Attacks on the Memory of the Holocaust in Poland: A Discussion with Professor Jan Grabowski

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in partnership with the History Department and the JCC North Shore will host an evening conversation with Professor Jan Grabowski. Professor Jan Grabowski has written extensively on Jewish-Polish relations in German-occupied Poland. In his recent work, Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-occupied Poland, Grabowski, and his co-author Barbara Engelking, exposed the widespread participation of segments of the Polish society in the German genocidal project. The Polish government, acting through its proxies, however, charged the two scholars of defaming the Polish people in its campaign to rewrite the history of Poland during World War II and deny the role of Poles in the Holocaust. The guilty verdict, which drew international ire, sent a chilling message to other scholars in the field. Although the case was later dismissed by an appellate court, it raises a series of questions about the role of historical research, the politics of national memory, and the rise of antisemitism in Europe and especially in Poland. Please join us for a discussion with Professor Grabowski, who will speak about his trial and the state of Holocaust research in Poland today.