“He falsifies the history of Poland, proclaiming the thesis that Poles are complicit in the extermination of Jews,” the leagues writes. “Grabowski fails to adhere to the fundamental rules of researcher’s credibility. He uses vivid and exaggerated statements to create propagandistic constructions, rather than to provide an honest picture.”
One of the letters is signed by 130 Polish scholars – none, he says, with any connection to Holocaust studies.
In 2014, Grabowski was given the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for his work “Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland,” an award the league called “disturbing.”