Far-right MP forces abandonment of Holocaust scholar’s lecture at German institute in Warsaw

A lecture by Polish-Canadian Holocaust scholar Jan Grabowski at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw had to be abandoned yesterday after a far-right leader disrupted the event and reportedly told the institute’s director to “get out of Poland”. Another nationalist leader led a protest outside the venue.

Grabowski, the Warsaw-born son of a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor and a professor of history at the University of Ottawa, has long received criticism from right-wing figures in Poland over his research into crimes against Jews committed by Poles during World War Two, which critics say he has exaggerated and misrepresented.

Yesterday, he was due to give a lecture entitled “The (growing) Polish problem with the history of the Holocaust” co-organised by the German Historical Institute, the University of Warsaw’s history department, and the Max Weber Foundation.

According to a description by the organisers, the lecture would address “attempts to falsify the history of the Holocaust…by both the Polish authorities and independent organisations” with the aim of “defending the good name of Poland”.

However, 20 minutes into the lecture, it was disrupted by Grzegorz Braun, one of the leaders of the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party. Braun has a long history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, including claiming that the US and Israel are involved in a plot to turn Poland into a “Jewish state”.

Braun, who had been sitting in the audience, reportedly ripped out the microphone being used for the lecture and knocked over loudspeakers before occupying the rostrum. “This lecture is over,” he announced, according to news website Onet.

After the director of the German Historical Institute, Milos Reznik, asked Braun not to damage their equipment and to leave the room, the MP told him: “A German in Warsaw teaching me not to destroy something! Get out of Poland”. Reznik is in fact Czech, not German.

Police were called to the scene, but Braun told them he “refuses to leave the building [because] I am protecting the Polish nation against a provocative attack on our historical sensitivity”, reports the Do Rzeczy weekly. “The Germans will not teach us history in Poland.”

Braun himself later tweeted that he had intervened to “put an end to this type of provocation against the Polish nation [by] a person known for his anti-Polish, counterfactual, historical propaganda spinning a narrative in which Polish patriots are cast as villains”.

Eventually, the organisers announced that the lecture was cancelled and asked participants to leave. Outside, they were met by a further protest led by Robert Bąkiewicz, a prominent nationalist figure.

His supporters held signs saying “Poles were victims” and “German crimes. German Responsibility”. They chanted Braun’s name and shouted insults at guests leaving the lecture, reports the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

Afterwards, Grabowski told the newspaper that “nothing like this has ever happened to me. I felt like [I was] in Poland in the 1930s”. That decade saw a growing anti-Jewish campaign in Poland involving far-right groups and the right-wing National Democracy (Endecja) movement.

Ahead of the event, Grabowski’s planned lecture had been criticised by public media – which are under the influence of the national-conservative ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party – and some state institutions and figures associated with them.

Rafał Leśkiewicz, spokesman for the state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), told state broadcaster TVP that “there is no problem with the history of the Holocaust in Poland, contrary to what is suggested by the title of Professor Grabowski’s lecture”.

“Unfortunately, in the Polish and international public space there are voices of both politicians and historians who try, often using manipulations and half-truths, to transfer the burden of responsibility for German crimes committed against Jews during World War II onto Poles,” he added.

In 2021, Grabowski and another Polish Holocaust scholar, Barbara Engelking, were ordered by a Warsaw court to apologise to the relative of a man whom they wrote had been involved in the murder of Jews. However, that ruling was overturned on appeal.

Engelking has again been the subject of controversy this year after saying, on the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, that Jews were disappointed with how little help they received from Poles during the Holocaust.

Her remarks were condemned by government figures, including the prime minister, but she received the support of over 1,000 academics and various research institutions in Poland and Israel. The Polish education minister this month announced he would investigate the scholars who had signed a letter supporting Engelking.

Main image credit: Adam Stepien / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

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.