Institute of National Rememberance (2018 Amendment)

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Polish Memory Law, officially called the Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance[a] of 2018 in Poland, is a partly repealed law that would have made it criminal to claim that Poland was responsible for the Holocaust. The terms that made such speech criminal were removed after international protests.[1]

Overview

Scholars worldwide see the Law as part of the Law and Justice[b] party-led government's policy to present ethnic Poles as the only victims and heroes in Nazi-occupied Poland,[2][3] and a violation of freedom of speech due to its potential of suppressing discussions on Polish collaboration in Nazi-occupied Poland.[2][3]

Bill

The proposed law changes a previous law known as the Act of 18 December 1998 on the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Dz.U. 1998 nr 155 poz. 1016).[4] Articles added in February 2018 included:

  • Article 53o:[5]

Protecting the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation shall be governed by the provisions of the Civil Code Act of 23 April 1964 (Polish Journal of Laws of 2016, items 380, 585 and 1579) on the protection of personal rights. A court action aimed at protecting the Republic of Poland’s or the Polish Nation’s reputation may be brought by a non-governmental organisation within the remit of its statutory activities. Any resulting compensation or damages shall be awarded to the State Treasury.

  • Article 53p:[5]

A court action aimed at protecting the Republic of Poland’s or the Polish Nation’s reputation may also be brought by the Institute of National Remembrance. In such cases, the Institute of National Remembrance shall have the capacity to be a party to court proceedings.

1. Whoever claims, publicly and contrary to the facts, that the Polish Nation or the Republic of Poland is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich, as specified in Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal enclosed to the International agreement for the prosecution and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis, signed in London on 8 August 1945 (Polish Journal of Laws of 1947, item 367), or for other felonies that constitute crimes against peace, crimes against humanity or war crimes, or whoever otherwise grossly diminishes the responsibility of the true perpetrators of said crimes—shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment for up to 3 years. The sentence shall be made public.

2. If the act specified in clause 1 is committed unintentionally, the perpetrator shall be liable to a fine or a restriction of liberty.

3. No offence is committed if the criminal act specified in clauses 1 and 2 is committed in the course of one's artistic or academic activity.'

The crimes of Ukrainian nationalists and members of Ukrainian organizations collaborating with the Third German Reich, as defined in the Act, are acts committed by Ukrainian nationalists in the years 1925–1950, involving the use of violence, terror or other forms of violation of human rights, against individuals or ethnic groups. One of the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists and members of Ukrainian organizations collaborating with the Third German Reich is their involvement in the extermination of the Jewish population and genocide on citizens of the Second Polish Republic in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland."

Amendment

The US Department of State opposed the bill, and the Polish government removed Articles 55a and 55b from the bill, meaning that it would not become criminal to claim that Poland was responsible for the Holocaust.[8] In June 2018, the Polish parliament took merely 8.5 hours to pass the bill.[9] The bill's passage makes it a civil offence for someone associated with Poland to make the said claim.[9]

Reactions

Poland

According to a survey from February 2018, 40% of Poles supported the criminal penalties in the bill, while 51% believed that the issue should be handled differently.[10] Research showed that the Law had the opposite effect of raising global searches for the phrase "Polish death camps" ninefold, while increasing antisemitic speech on social media.[11]

Scholars

Legal scholars Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias, Grażyna Baranowska, and Anna Wójcik state that with the revised bill, "the risk of violations of individual rights and freedoms remains high".[12] Meanwhile, legal scholar Patrycja Grzebyk said:[13]

A scientist who would like to investigate crimes committed by Polish citizens or the scale of Polish collaboration risks the loss of his time, money and reputation in lengthy proceedings against her/him commenced by someone who feels insulted." Even the revised version of the law is inconsistent with international law and human rights standards, as it "limit[s] freedom of speech and scientific activity in a disproportional way and entitle[s] NGOs to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the Polish state or nation.

Legal scholar Uladzislau Belavusau said:[14]

[t]he fears that the 2018 Law may negatively impact on freedom of expression about Polish history have solid foundations [...] Potentially anybody who expresses views that are counter to the official version of history recognised by the Polish State could fall under its scope.

Legal scholar Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz also said:[15]

The new law politicizes historical discussion and instrumentalizes law to achieve the desired reading of history and the past [...] is the most recent proof that in Poland the past continues to be seen as a collection of indisputable truths, not open to divergent interpretations and historical debate.

Furthermore, constitutional law scholar Wojciech Sadurski said:[16]

[t]he chilling effect of such penal and civil sanctions upon scholarly or journalistic debates regarding the darker sides of Polish history is obvious [...] concerns not so much statements of fact, but rather an opinion: an opinion about (the alleged) responsibility of, say, passive onlookers. To punish for an opinion is an anathema[c] to any system of freedom of expression.

In addition, mathematician Stanisław Krajewski, co-chair of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews, said:[17]

The law would become a blunt instrument for paralysing and punishing anyone you don't like [...] the government's harsh, dismissive reaction would encourage violence against Jews.

Religious groups

The Polish Bishops' Conference noted a rise in antisemitism after the bill was passed, declaring the phenomenon "contrary to the Christian tenet of loving one's neighbor".[18] The Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland said the bill had led to a "growing wave of intolerance, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism", making many members fearful for their safety.[19][20]

United States

Government

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was disappointed with the bill, saying that the "enactment of this law adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry."[2] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum said that the Law could not secure a future for Holocaust education, scholarship, and remembrance, hinting at the chances of intimidation, politicization and self-censorship.[21]

Scholars

In February 2018, the American Historical Association (AHA) stated that the bill was "a threat both to historians' freedom of speech and to the future of historical scholarship". The AHA was supported by 50 academic organizations.[22] The Polish Center for Holocaust Research called the Law an "unprecedented intrusion into the debate about the Polish history".[23] Jurist Alexander Tsesis said:[24]

[The Law] restricts the acquisition, expression, and dissemination of knowledge [...] its ambiguity makes it uncertain who will be punished and for what communications [... cause a chilling effect on] satire, political commentary, historical analysis, and eyewitness testimony [...] Poland's effort to control the public spread of information is likely to lead to misleading conclusions that downplay victims' sufferings and incite hate propaganda.

A letter signed by prominent figures in February 2018, including American historian Anne Applebaum and the third President of Poland Aleksander Kwaśniewski, read:[25]

Why should the victims and witnesses of the Holocaust have to watch what they say for fear of being arrested, and will the testimony of a Jewish survivor who "feared Poles" be a punishable offence?

Advocacy groups

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) said:[26][27]

[w]hile we remember the brave Poles who saved Jews, the role of some Poles in murdering Jews cannot be ignored [... we are] firmly opposed to legislation that would penalize claims that Poland or Polish citizens bear responsibility for any Holocaust crimes.

Canada

Scholars

In his book Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust, Jeffrey Kopstein of the University of Toronto[d] said:[28]

[Their goal] is clear: to restrict discussion of Polish complicity [...] Poland's current government will likely face the unpalatable prospect of enforcing an unenforceable law and denying what the mainstream scholarly community has increasingly shown to be true: Some Poles were complicit in the Holocaust.

Israel

Government

The law damaged Israel–Poland relations. Israel's Foreign Ministry director-general Yuval Rotem said that preserving the memory of the Holocaust takes priority over international relations, saying:[29]

Preserving the memory of the Holocaust is a matter beyond the bilateral relationship between Israel and Poland. It is a core issue cutting to the essence of the Jewish people.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Poland of Holocaust denial.[30] Israel's Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett said:[31]

This is a shameful disregard of the truth. It is a historic fact that many Poles aided in the murder of Jews, handed them in, abused them, and even killed Jews during and after the Holocaust.

Israel's ambassador to Poland opposed the bill, saying that antisemitism in Poland was rising.[32] In response, Jan Żaryn, then a Polish Senator and nationalist historian who made controversial claims about Polish-Jewish history,[33][34] called for the Israeli ambassador's expulsion.[32]

Holocaust museums

Yad Vashem condemned the bill:[35]

While "Polish death camps" as a phrase is a historic misrepresentation [... the law is] liable to blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust.

International

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) expressed regret over Polish President Andrzej Duda's signing of the Law into power, adding that the Law would harm the right to free and open research.[36]

Subsequent events

Repeal of Article 2a

In January 2019, the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland ruled the Article 2a void and non-binding.[37]

Holocaust distortion on English Wikipedia

Further information: Leon Rupnik § Beyond Slovenia, and Online antisemitism

In February 2023, Profs. Jan Grabowski[38] and Shira Klein[39] published a 57-page article,[33] claiming that the revisionism encouraged by the Law motivated a years-long Holocaust distortion campaign on English Wikipedia.[33][40] The years-long distortion involved the exaggeration of Jewish collaboration with Nazi/Soviet occupiers,[33][40] invention of Jewish "war crimes" against Poles,[33][40] downplaying of Polish collaboration with Nazi/Soviet occupiers,[33][40] and blaming Jews for their own suffering:[33][40]

Four distortions dominate Wikipedia’s coverage of Polish–Jewish wartime history: a false equivalence narrative suggesting that Poles and Jews suffered equally in World War II; a false innocence narrative, arguing that Polish antisemitism was marginal, while the Poles’ role in saving Jews was monumental; antisemitic tropes insinuating that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland, and that Jews bear responsibility for their own persecution.

A photo that (in this version) is featured as figure 1 in the paper, with the caption "Photograph of a sign in Białystok, wrongly captioned as a Jewish welcoming banner for the Soviets" (referring to this edit)

Grabowski and Klein also criticized English Wikipedia's administrators and the Wikimedia Foundation's lack of will to handle, leaving the site vulnerable to disinformation:[33][40]

Wikipedia’s administrators have largely failed to uphold Wikipedia’s policies [. ...] unable to deal with the issue of persistent distortion [...] Wikipedia’s articles [...] have become a hub of misinformation and antisemitic canards.

Some misconceptions about the Holocaust in Poland are summarized as follows:[33]

Type Summary
Death toll Myth 1: "3 million non-Jewish Poles were killed in WWII."[33][41]
Fact: The number was claimed in 1946 by Jakub Berman, the head of the Polish communist secret police, to create a false equivalence between Jewish and Polish victimhood.[33][42] The death toll of non-Jewish Poles was 1.8 million according to the most recent estimates.[33][43]
Scale of helping Jews Myth 2: "Thousands of Poles were executed for helping Jews."[33][41]
Fact: 800 Poles were executed for helping Jews according to the most recent estimates.[44][45]
Scale of hiding Jews Myth 3: "450,000 Poles hid Jews in their houses during the Holocaust."[33][46]
Fact: The number was promoted by Władysław Żarski-Zajdler, a writer propagandizing for the Polish communist regime during the 1968 antisemitic campaign.[33][47] Fewer than 30,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust.[33][48]
Scale of Polish collaboration Myth 4: "<1% Poles collaborated with Nazi occupiers."[33][49]
Fact: Several independent research showed otherwise.[33][50]
Polish Blue Police Myth 5: "Many Polish Blue Police were executed for refusing to follow Nazi orders to arrest Jews."[33][51]
Fact: Proven cases have not been found by mainstream historians yet.[51] Instead, the Polish Blue Police helped Nazi occupiers kill Jews enthusiastically.[51][52]
Polish Underground State Myth 6: "The Polish Underground State's court investigated 17,000 suspected Polish collaborators and sentenced 3,500 to death."[33]
Fact: No more than seven collaborators were sentenced to death by the Polish Underground State's court,[53] despite desperate requests from the Committee to Aid Jews (Żegota).[53]
Policies against helping Jews Myth 7: "Poles were specifically targeted by the Nazis for helping Jews.[33][41] The Nazis imposed death penalty on Poles because of this."[33][41]
Fact: Nazi laws against helping Jews were applied equally to millions of non-German subjects under Nazi occupation.[54] The death penalty was introduced on October 15, 1941,[54] long before any obvious help could have been noticed.[54]
Revelation of the Holocaust Myth 8: "Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki told the Allies about the Holocaust via Polish government-in-exile courier Jan Karski."[33][41]
Fact: Jan Karski did not tell the Allies about the Holocaust.[55] Karski left Poland in fall 1942,[55] while Pilecki did not write a report about the Holocaust until summer 1943,[55] when most Polish Jews had already been killed.[55] Pilecki could not have given Karski a report that did not exist when Karski left.[55]
Nazi reprisals against Poles helping Jews Myth 9: "The Nazi murdered 20,000 Polish villagers in Białka over some of them helping Jews."[33][56]
Fact: It is true that individual shootings of Białka's Polish villagers happened, but the confirmed death toll was 96.[33][57]
Post-war pogroms against Jews Myth 10: "The July 1946 Kielce pogrom was planned by the Soviet occupiers."[33]
Fact: The claim has been roundly rejected by mainstream scholars, including Joanna Tokarska-Bakir who won the 2019 Yad Vashem International Book Award for a book that disproved the claim,[58] which is only held by some Polish nationalists and conspiracy theorists.[33]

Victimization of historians

2021

Prof. Jan Grabowski is a prominent historian[38] strongly opposed to the Law,[59] which has made him a target of threats.[60] In February 2021, Profs. Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking were sued in a Polish court over a book in which they discussed the role of Catholic Poles in the Holocaust.[61] In August 2021, the Warsaw Court of Appeal dismissed the lawsuit against them.[62]

2023

In June 2023, Grabowski held a seminar on Poland's history of antisemitism in Warsaw. Grzegorz Braun, a far-right MP, smashed Grabowski's microphone and forced the seminar to be cancelled.[63] During the 2023 Hanukkah, the same MP put out a menorah with a fire extinguisher in the Polish parliament,[64] who was expelled by the parliament and charged with hate crimes.[64] Braun's behavior caused a global uproar,[65] while being praised by pro-Palestinian users in Reddit's subreddit r/Poland (1.1M subscribers) who claimed to be "only anti-Israel".[66] Despite Braun's actions, he was elected to the European Parliament in June 2024.[67]

Normalization of Holocaust distortion

In August 2024, Grabowski said that the distortions encouraged by the Law had far-reaching global consequences on the public views of the Holocaust.[59] A trend of Holocaust distortion, some state-sponsored, is also seen in other European countries, including Austria,[68] Croatia,[69] Czechia,[68][70] Hungary,[71] Germany,[68] and Italy.[68] In the book Decoding Antisemitism, co-author Hagen Troschke said that the common strategies of such distortion consisted of:

  1. Making some Holocaust perpetrators[e] look better than they were[72]
  2. Reducing the Holocaust responsibility to a small group of perpetrators[72][f]
  3. Doubting the scientifically proven death toll[72][74]
  4. Blaming Jews for the Holocaust[72]
  5. Equating the Holocaust with other crimes against humanity[72][g], which is common in academia.[76]

Some scholars said that Holocaust distortion had gone mainstream[77] amid the rise of nationalism across Europe,[72][78] where Jews were sometimes equated with the disliked Soviet communists against whom the Holocaust was considered "a reaction".[72]

Some described the phenomenon with the concept mnemonic politics,[70] where nationalist governments distorted the Holocaust by framing their ethnic majority as the victims rather than the Jews or Roma.[70][79] Such distortion is sometimes rooted in the conspiracy theory that the focus on Jews is an EU plot to suppress national identity[70][80] and promote "cosmopolitanism" and "multiculturalism".[70][81]

Related pages

Footnotes

  1. ^ Polish: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN)
  2. ^ Polish: Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS)
  3. ^ Something or someone that one vehemently dislikes. Oxford Languages
  4. ^ Co-author of the book: Jason Wittenberg of the University of California, Berkeley
  5. ^ A person who carries out a harmful, illegal, or immoral act. Oxford Languages.
  6. ^ Examples in Germany: Excusing the Wehrmacht, the police and the population, while blaming the SS, the Nazi leadership or Hitler alone.[72][73]
  7. ^ An example is the Arab–Israeli conflict, which is often compared to the Holocaust by those accusing Israel of genocide.[75]

References

  1. ^ "Poland Holocaust law: Government U-turn on jail threat". BBC News. 2018-06-27. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
  2. ^ a b c
    • Noack, Rick (February 2, 2018). "Poland's Senate passes Holocaust complicity bill despite concerns from U.S., Israel". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
    • Hackmann, Jörg (2018). "Defending the "Good Name" of the Polish Nation: Politics of History as a Battlefield in Poland, 2015–18". Journal of Genocide Research. 20 (4): 587–606. doi:10.1080/14623528.2018.1528742. S2CID 81922100.
    • Robert Rozett, “Competitive Victimhood and Holocaust Distortion,” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, XVI (2022); “Distorting the Holocaust and Whitewashing History: Toward a Typology,” XIII: 1 (2019); Yehuda Bauer, “Creating a “Usable” Past: On Holocaust Denial and Distortion,” XIV: 2 (2022); and Jan Grabowski, “The Holocaust and Poland's 'History Policy'” X: 3 (2016).
    • Joanna Beata Michlic, “The Politics of the Memorialisation of the Holocaust in Poland: Reflections on the Current Misuses of the History of Rescue,” Jewish Historical Studies—Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, LIII: 1 (2022); Piotr Forecki, Po Jedwabnem: Anatomia pamięci funkcjonalnej (Kraków, 2018); Jan Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne (Princeton, 2001).
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  4. ^ "Ustawa z dnia 18 grudnia 1998 r. o Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej — Komisji Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu" (PDF). Dziennik Ustaw (in Polish). No. 155. December 19, 1998. 1016. Retrieved 2019-05-16.
  5. ^ a b c d "Full text of Poland's controversial Holocaust legislation". February 1, 2018. Retrieved January 2, 2021.
  6. ^ Kanika, Gauba (July 11, 2019). "Rethinking 'Memory Laws' from a Comparative Perspective". The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law 2018. pp. 233–249. Retrieved May 31, 2025.
  7. ^ "Ustawa z dnia 26 stycznia 2018 r. o zmianie ustawy o Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej – Komisji Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, ustawy o grobach i cmentarzach wojennych, ustawy o muzeach oraz ustawy o odpowiedzialności podmiotów zbiorowych za czyny zabronione pod groźbą kary" (PDF). orka.sejm.gov.pl (in Polish). Sejm of the Republic of Poland. January 29, 2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-04-29. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
  8. ^ "Szklarski, Bohdan, and Piotr Ilowski. "Searching for Solid Ground in Polish-American Relations in the Second Year of the Trump Administration." (2019): 65-82" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-08-27. Retrieved 2019-08-27.
  9. ^ a b Jaraczewski, Jakub (July 23, 2018). "Fast Random-Access Memory (Laws) – The June 2018 Amendments to the Polish "Holocaust Law"". Verfassungsblog. Retrieved January 2, 2021.
  10. ^ The amendment to the Institute of National Remembrance act Centre for Public Opinion Research
  11. ^ "Analiza skutków noweli ustawy o IPN: wzmożenie antysemickie w debacie publicznej". Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich (in Polish). June 13, 2018. Retrieved January 2, 2021.
  12. ^ Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias, Grażyna Baranowska, Anna Wójcik (2019). "Law-Secured Narratives of the Past in Poland in Light of International Human Rights Law Standards". Polish Yearbook of International Law. doi:10.24425/pyil.2019.129606. S2CID 217067626.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ Grzebyk, Patrycja (2018). "Amendments of January 2018 to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Light of International Law". Polish Yearbook of International Law. 37: 287–300. doi:10.7420/pyil2017o. As a result of the amendments, Ukrainians are the only national group directlymentioned in the Act as perpetrators of crimes, and the Act does not refer even toGermans or Russians but instead prefers to speak about crimes of the "Third Reich" or of the "communists." Not surprisingly, Ukrainians have felt offended by this "distinction."
  14. ^ Belavusau, Uladzislau (December 12, 2018). "The Rise of Memory Laws in Poland: An Adequate Tool to Counter Historical Disinformation?". Security and Human Rights. 29 (1–4): 36–54. doi:10.1163/18750230-02901011. ISSN 1875-0230. S2CID 216759925. The argument of the Polish government that all Western European countries have been legally protecting the memory of the Holocaust in the same way is at best misleading. The closest relative of the 2018 Law is not a standard provision in continental Europe's criminal codes about punitive measures against Holocaust deniers. Rather, the closest sibling of the Law are parts of the Turkish and Russian penal codes. The way the Law frames the defence of collective Polish dignity in a historical context is foremost reminiscent of the notorious provision in the Turkish criminal code (Article 301), which criminalises denigration of the Turkish nation and is particularly used to silence people speaking out against the massacres of Armenians and other minorities by the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
  15. ^ Koncewicz, Tomasz Tadeusz (2018). "On the Politics of Resentment, Mis-memory, and Constitutional Fidelity: The Demise of the Polish Overlapping Consensus?". Law and Memory: Towards Legal Governance of History. Cambridge University Press. pp. 263–290. ISBN 978-1-107-18875-4.
  16. ^ Sadurski, Wojciech (May 16, 2019). Poland's Constitutional Breakdown. Oxford University Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-19-884050-3.
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  19. ^ Masters, James; Mortensen, Antonia (February 20, 2018). "Poland's Jewish groups say Jews feel unsafe since new Holocaust law". CNN. Retrieved November 11, 2018.
  20. ^ "Oświadczenie organizacji żydowskich do opinii publicznej / Open statement of Polish Jewish organizations to the public opinion". Jewish.org.pl (in Polish). Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  21. ^ "Museum Statement on Amendment to Poland's Act on the Institute of National Remembrance". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. July 6, 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2025.
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  24. ^ Tsesis, Alexander (2020). "Genocide Censorship and Genocide Denial". In Grzebyk, Patrycja (ed.). Responsibility for Negation of International Crimes. Warsaw: Institute of Justice in Warsaw. p. 117. ISBN 9788366344433. Far more controversial than genocide denial laws, however, have been national efforts to censor evidence of complicity to commit genocide, and this is the case with civil legislation in Poland and the criminal law in Turkey... The newest version of the law, passed on June 6, 2019, continues to have a civil cause of action that can be brought by private citizens of the Law on Institute of National Remembrance (Art. 53o and 53p). The problem, then, has not been fully resolved, despite the 2019 changes, because defense of nationalistic honor continues to function as a censor on speech. The Law on Institute of National Remembrance is likely to have some of the same negative impacts as the Turkish censorship statute protecting national honor.
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  33. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa Grabowski, Jan; Klein, Shira (February 9, 2023). "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". The Journal of Holocaust Research. 37 (2): 133–190. doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939. Retrieved October 24, 2024. Four distortions dominate Wikipedia’s coverage of Polish–Jewish wartime history: a false equivalence narrative suggesting that Poles and Jews suffered equally in World War II; a false innocence narrative, arguing that Polish antisemitism was marginal, while the Poles’ role in saving Jews was monumental; antisemitic tropes insinuating that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland, and that Jews bear responsibility for their own persecution.
    [...]
    The Polish government’s resolve to control the past culminated with [...] the Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance [...] penalizes those who ‘slander the good name of the Polish nation’ and who ‘blame the Polish society for crimes committed by the Nazi Third Reich.’
    [...]
    Jan Żaryn, a fervent nationalist, a darling of Polish right-wing populists, and the current chief of the newly established, government-funded Roman Dmowski Institute of National Thought (Dmowski was a prewar Polish politician, an unrepentant antisemite, and a great admirer of Adolf Hitler).
  34. ^ "How Ewa Kurek, the Favorite Historian of the Polish Far Right, Promotes Her Distorted Account of the Holocaust". Tablet. May 3, 2018. Retrieved May 29, 2025. [Ewa] Kurek was not the only participant in the Smolensk commemoration with a history of problematic statements about Jews [. ...] Jan Zaryn, who was also listed as attending the event, is a far-right parliamentarian who introduced a resolution denying most Polish responsibility for the 1968 purges, and has called for the prosecution of the Princeton Holocaust historian Jan Tomasz Gross.
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  38. ^ a b "Dr. Jan Grabowski". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved January 4, 2025.
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  47. ^
  48. ^ Natalia Sawka, “Antysemita Leszek Żebrowski poprowadzi wykład o ‘żołnierzach wyklętych,’” Gazeta Wyborcza, March 1, 2016
  49. ^ The “Israeli War Crimes Commission” statistics seem to originate from an essay from the 1960s by one Leo Heiman, which provides no footnote. Leo Heiman, “Ukrainians and the Jews,” in Ukrainians and Jews, Articles, Testimonies, Letters and Official Documents Dealing with Interrelations of Ukrainians and Jews in the Past and Present: A Symposium (New York: The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, 1966), p. 60.
  50. ^ Machcewicz and Persak, (eds.), Wokół Jedwabnego; Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, (eds.), Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland), 2 vols. (Warsaw: Polish Center for Holocaust Research, 2018).
  51. ^ a b c Engelking and Grabowski, (eds.), Dalej jest noc; Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, “Polnische Bürgermeister und der Holocaust im Generalgouvernement Besatzung, Kollaboration und Handlungsmöglichkeiten,” Bulletin des Fritz Bauer Instituts, (2021), pp. 26–35.
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  53. ^ a b Andrzej Żbikowski, Polacy i Zydzi pod okupacja niemiecką, 1939-1945: Studia i Materiały (Warsaw: IPN, 2006), pp. 482–84.
  54. ^ a b c The Third Decree of General Governor Hans Frank concerning restrictions on residency in the Generalgouvernement and introducing the death penalty for aid rendered to Jews, October 15, 1941; Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement. Dziennik Rozporządzeń dla Generalnego Gubernatorstwa, Cracow, October 25, 1941, p. 595.
  55. ^ a b c d e Adam Puławski, “Revisiting Jan Karski’s Final Mission,” Israeli Journal of Foreign Affairs, vol. 15, no. 2 (2021): pp. 289–97; Adam Puławski, Wobec niespotykanego w dziejach mordu. Rząd RP na uchodźstwie, Delegatura Rządu RP na Kraj, AK a eksterminacja ludności żydowskiej od wielkiej akcji do powstania w getcie warszawskim (Chełm: Stowarzyszenie Rocznik Chełmski, 2018).
  56. ^ Wikipedia article, “Nazi Crimes Against the Polish Nation,” Wikipedia, revision from 14:14, June 15, 2022,
  57. ^ Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) (Washington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009), p. 692.
  58. ^ "Omer Bartov and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir Were Awarded with the 2019 Yad Vashem International Book Prize". Yad Vashem. December 8, 2019. Retrieved March 5, 2025.
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  64. ^ a b Wright, George (18 January 2024). "Grzegorz Braun: Polish MP who doused Hanukkah candles loses immunity". BBC News. Retrieved August 15, 2024.
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  68. ^ a b c d "Defeating distortion: new report highlights Holocaust distortion amid rising antisemitism". International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
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  70. ^ a b c d e Kubátová, Hana; Láníček, Jan (October 14, 2024). "Memory Wars and Emotional Politics: "Feel Good" Holocaust Appropriation in Central Europe". Nationalities Papers. 53 (2). Retrieved May 25, 2025.
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  74. ^ Litvak, Meir, and Esther Webman. 2009. From Empathy to Denial. Arab Responses to the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press.
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  78. ^ Petrović, Zorica (2018). "The Roman Catholic Church and Clergy in the Nazi-Fascist Era on Slovenian Soil" (PDF). Athens Journal of History. 4 (3): 227‒252. doi:10.30958/ajhis.4-3-4. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
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