Israeli Holocaust institutes support Polish scholar targeted by “disgraceful political attacks”

Israel’s leading Holocaust institutes – including the Yad Vashem state remembrance centre – have published a statement in support of the Polish scholar who has faced criticism in her homeland – including from the government – for saying that Poles did little to help Jews during the war.

Barbara Engelking has also this week received backing from a group of over 300 Polish and international academics, as well as leading research institutions in Poland.

It comes after her comments were condemned by Poland’s prime minister, who called them part of an “anti-Polish narrative”. A politician from the ruling party has filed a request for prosecutors to investigate Engelking for insulting the Polish nation, a crime that carries a prison sentence of up to three years.

The Polish broadcasting regulator has also launched an investigation into the US-owned TV station that aired her remarks and the education minister has said he will not approve funding for academics who “insult Poles and the Polish nation, the greatest victim of WWII”.

“We wish to express our definite support for Prof. Barbara Engelking,” wrote the group of 11 Israeli institutions, which includes the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum and Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust.

They describe Engelking as a “pioneering scholar in the field of Holocaust studies” whose work is a “cornerstone for every student and scholar in Israel, Poland and worldwide”.

“We condemn the political attempts to question her integrity and research,” concluded their letter. “These disgraceful attacks also violate academic freedom and historical facts.”

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Earlier this week, the Scientific Council of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), where Engelking works, also issued a statement expressing “its indignation at the words of the prime minister and complete solidarity with Prof. Engelking”.

They noted that Engelking is “one of the world’s most eminent experts on the Holocaust” and that her recent remarks were “based on many years of research” and were presented in “a measured and non-aggressive way”.

“It is a dangerous situation when the prime minister of a democratic state, using the authority of his office, launches an ideologically motivated attack on an independent academic,” added the council, which also condemned the words of the education minister, Przemysław Czarnek.

Meanwhile, over 300 scholars of the Second World War, the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations have signed a letter expressing their opposition to the “hate campaign” and “political attack” against Engelking, which they said appeared to be part of the government’s ongoing reelection campaign.

“We regard such censorious tendencies and the notion that the continued financing of academic institutions should be conditional upon whether the research produced within them meets the expectations of politicians as extremely dangerous and unacceptable,” they wrote.

Among the 335 signatories so far are François Guesnet, a professor of Jewish History at University College London, Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale, and Steven Seegel, a professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Meanwhile, Poland’s two foremost Polish-Jewish historical institutions – the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH) – also issued a joint statement condemning the “brutal personal attack” against “an outstanding authority in her field”.

They defended her “thoughtful and empathetic” remarks on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising anniversary, in which she had “emphasised the role of those Poles who, in extremely difficult conditions, tried to help their Jewish neighbours”.

However, “there were not many [such Poles], because there are never many heroes”, wrote the Jewish institutions. Therefore they “deserve honour and respect all the more”.

Engelking’s remarks that Jews in the ghetto were disappointed with the lack of help from Poles outside are simply a historical fact borne out by “numerous diaries, eyewitness accounts, and even poetry”, added the statement.

Main image credit: M. JAŹWIECKI / MUZEUM HISTORII ŻYDÓW POLSKICH (press material)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.