'Muzzling' Holocaust law casts shadow over 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

As Poland prepares to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a Holocaust historian says the event will be shadowed by a controversial law that makes it illegal to fault the country for crimes committed by Nazi Germany.

"There are a number of delicate, controversial issues surrounding Polish Jewish history that the Polish authorities are simply not inclined to share with the rest of the world," said Jan Grabowski, a Holocaust historian at the University of Ottawa.

On April 19, 1943, the residents of Warsaw's Jewish ghetto began a nearly month-long fight against Nazi troops who raided the ghetto to deport them. Eventually, Nazi troops razed the ghetto, killing as many as 7,000 people and sending the remaining 50,000 survivors to extermination and labour camps.

Jews were 'dying alone'

According to Grabowski, who takes a critical view of Poland's role in the Holocaust, Polish authorities have in the past used the uprising's anniversaries to suggest that Poles and Jews had formed a united front against Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

"Jews in Warsaw were dying alone," Grabowski told Day 6 host Brent Bambury. "They were dying in horrible loneliness."

Grabowski said certain parts of Polish society were actively involved in activities that "simply doomed Polish Jews."

The Polish Blue Police and firefighters, for example, were involved in handing the Jews over to the Nazis, he added.

Grabowski

He acknowledged that Nazi Germany issued the death penalty to anyone who was caught helping Jews.

But he said a plethora of other crimes, including keeping unlicensed cattle and listening to the radio, were also punishable by death.

"Now the problem is that in all these [other] cases, there was no shortage of volunteers [to take part]," Grabowski said.

He added that Poles commonly kept unlicensed pigs and joined resistance movements.

"But hiding the Jews was really the most dangerous of all kinds of resistance," Grabowski said. "And the reason was simple: there was no social approval for this kind of help."

New law 'muzzles' historians

This year, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising comes just weeks after a new Holocaust law came into effect in Poland.

Under the law, it is illegal to blame Poland for atrocities committed by Nazi Germany during World War II.

As World War II grows distant in history, some Poles fear that new generations will come to believe that Poles were the perpetrators of the Holocaust.  

But Grabowski is dismissive of that fear. The goal of the new law is to stifle narratives from the war that are contrary to what the Polish government wants the world to believe, he said.

"This muzzling law plays very well with their electorate," he added.

Historians must do 'what needs to be done'

Each time historians have tried to shed light on the untold part of Polish history, authorities have responded with hostility, Grabowski said.

"The more you pretend that something did not happen, the more you feel defensive; the more you wanted to reject any kind of discussion."

"In this case, what should be done is an open, honest discussion of one's national past, which is never black, which is never white."

Poland recently opened the Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews in World War II in Markowa.

Grabowski, who has visited the museum, said the exhibit tells the story of a Polish family that was killed by Nazis for offering refuge to Jewish families.

He said the display is selective story-telling. In that same village where a Polish family hid Jews, others were "hunting down their Jewish neighbours throughout the war."

Grabowski, who spoke to Day 6 from Warsaw, shrugged off the possibility of getting in trouble with Polish authorities for his critical statements about Poland's role in Holocaust.

Historians "simply have to do what we have to do."

"In terms of the study of the Holocaust, you don't choose it; it chooses you. So you simply need to do what needs to be done."

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