© Provided by The GuardianPhotograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters
A Warsaw court has ordered two prominent historians to apologise to an elderly woman who claimed they had defamed her late uncle, in a case seen as critical to independent Holocaust research in Poland.
Prof Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa and Prof Barbara Engelking of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research were accused of defaming Edward Malinowski, a wartime mayor, by suggesting he gave up Jews to Nazi Germans.
Related: Fears rise that Polish libel trial could threaten future Holocaust research
In a civil case condemned by Jewish organisations and historians as an attack on free academic inquiry, the researchers were told to apologise for a passage in Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland, a 1,600-page work they co-edited, which the court said "violated Malinowski's honour" by "providing inaccurate information".
© Photograph: Kacper Pempel/ReutersProf Jan Grabowski, one of the academics accused of defaming Edward Malinowski, a wartime mayor, by suggesting he gave up Jews to Nazis.
The court did not demand the historians pay compensation, but ordered them to write to Malinoswski's niece, Filomena Leszczynska, who brought the case, publish a statement on the website of the Center for Holocaust Research, and correct the passage in any future edition.
"I respect the court's judgment, but it is difficult for me to agree with this decision," Grabowski, a Polish-Canadian history professor whose father was a Holocaust survivor, told Gazeta Wyborcza. "I hope our arguments will be recognised on appeal."
Research shows thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews, but thousands also participated in the Holocaust. Poland's ruling nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) party has said it views allegations of Polish complicity as dishonouring the country.
The charges against Grabowski and Engelkring were condemned by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, which said they amounted to "an attack on the effort to achieve a full and balanced picture of the history of the Holocaust".
Other historical institutions also strongly criticised the case, including the Paris-based Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, which called it a "witch-hunt" and a "pernicious invasion into the very heart of research".
Leszczynska, 81, had demanded 100,000 zlotys (?22,300) in damages and a public apology from the historians for allegedly defaming her uncle, the wartime mayor of Malinowo village in north-east Poland.
According to the passage, Malinowski allowed a Jewish woman to survive by helping her pass as a non-Jew. But the woman, Estera Siemiatycka, is also quoted as saying the mayor may have been implicated in a massacre of local Jews by German soldiers.
Leszczynska said the mayor, who was acquitted of collaboration in 1950, aided Jews and the book contained "omissions and methodological errors". She was backed by the Polish Anti-Defamation League, which aims to "defend Poland's good name".
The League, which has close ties to the Polish government and in the past received state grants, argued that the two researchers were guilty of "defiling the good name" of a Polish hero and, by extension, harming the dignity and pride of all Poles.
Maciej Swirski, the organisation's head, said before the trial that academic research "has to be conducted with probity" and criticised "attempts at establishing an academic consensus on Polish co-responsibility for the Holocaust".
Leszczynska's lawyer, Monika Brzozowska-Pasieka, denied the case was aimed at opening up new avenues for litigation. "We say the authors violated Filomena's rights by identifying her uncle as an accomplice, as a murderer, simply," she said.
Critics have accused Poland's government of trying to whitewash cases of complicity in the genocide of Jews under Nazi occupation. In 2018, it passed a law making it a civil offence to falsely blame the Polish nation or state for Holocaust crimes, dropping a plan to criminalise the offence only after an international outcry.
Last week Katarzyna Markusz, a journalist, was questioned by police on suspicion of "slandering the Polish nation", a crime carrying a penalty of up to three years in prison, for writing that "Polish participation in the Holocaust is a historical fact".
Engelking said in a pre-trial statement that the real aim of the case had been "to question the credibility and competence of the people accused ... and to have a dissuasive effect, specifically to discourage other researchers from finding out the truth of the Holocaust in Poland".
The Polish government has denied any involvement in the case, saying it is a private matter, and Polish officials, including the country's ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski, said it was only a civil case and did not represent a threat to freedom of speech.
Six million Poles, including three million Jews, died during the country's occupation by the Nazis from 1939 to 1945. Unlike other occupied countries, there was no collaborationist government in Poland.
Catholic Poles' attitudes to their Jewish neighbours varied greatly, ranging from showing immense courage to indifference and sometimes cruelty, including collaborating with the Germans in hunting down and killing Jews.
Israel has named more than 7,000 Poles - a greater number than any other nationality - as "righteous among the nations" for risking their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination.