ACADEMIA

Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski

Historians

Two of the leading historians of the Holocaust of 3 million Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski have been locked in a legal battle for much of 2021 that is now headed for Poland’s Supreme Court. The co-editors of the 1,600 page volume Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties in Occupied Poland, both scholars have run afoul of Polish legislation that enables the prosecution of historians who examine the issue of Polish collusion with the Nazi extermination program -- part of a broader strategy by the Polish government to control the narrative of the Holocaust, with new legislation passed this year denying restitution payments to Holocaust survivors. Speaking to The Algemeiner in February, Grabowski – a professor in the history department of the University of Ottawa -- warned that the Polish government’s campaign would chill academic research. “If the state controls 90 or 95 percent of grant activities, then anything that smacks of an attack on national mythology will not be funded,” he said. (Photo: Wikimedia / Creative Commons License)