Pod Save America Hosts Call on Democrats to Cut All Israel Military Aid, No Longer Accept AIPAC Funding
Jews, Israelis Targeted in Austria Amid Surge in Antisemitic Incidents; Local Jewish Community Calls for Action
‘All of Our Strength’: Over 1,000 Pro-Israel Activists Gather in DC for Solidarity Conference
‘Devastated’: Wesley LePatner, Killed in Manhattan Mass Shooting, Was a Jewish Communal, Philanthropic Leader
Sen. Angus King Vows to No Longer Vote for Israel Military Aid Until Gaza Conditions Improve
Europe Won’t Pressure Israel to ‘Commit Suicide’ Amid Gaza Backlash, Palestinian State Push, Says Israeli FM
Israel’s National Soccer Coach Attacked in Athens Before Soccer Fans Chant ‘F–K Israel, Free Palestine’ at Match
New York Judge Sentences Neo-Nazi to 5 Years for Livestreaming Bomb Threats Against Jewish Hospitals
US Pressures Lebanon to Issue Cabinet Decision to Disarm Hezbollah Before Talks Continue
UK Plans to Recognize Palestinian State in September Unless Israel Meets Conditions, Starmer Says
Polish Justice Minister in Furious Attack on Independent Court’s Decision to Dismiss Lawsuit Against Holocaust Historians
Error: Contact form not found.
by Ben Cohen
Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. Photo: Reuters/Adam Stepien/Agencja Gazeta.
Poland’s Minister of Justice on Tuesday launched an extraordinary attack on a judge’s decision to reject a lawsuit brought against two leading historians of the Holocaust.
In a post on Twitter, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said the decision of the Appellate Court in Warsaw in favor of the historians Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking — who edited the two-volume, 1,600 page study “Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland” — amounted to a “judicial assault on justice.”
In February, a Warsaw court ruled that the two scholars had to apologize for an entry in the study stating that Edward Malinowski — the mayor of the village of Malinowo in north-eastern Poland — had betrayed Jews to the German occupiers. The lawsuit was filed by Malinowski’s 81-year-old niece, Filomena Leszczyńska, who also demanded an admission from Grabowski and Engelking that the purpose of their work was to accuse Poles of murdering Jews during the Nazi occupation.
Leszczyńska’s legal expenses were paid by the Polish League Against Defamation, an ultranationalist group that targets historians and others researching the issue of Polish collusion and participation in the genocide of their Jewish neighbors.
On Monday, however, an appeals judge in Warsaw overturned the original court decision, emphasizing the right of academics to carry out research and publish their findings without fear of legal censure.
In his Twitter post on Tuesday morning, Ziobro angrily derided the appeal court’s decision.
The court had arbitrarily decided that Grabowski and Engelking “are scholars, so they can lie with impunity, and turn a hero into a criminal, a Pole who saved Jews into an accomplice in their deaths.”
Ziobro continued: “This is not only an embarrassment for the court, it is a judicial assault on justice.”
Speaking to The Algemeiner on Tuesday afternoon, Grabowski said that the minister’s tweet caused him to fear for the safety of the appeals judge as well as the broader independence of Poland’s judiciary.
“The judge was fair and open-minded,” Grabowski said. “But given this tweet by the Justice Minister, the chilling effect on the judiciary will be profound.”
