Warsaw police questioned journalist about an article about Poland’s involvement in the Holocaust

“How can they be offended by the truth?” Polish journalist Katarzyna Markusz reacted strongly after being questioned by the Warsaw police after an article published last October on Poland’s participation in the Holocaust.

The 39-year-old communicator had to testify to the authorities last week on suspicion of “defaming the good reputation of the Polish nation”. “They asked me if I was the author of the article, if I wanted to offend the nation, and if not, what was my purpose in writing the article.”he told the israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Markusz published the article on the Polish portal Political critic in October 2020. He writes: “Will we live to see the day when the Polish authorities will also admit that hostility towards Jews was widespread among Poles and that Polish complicity in the Holocaust is a historical fact?”

“The steadfastness, hospitality, bravery and nobility of the Poles and, of course, the supposed enormous help given to the Jews during and immediately after the war, is one of those fictions that Polish politicians have been feeding us since. many decades, ”the newspaper publication added.

Markusz revealed that during his appearance he told police that the investigation against him was “a waste of taxpayers’ time and money.” Moreover, he made them understand that what he wrote “is the truth”. “How can they think of punishing someone in prison for telling the truth?” Polish prosecutors do not punish anti-Semitic opinions but a journalist? She’s a madwoman.

“There were Poles involved in the Holocaust: they betrayed their Jewish neighbors and sometimes killed them. It’s a fact. It’s ridiculous that you have to discuss this with the police and someone gets offended. How can they be offended by the truth? », He stressed.

The Polish journalist also writes for a portal called “Jewish.pl” and for other Polish magazines and newspapers. In addition to being a doctoral candidate at the Polish Academy of Sciences, she is currently conducting research on Judeo-Polish history, anti-Semitism, and World War II. He also translates memoirs from Yiddish into Polish and has organized Holocaust commemorations for Jews in Poland in recent years.

In the interview with Haaretz, Markusz explained why his particular interest in the subject: “I am one hundred percent Polish, I always say it (…) I am interested in the truth; Maybe this is the reason why the Polish right and Polish politicians don’t like me. On my Twitter account, they always leave a lot of anti-Semitic comments for me, no matter what I write. But I’m not going to change anything. They won’t scare me ”.

Besides the cause of a possible “defamation”, the Polish authorities are investigating the journalist for having “slandered” the country. The maximum penalty for this crime is three years in prison. According to a Polish report, the complaint against Markusz was lodged by a right-wing nationalist organization. The last libel action was brought in 2015, when the historian was interviewed Jan Tomasz Gross, after his study of Polish involvement in Nazi crimes. However, his questioning did not result in an indictment and the case was finally closed in 2019.

There is currently a defamation lawsuit against two respected Polish historians following the publication of a book which analyzes the behavior of Polish citizens during World War II. Barbara engelking, historian at the Polish Holocaust Research Center in Warsaw, and Jan Grabowski, professor of history at the University of Ottawa, has co-edited “Endless Night: The Fate of Jewish in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland,” a 1,600-page two-volume work.

According to the Yad Vashem Center, these accusations “They constitute an attack on efforts to obtain a complete and balanced picture of the history of the Holocaust.”

The trial was initiated by Filomena Leszczyńska, niece of Edward Malinowski, mayor of the village of Malinowo (northeast) under German occupation, whose memory would have been stained by a short passage from the book “Plus loin est la nuit”, evoking his involvement in a massacre of Jews. According to the indictment, Malinowski displayed the opposite behavior to that attributed to him.

For Grabowski and Engelking, the accusation is “an attempt to discredit them personally” and was made to “deter other investigators from investigating the truth about the extermination of Jews in occupied Poland”. “This is a case of the Polish state against freedom of investigation,” Grabowski told The Associated Press.

Leszczyńska claims 23,508 USD (100,000 zlotys) in damages and apologies in newspapers, because his uncle was acquitted of his collaboration with the Nazis in a post-war trial. The lawsuit – which has been filed in court for free as allowed under the 2018 law – is supported by the Polish League Against Defamation, a group that receives government funding. This organization argued that the two academics are guilty of “desecrating the good reputation” of a Polish hero and, by extension, of undermining the dignity and pride of all Poles.

The verdict will be heard by the Warsaw District Court on February 9.

Although the case is a libel trial, it stems from a 2018 law that criminalizes falsely accusing the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. Faced with international pressure, the three-year prison clause was quickly canceled. However, Historians, journalists and the general public, including Holocaust survivors and Holocaust scholars, continue to face legal action for their work on the issue. The authorities justify their actions on the basis of other clauses of Polish law.

Germany occupied Poland in 1939, annexing part of the Third Reich and directly ruling the rest. The pre-war Polish government and army fled into exile, except for an underground resistance army that fought against the Nazis in the country. However, a a small number collaborated with the Germans to hunt down and kill Jews, in many cases people who had fled the ghettos and sought to hide in the countryside.

Grabowski has spent a decade of work visiting the General Archives of Poland, Germany, the United States and Israel to document his research. He also interviewed Holocaust survivors who had witnessed the horrors. Many of these documents, which include Polish police files, have never been viewed and show that there is still much to investigate and learn 75 years after the end of World War II.

“I was surprised to discover the role that the Polish police played in the murder of the Jews (…) Murder, rape, theft, the scale is immeasurable”, he told Haaretz in June of last year.

Poland’s involvement in the Holocaust has been a contentious issue in the country since the end of World War II.. Those who reject any hint of collaboration insist that the state was dissolved by the Germans and that all responsibility must lie with the Nazis, beyond certain individuals who served the invaders. They also underline the intense underground resistance faced by former Polish soldiers against the occupation.

But many others highlight the role played by different Polish bodies in the massacre, not only the police but also the railway companies, which were instrumental in the transfer of Jews and other minorities to the death camps. They also recall the anti-Semitism that prevailed in Poland (as in almost all of Europe at that time) and the pogroms against Jewish communities.

Currently, in Poland, the mere mention of this debate can generate tensions. The ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has launched a campaign in recent years to ban and criminalize the mere mention of Poland in the Holocaust, which has its most extreme case in banning the use of the term “Polish concentration camp”, which refers to the geographical location.

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