{"id":36052,"date":"2016-02-14T18:05:10","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T16:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=36052"},"modified":"2016-02-14T10:48:58","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T08:48:58","slug":"14-05-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=36052","title":{"rendered":"Polish move to strip Holocaust expert of award sparks protests"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Polish move to strip Holocaust expert of award sparks protests<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Alex Duval Smith<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Princeton University professor Jan Tomasz Gross faces losing Order of Merit<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"Defeated
\nDefeated Jewish families fleeing the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. Professor Jan Grosssaid Poles killed more \u2018Jews than Germans during the war\u2019. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Academics have rallied to the defence of one of the world\u2019s leading Holocaust historians after reports that Poland intends to strip him of a national honour because he claimed that Poles were complicit in Nazi war crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Princeton University professor Jan Tomasz Gross, 69, was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 1996. He is best known for his 2001 book Neighbors, which describes in graphic detail the 1941 massacre by Polish villagers of up to 1,600 Jewish men, women and children. The book inspired Aftermath (Pok\u0142osie), a 2012 film directed by W\u0142adys\u0142aw Pasikowski.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A scene from the 2012 film Aftermath, based on Gross\u2019s book. Photograph: Menemsha Films\/Everett\/Rex Shutterstock<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The move against the historian comes as the nationalist Law and Justice government, elected in 2015, comes under European scrutiny for law changes that, critics say, threaten democracy. president Andrzej Duda signed into law a controversial move bringing the attorney general under the control of the justice ministry. Critics say this will put political pressure on the judiciary.<\/span><\/p>\n

Intellectuals who in the past few days have signed two open letters in Gross\u2019s defence say the Law and Justice government wants to rewrite history, expunging any suggestion of Polish complicity in past horrors.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe government says Gross is unpatriotic. But he is a patriot who looks at both the darker and lighter periods in Polish history,\u2019\u2019 said University of Ottawa history professor Jan Grabowski, who is among 30 signatories of the first letter, published last week.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Professor
\nProfessor Jan Tomasz Gross, whose book \u201cNeighbors\u201d tells of the massacre of Jews in Jedwabne. Photograph: Czarek Soko\u0142owski\/AP<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Gross was born in Poland but left the country in 1969 after an antisemitic purge on dissidents. Last September, in an article published in Germany\u2019s Die Welt newspaper, he lamented eastern European countries\u2019 reluctance to accept refugees and asserted that Poles killed more Jews than they did Nazis during the second world war. Prosecutors in Warsaw decided to investigate whether Gross had broken laws prohibiting the defamation of Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGross is controversial, but it is stupid and harmful to consider removing his award,\u2019\u2019 said Dariusz Stola, director of Warsaw\u2019s Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, who signed the second open letter, submitted to the Polish Press Agency on Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poland plans to punish use of the phrase ‘Polish death camps’<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more<\/span><\/p>\n

Stola said Duda should bear in mind the broad context of Gross\u2019s work, which included valuable studies of the German and Russian occupations of Poland. \u201cHe was awarded the Order of Merit for his scholarly work but also for his contribution, while in exile, to the democratic transition,\u2019\u2019 said Stola. \u201cThese are achievements you cannot take away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gross is currently on sabbatical leave from Princeton and did not respond to a request for comment from the Observer. But at a recent talk, posted online by the University of Haifa last week, he described his work as \u201ca confrontation with ghosts in the consciousness of Polish society\u2019\u2019. He said most Poles were still not aware that 3.5 million Jews had died in Nazi death camps. The Law and Justice government was, he said, \u201cvested in martyrology\u2019\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said to the students: \u201cHistorians write about what happened. What the consequences are is not your responsibility or business. Speaking and knowing the truth is a necessary step towards clarifying and setting relationships between groups on a path of mutual understanding.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Agata Bielik-Robson, professor of Jewish Studies at Nottingham University, said: \u201cGross is one of the world\u2019s leading Holocaust historians. Any normal liberal democracy has to have a voice of inner criticism, speaking in the name of minorities and different interests. Gross is one of those voices for Poland.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Bielik-Robson, who is Polish and also signed the open letters, added: \u201cLaw and Justice want to eliminate voices like his, to produce a uniform historical perspective. The trend is deeply worrying.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

An announcement on Gross\u2019s Order of Merit is expected soon. Ma\u0142gorzata Sadurska, a member of the presidential staff, told the state-run TV station TVP last Tuesday that 2,000 letters had been sent to the presidency calling for the historian to be stripped of his honour. She said Duda had requested an opinion from the Polish foreign ministry. The ministry, in turn, said its statement was ready and has been submitted to President Duda.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Polish move to strip Holocaust expert of award sparks protests Alex Duval Smith Princeton University professor Jan Tomasz Gross faces losing Order of Merit Defeated Jewish families fleeing the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. Professor Jan Grosssaid Poles killed more \u2018Jews than Germans during the war\u2019. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection Academics have rallied to the defence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36052"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36056,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36052\/revisions\/36056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}