Jan Grabowski PhD
Jan Grabowski
Born	1962 (age 61–62) Warsaw
Nationality	Polish-Canadian
Occupation	Historian
Known for	The Holocaust in Poland 1939-1945 Polish-Jewish relations
Academic background
Alma mater	Université de Montréal
Academic work
Institutions	University of Ottawa
Notable works	Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland

Jan Grabowski (born 1962) is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa specializing in Canadian history, the Holocaust in Poland, and Jewish-Polish relations in World War II-era Poland. He is a co-founder of the Warsaw-based Polish Center for Holocaust Research.

He is best known for his 2013 book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland.

Early life

Grabowski was born in 1962 in Warsaw, Poland. His father, Zbigniew Ryszard Grabowski,^[1] was a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Kraków and participant in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising; his mother was Christian.^[2]

Grabowski studied at the University of Warsaw and was active in the Independent Students' Union between 1981 and 1985, where he recalls being involved in the operation of an underground printing press for the Solidarity movement. He received his M.A. degree from the University of Warsaw in 1986.^[3]

In 1988 Grabowski was invited to continue his Ph.D. work in Canada;^[2][4] travel restrictions had been eased by the communist government, and he was able to leave. He recalls thinking that "communism was this rock that would never budge".^[3] He said that if he had known that Poland's communist regime would fall a year later he would have stayed, but he does not regret moving to Canada.^[3] He received his Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal in 1994.

Academic career

Grabowski has been a faculty member at the University of Ottawa since 1993. He co-founded Warsaw's Polish Center for Holocaust Research, where he specialises in the Holocaust in Poland as well as in Jewish-Polish relations in World War II-era Poland.^[2] During 2016-2017 he was an Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he conducted research into the Polish Blue Police in German-occupied Poland.^[5][6]

Hunt for the Jews

In 2011 Grabowski published Judenjagd: Polowanie na Zydow 1942-1945,^[7] which was followed in 2013 by a revised and updated English-language edition, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland,^[8] and a 2016 revised and updated edition in Hebrew through Yad Vashem.^[2]

The book describes events of Judenjagd (German: "Jew hunt") from 1942 onwards, focusing on Dąbrowa, a rural county in southeastern Poland.^[9] Grabowski describes an entire mechanism set up to persecute Jews:

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.^[10]

According to Grabowski, Poles were responsible for the deaths, directly or indirectly, of more than 200,000 Jews during the Holocaust. While he held this estimate to be very conservative, as he did not include victims of the Polish Blue Police^[2] "The great majority of Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal. They were denounced or simply seized, tied up and delivered by locals to the nearest station of the Polish police, or to the German gendarmerie".^[2] several historians have pointed out methodological flaws in the estimate; the fact that the 200,000 number of Jews supposedly killed by Poles claimed by Grabowski exceed the overall number of Jews who had escaped the ghettos,^[11] Grabowski's failure to analyze witness statements, German statements and archival documents which contradicted his thesis,^[12] and his failure to properly identify the true number of survivors by "giving up" on "field research" once he arrived at his desired conclusion.^[13]

The book sparked a public debate in Polish media on the role of Poles in the Holocaust.^[14][15][16] The book was criticized by historians Grzegorz Berendt,^[17][18] Bogdan Musial,^[12][19] and Krystyna Samsonowska^[20] particularly for its estimate that Poles were either directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of 200,000 Jews during the Holocaust.^[21] Poland's embassy to Canada published a statement criticizing Grabowski for "groundless opinions and accusations".^[21] In response, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research and a large group of international Holocaust scholars published statements in defense of Grabowski.^[22][23][24]

In 2014 the book was awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize.^[16][25]

Controversy

After the publication of a favorable review of the book in a German newspaper, the Polish website Fronda.pl ran a piece with the headline, "Sieg Heil, Mr. Grabowski", accompanied by a photo of Joseph Goebbels. Grabowski sued the website for libel and won in 2017.^[2]

According to multiple media reports, Grabowski has faced harassment and death threats, leading to increased security patrols in his department at the University of Ottawa.^{[9][26][21][27][28]}

In June 2017, the Polish League Against Defamation released a statement signed by 134 Polish scientists protesting the "false and harmful portrayal of Poles and Poland during the Second World War and attempts to blame the Polish Nation for the Holocaust".^[29] The statement was sent to the University of Ottawa, to the colleges with which he was affiliated, and to the publishers of his books. The statement mentioned the German efforts to exterminate the Polish population itself, which made its occupation by Germany 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 alleges 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.^[29]

The Polish Center for Holocaust Research, which Grabowski is a member of, released a statement "In defence of Jan Grabowski's good name" signed by eight of its members, including Barbara Engelking, Jacek Leociak and Dariusz Libionka, saying that "None of the 134 signatories is a Holocaust historian" and that "All these economists, linguists, oncologists, chemists, nuclear physicists, engineers, constructors of electromechanical appliances, environmental geologists, ethnomusicologists, theatrologists and priest professors present themselves as Holocaust experts, but cannot even quote the sources they refer to."^[22][30] The Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa also condemned the attacks and expressed strong support of Grabowski.^[31] Finally, some 180 international historians of modern European history signed an open letter in Grabowski's defense, saying his work "holds to the highest standards of academic research" and that the Polish League Against Defamation puts forth a "distorted and whitewashed version of the history of Poland during the Holocaust era." The historians further said they considered the campaign against Grabowski to be "an attack on academic freedom and integrity."^[28]

Night without an End

In 2018 Grabowski co-edited, with Barbara Engelking, a Polish-language study on The Fate of the Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland (Polish title: Dalej jest noc, Night without an End^[32]). The 1,600-page, two-volume study comprises 9 sections, each by a different author associated with Warsaw's Polish Center for Holocaust Research, about a different county in Poland.^[33]

The book has been criticized by historian Jacek Borkowicz who, on analyzing the publication, concluded in an article in the nation-wide Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita (The Republic) that the book can give evidence for only some 40,000 Jews having perished due to Polish acts, and that it is difficult to understand why Grabowski has in media interviews estimated the number of Jewish victims of Poles during the Holocaust at 200,000.^[34]

Views

In 2016 Grabowski published a paper criticising what he called "the history policy of the Polish state". He wrote 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".^[35]

Grabowski 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 rewrite history by inflating the role of the rescuers. Grabowski describes the rescuers as a "desperate, hunted, tiny minority" who were the exception to the rule. The ghetto site, he says, should be dedicated to Jewish suffering, and not to Polish courage.^[36][37]

Grabowski has criticized the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews in World War II, in Markowa, which opened in 2016, for, according to him, being too limited in its approach. He believed that it should have provided what he believed was information and context about the Polish neighbors of the Ulma family and other persons who aided Jews.^[38] The garden of the museum will have plaques identifying the names of 1,500 towns where the nearly 6,700 Poles who aided Jews have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations.^[39] Grabowski has claimed in other interviews that this number represents very few among the Polish population, and that they feared their neighbors. He believes that Polish authorities are using the Ulma Museum to suggest that the "rescue of Jews was widespread in occupied Poland."^[2]

In 2018, following the Polish Parliament's adoption of a controversial Amendment to Poland's Act on the Institute of National Remembrance that would penalize "slandering or libeling the Polish nation" by accusing it of being complicit with the Holocaust, with imprisonment for up to three years,with the exception of historical research or artistic activity, Grabowski compared the new legislation to pre-1939 law that had stipulated punishment for slandering Poland.^[40] Grabowski said that the Israeli government should refrain from dialogue with the Polish government about changes to Poland's Holocaust law, as, "given the current level of expressed anti-Semitism, I don’t think that any official meetings on this topic should take place." He further said, "The mass murder of Polish Jews was not abstract. It happened inside the space of the Polish nation, so this is why you cannot pretend that this is only a German-Jewish affair. There are no Polish bystanders in the Holocaust."^[41][21]

Bibliography

• Historia Kanady, 2001, a survey of Canadian history in Polish.^[42][43]
• "Ja tego Żyda znam!" Szantażowanie Żydów w Warszawie, 1939-1943, 2004, covering blackmailing (szmalcownik) of Jews in Warsaw during 1939-1943. According to Grabowski, blackmailers were not from the social margins but were rather ordinary craftsmen, from good families.^[42][44]
• Rescue for Money: ‘Paid Helpers’ in Poland, 1939-1945 (2008), Search and Research Series, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem–The International Institute for Holocaust Research, 2008 ISBN 9789653083257. Discusses patterns of Poles' rescue of Jews, in particular, payments made by Jews to Poles for their aid.^[42][45]
• (with Barbara Engelking) Żydów łamiących prawo należy karać śmiercią! "Przestępczość" Żydów w Warszawie, 1939-1942, discussing criminal behavior in the Warsaw Ghetto.^[42][46]
• (with Barbara Engelking) Zarys krajobrazu: wieś polska wobec zagłady Żydów 1942-1945, 2011, discussing the situation of Jews trying to hide in the Polish countryside during the Holocaust.^[42][47]
• (edited with Dariusz Libionka) Klucze i kasa: o mieniu żydowskim w Polsce pod okupacją niemiecką i we wczesnych latach powojennych, 1939-1950, 2011, discussing the theft of Jewish property during the Holocaust and after the war.^[42][48]
• Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland,  Indiana University Press, 2013, 312 pp., ISBN 978-02-53010-74-2.
• (edited with Dariusz Libionka) Klucze i Kasa. Losy mienia żydowskiego w okupowanej Polsce, 1939-1945, Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą, 2014, 628 pp., ISBN 978-83-63444-35-8.
• ציד היהודים; בגידה ורצח בפולין בימי הכיבוש הגרמני, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, 2016, ISBN 9789653085312.
• (edited with Barbara Engelking) Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w [9] wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski, Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą, 2018, 1640 pp. (in 2 volumes), ISBN 978-83-63444-60-0.

References

External links

• Homepage at the University of Ottawa
• Biography on the website of Polish Center for Holocaust Research