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Jan Zbigniew Grabowski (born June 24, 1962) is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specializing in Jewish–Polish relations in German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust in Poland.[1]

Key Information

Grabowski co-founded the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw, Poland, in 2003. He is best known for his book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (2013), which won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize.[2]

Early life and education

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Grabowski was born in Warsaw to a Roman Catholic mother and Jewish father.[3] His father, Zbigniew Ryszard Grabowski né Abrahamer [pl], a Holocaust survivor and chemistry professor[4] from Kraków, fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.[5]

While at the University of Warsaw, Grabowski was active in the Independent Students' Union between 1981 and 1985, where he helped to run an underground printing press for the Solidarity movement. He received his M.A. in 1986,[6] and in 1988 he emigrated to Canada after travel restrictions had been eased by Poland's communist government.[5] If he had known the regime would fall a year later, he would have stayed, he told an interviewer: "When I left in 1988 I thought there was no future for any young person in Poland. It felt like you were looking at the world through a thick wall of glass. It was sort of an un-reality ... the rules were oblique, strange, inhuman even. Then after one year the system seemed to collapse like a house of cards."[6] He received his Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal in 1994 for a thesis entitled The Common Ground. Settled Natives and French in Montréal 1667–1760.[7]

Academic appointments

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Grabowski became a faculty member at the University of Ottawa in 1993.[5] In 2016–17 he was an Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he conducted research into the Blue Police for a project entitled "Polish 'Blue' Police, Bystanders, and the Holocaust in Occupied Poland, 1939–1945".[8][9] He received a grant for the project (2016–2020) from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.[10]

Research

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Hunt for the Jews

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Main article: Hunt for the Jews

Grabowski is best known for his book Hunt for the Jews, first published in Poland in 2011 as Judenjagd: Polowanie na Żydów 1942–1945.[11] In 2013 a revised and updated edition was published by Indiana University Press as Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland,[12] and in 2016 a revised and expanded edition was published in Hebrew by Yad Vashem.[13][5]

Awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize in 2014,[2] the book describes the Judenjagd (German: "Jew hunt") from 1942 onwards, focusing on Dąbrowa Tarnowska County,[14] a rural area in southeastern Poland.[15] The Judenjagd was the German search for Jews who had escaped from the liquidated ghettos in Poland and were trying to hide among the non-Jewish population.[16] Grabowski relied on Polish court records from the 1940s, post-war testimony collected by the Central Committee of Polish Jews, and records gathered in Germany during investigations in the 1960s.[17] In a 2015 interview, he described the mechanics of the "hunt":

The German policy was based on terror. Poles faced the death penalty for any help they gave to Jews. Also, the Germans created a so-called "hostage" system among the Poles. In every community they designated people who would be rotated every couple of weeks. They were responsible for informing the Polish police, or the Germans, about Jews hiding in their towns. If a Jew was discovered that had not been reported, the so-called hostages would be harshly punished. So everyone was highly motivated to get rid of the Jews.[3]

According to Grabowski, most Jews in hiding were given up by local people to the Blue Police or directly to the Germans. He said that Poles were "directly or indirectly" responsible for most of the deaths of over 200,000 Jews, not counting victims of the police; he explained that by "most", it could be 60 percent or as high as 90 percent.[5][a]

The book sparked a heated public debate in Poland.[17]

The Polish Police

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Grabowski's book The Polish Police: Collaboration in the Holocaust (2017), published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is based on his 2016 Ina Levine Annual Lecture on the Blue Police.[9]

Dalej jest noc

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In 2018, Grabowski and Barbara Engelking co-edited a two-volume study, Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night without End: The Fates of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland). Published by the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, the study focused on nine counties in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust, giving a detailed account of the fate of the area's Jews and of the question of Polish collaboration with the German occupiers. Grabowski contributed a chapter on Węgrów County. He told a newspaper that the work "talks about Polish virtue just as much. It paints a truthful picture."[20]

Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said it was "meticulously researched and sourced".[20] Polish historian Jacek Chrobaczyński [pl] commended its authors for deconstructing political myths that persist in Polish history, journalism, church, and politics.[21] However, scholars associated with Poland's Institute of National Remembrance alleged that the study used unreliable sources, selectively treated witness statements, presented rumor as fact, and underestimated the draconian nature of the German occupation.[22][23][24]

Litigation

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The Polish League Against Defamation, a group whose stated aim is to protect "Poland's good name", funded a civil case against Grabowski and Engelking in Poland, brought by the 81-year-old niece of a Polish villager who was accused in the book by witness testimony of having betrayed Jews to the Germans. In February 2021, a Warsaw court ruled that Grabowski and Engelking would apologize for their claims about the villager, but it did not order them to pay compensation.[25][26]

In response to the court ruling, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Yad Vashem, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center released statements expressing their concerns about the ruling's effects on academic freedom and freedom of speech.[27][28] The POLIN Museum stated that the suit had been "an attempt to frighten scholars away from publishing the results of their research out of fear of a lawsuit and the ensuing costly litigation."[29][30]

In August 2021, an appeals court overturned the ruling against Grabowski and Engelking, arguing in favour of academic freedom.[31]

Research regarding Wikipedia

[edit]

In 2023, Grabowski and historian Shira Klein published an article in the Journal of Holocaust Research which stated that Wikipedia spread misinformation about the history of Jews in Poland due to the work of a small group of editors.[32] Grabowski said,[33]

As a historian, I was aware for a long time of various distortions of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia. What I found shocking, was the sheer scale of the phenomenon, its lasting character and the small number of individuals needed to distort the history of one of the greatest tragedies in the history of humanity.

A response to Grabowski and Klein's article, which argues that their main conclusions are misleading or false, was published by Piotr Konieczny in the journal Holocaust Studies in 2025.[34]

Views

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Summary

[edit]

In 2016, Grabowski published a paper criticizing what he called "the history policy of the Polish state", and arguing that "the state-sponsored version of history seeks to undo the findings of the last few decades and to forcibly introduce a sanitized, feel-good narrative".[35] He has deplored plans for a monument to rescuers of Jews, to be located at Grzybowski Square, which was part of the wartime Warsaw Ghetto; he sees it as an attempt to inflate the role of the rescuers, whom he describes as a "desperate, hunted, tiny minority", the exception to the rule. The ghetto site should be dedicated, he argues, to Jewish suffering, not to Polish courage.[36][37]

Poland's embassy in Ottawa criticized Grabowski in 2016 for "groundless opinions and accusations" after he wrote an article for Maclean's about Poland's controversial amendment to its Act on the Institute of National Remembrance.[38] The amendment would have penalized, with imprisonment for up to three years, anyone defaming Poland by accusing it of complicity in the Holocaust,[39] with exceptions for "freedom of research, discussion of history, and artistic activity".[40][41]

The Markowa Ulma-Family Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews in World War II, in Markowa, Poland, March 2019

In July 2017, Grabowski criticized the Ulma-Family Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews in World War II, which opened in Markowa in 2016. The garden will have plaques identifying the 1,500 towns in which the nearly 6,700 Poles lived who helped Jews and were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.[42] In Grabowski's view, the museum should provide more information about the Polish neighbours of the Ulma family and others who aided Jews.[43]

Grabowski co-wrote a Haaretz opinion piece in December 2018 criticizing Israeli historian Daniel Blatman, professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for accepting the post of chief historian at the newly formed Warsaw Ghetto Museum in Warsaw, Poland, and thus agreeing to be "the poster boy of [Polish] state authorities bent on turning back the clock and distorting the history of the Holocaust".[44] In January 2019 Blatman responded in Haaretz that, while scholars at the Center for Holocaust Research had provided valuable insights into involvement in the Holocaust by parts of the Polish population, they did not give due weight to the terror and violence perpetrated by the Germans against Poles under German occupation.[45]

In 2022, Grabowski attended a conference "Hijacking Memory" about how right-wing actors have instrumentalized the Holocaust for political gain. He criticized the only Palestinian speaker Tareq Baconi and accused him of antisemitism after Baconi argued that the memory of the Holocaust should not justify violation of Palestinians' human rights.[46]

Responses

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Since publication of Hunt for the Jews, Grabowski has become subject to significant criticism in Poland, particularly from groups associated with Polish right-wing spectrum. Some of them[which?] attempted to have him fired from his academic position, and he has faced harassment and death threats, leading to increased security patrols in his department at the University of Ottawa.[47][48][49]

On 7 June 2017, the Polish League Against Defamation (PLPZ) published a statement signed by about 130 Polish scholars — none of them historians of the Holocaust — protesting against Grabowski's research, which allegedly portrayed a "false and wrongful image of Poland and Polish people".[50][51] In response, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research issued a statement of its own, entitled "In defence of Jan Grabowski's good name" — signed by seven of its members, including Barbara Engelking, Jacek Leociak and Dariusz Libionka, it called the criticism "as brutal as it is absurd".[51] On 19 June 2017, about 180 historians of Holocaust and modern European history, including Christopher Browning, Mary Fulbrook, Deborah Lipstadt, Antony Polonsky, Dina Porat, Yitzhak Arad, and Robert Jan van Pelt, signed an open letter in Grabowski's defence, describing the campaign against Grabowski as "an attack on academic freedom and integrity", the letter emphasized that "[h]is scholarship [held] to the highest standards of academic research and publication", and that the PLPZ attempted to put forth a "distorted and whitewashed version of the history of Poland during the Holocaust era".[50] In November 2018, Grabowski filed a defemation lawsuit in Warsaw against the PLPZ; he asked that each of their signatories buy a copy of Dalej jest noc and donate it to a Polish high school.[52][18]

On 30 May 2023, a lecture by Grabowski at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw was cancelled after far-right MP Grzegorz Braun smashed Grabowski's microphone.[53]

Selected works

[edit]
  • (2001). Historia Kanady. Warsaw: Prószyński i S-ka. ISBN 978-8372550446 OCLC 169635941
  • (2004). "Ja tego Żyda znam!": Szantażowanie Żydów w Warszawie 1939–1943. Warsaw: Wydaw. ISBN 978-8373880580 OCLC 937072035
  • (2008). Rescue for Money: Paid Helpers in Poland, 1939-1945. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. ISBN 978-9653083257 OCLC 974380257
  • (2010, with Barbara Engelking). Żydów łamiących prawo należy karać śmiercią! "Przestępczość" Żydów w Warszawie, 1939-1942. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 839268317X OCLC 750651880
  • (2011, with Barbara Engelking). Zarys krajobrazu: wieś polska wobec zagłady Żydów 1942–1945. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 978-8393220243 OCLC 761074409
  • (2011). Judenjagd: Polowanie na Zydow 1942–1945. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 978-8393220236 OCLC 715338569
  • (2014, with Dariusz Libionka, eds.). Klucze i kasa: o mieniu żydowskim w Polsce pod okupacją niemiecką i we wczesnych latach powojennych, 1939–1950. Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów. ISBN 978-8363444358 OCLC 892600909
  • (2017). "The Polish police: Collaboration in the Holocaust". Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Ina Levine annual lecture, 17 November 2016).
  • (2018, co-edited with Barbara Engelking),\. Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night without End: The Fates of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland). Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów (Polish Center for Holocaust Research), 2 volumes (1,640 pp.). ISBN 978-8363444648 OCLC 1041616741
  • (2020). Na posterunku. Udział polskiej policji granatowej i kryminalnej w zagładzie Żydów (On Duty: Participation of Blue and Criminal Police in the Destruction of the Jews). Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec. ISBN 978-8380499867
  • (2021). Polacy, nic się nie stało! Polemiki z Zagładą w tle (Poles, Nothing Happened! Polemics with the Holocaust in the Background), Wydawnictwa Austeria.

See also

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Notes

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References

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Further reading

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Jan Grabowski

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from Grokipedia
Jan Grabowski is a Polish-born historian and professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specializing in the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland with emphasis on the destruction of the Polish-Jewish community, local collaboration in the murder of Jews, and the mechanisms of Jewish survival and betrayal in rural areas. He earned an MA in history from the University of Warsaw in 1986 and a PhD from Université de Montréal. Grabowski co-founded the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw in 2003 and has held fellowships at institutions including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. His archival-based studies, such as the book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland, document patterns of Polish assistance to German forces in tracking and killing fugitive Jews outside ghettos and camps, challenging narratives that minimize local agency in the genocide. This work has drawn international acclaim, including election to the Royal Society of Canada, but also faced criticism and legal challenges in Poland for alleged defamation and exaggeration of Polish complicity, exemplified by a 2021 civil suit alongside historian Barbara Engelking that was overturned on appeal.

Early life and education

Family background and wartime experiences

Jan Grabowski was born on June 24, 1962, in , , to a Jewish father, Zbigniew Grabowski, and a Catholic mother. His father, a survivor originally from , hid on the side in during the German occupation and later became a professor of chemistry at the . Zbigniew Grabowski's family experienced betrayal and peril typical of many Polish Jewish households under Nazi rule. A neighbor denounced them to the following the 1939 invasion, but a German officer spared them upon recognizing Grabowski's grandfather from their shared service in the during . Despite this reprieve, several family members were murdered during , with Zbigniew surviving as part of the roughly 1% of Polish Jews who outlived the occupation. Postwar, the family's trauma persisted; one of Zbigniew's uncles was killed by Poles approximately one year after the war's end simply for returning home as a . In 1973, Zbigniew penned a letter contesting then-common narratives of widespread Polish assistance to , a document his son later referenced as reflective of enduring family perspectives on wartime realities.

Formal education and early influences

Grabowski obtained his degree in from the University of Warsaw in . He subsequently pursued doctoral studies in at the Université de Montréal in Canada, earning his PhD in 1993. His dissertation focused on interactions between French colonial settlers and Indigenous populations in 17th- and 18th-century Montreal, reflecting an early scholarly emphasis on European colonization and settler societies in North America. Grabowski's transition to Holocaust research was shaped by his growing awareness of unresolved questions in the historiography of the extermination of Polish Jews, despite the topic's extensive prior study. Initially assuming the field was comprehensively mapped, he identified significant archival gaps concerning local dynamics of persecution and survival in occupied Poland, prompting a pivot from colonial history to micro-level analyses of Jewish hiding and Polish collaboration or aid during the German occupation. This shift aligned with his Polish background and access to regional archives, influencing his methodological commitment to granular, source-driven reconstructions over broader narratives.

Academic career

Initial appointments and affiliations

Grabowski completed his PhD in at the in 1993, with a dissertation titled The Common Ground: Settled Natives and French in Montréal, 1667–1760, focusing on colonial interactions between French settlers and . Immediately following his doctorate, he joined the University of Ottawa's Department of as a faculty member specializing in colonial history. This appointment marked his entry into Canadian academia, where his early teaching and research emphasized pre-Confederation North American topics rather than the Holocaust studies that would later define his career. His primary initial affiliation remained with the , an institution where he progressed through academic ranks while building expertise in archival methods applicable to broader historical inquiries. Prior to his Canadian positions, Grabowski held an MA from the , but no formal academic appointments in are documented in available records from that period. These early roles at Ottawa provided the institutional base from which Grabowski eventually pivoted to researching Jewish-Polish relations under Nazi occupation, leveraging the university's resources for interdisciplinary scholarship.

Professorship and research centers

Jan Grabowski has held a faculty position in the Department of History at the since 1993, where he advanced to full professor specializing in the history of . His teaching portfolio includes undergraduate and graduate courses on the extermination of Polish Jews and Jewish-Polish relations during , earning him the Faculty of Arts Professor of the Year Award in 2014. Grabowski was elected a of , recognizing his contributions to historical scholarship on . In 2003, Grabowski co-founded the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research, an independent institution based in dedicated to studying through archival analysis and interdisciplinary approaches. The center, which includes scholars such as and Andrzej Żbikowski, focuses on documenting Jewish survival strategies, local collaboration, and postwar memory, often drawing on underutilized regional archives. Grabowski's involvement has emphasized microhistorical methods to quantify phenomena like Jewish hiding and betrayal in specific Polish localities. Grabowski has also served as a at institutions including the in 2016 and the as the 2022–2023 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence, where he advanced research on distortion and bystander roles in . These affiliations have facilitated access to international archives and collaborative projects, though his work at these centers has occasionally intersected with debates over source interpretation in Polish historiography.

Research focus and methodology

Core themes in Holocaust studies

Grabowski's scholarship emphasizes the precarious attempts of in German-occupied Poland following the 1942 ghetto liquidations and deportations to camps, focusing on their efforts to evade detection by hiding "on the side" among the non- population. In rural districts like Dąbrowa Tarnowska county, he documents how the majority of these fugitives—estimated at around 4,000 seeking refuge—perished not primarily from German searches but through denunciations, , and direct by local Poles, with rates as low as 10-20% in some areas. This theme underscores the interplay between German genocidal policies and indigenous agency, where Polish civilians exploited opportunities for personal gain amid widespread and fear of reprisals. Central to his analysis is the concept of Judenjagd, or the organized "hunt for ," executed by Polish blue-collar police, self-defense units, night watches, and even firefighters who conducted manhunts, set traps, and held communities hostage to flush out hidden . Grabowski details how these grassroots efforts, often incentivized by German rewards or local loot, transformed rural Polish society into an extension of the perpetrator apparatus, with elders and communal leaders coordinating searches that resulted in the capture and murder of hundreds in specific locales during 1942-1945. He contends that such actions were not isolated but reflective of broader societal dynamics, including prewar antisemitic attitudes amplified by occupation hardships. Bystander passivity emerges as another key motif, portrayed not as neutral detachment but as active facilitation of Jewish annihilation through , refusal of aid, and normalization of . Grabowski's microhistorical approach—reconstructing events in single counties via survivor testimonies, , and German reports—reveals how indifference in small communities enabled the deaths of thousands, challenging narratives of uniform Polish victimhood or heroism by quantifying low rates and high levels. This framework integrates local agency with overarching Nazi strategies, arguing that without Polish participation in the "gray zone" of , the Holocaust's rural phase would have been less efficient.

Use of archival sources and microhistory

Grabowski employs a microhistorical approach in his Holocaust research, focusing on specific localities and individual cases to uncover broader dynamics of Jewish persecution and local responses in occupied Poland. This method prioritizes bottom-up analysis over institutional overviews, reconstructing events through granular examination of personal motivations and community interactions. In Hunt for the Jews (2013), he applies to Dąbrowa Tarnowska county, a in southeastern Poland, detailing the Judenjagd—the systematic pursuit of evading ghettos and deportations—and estimating that of approximately 300 who sought refuge there, only about 30 survived, largely due to betrayals by Polish neighbors and auxiliary forces. His archival methodology draws from diverse primary sources, including local Polish records such as municipal (sądy grodzkie) documents and village administrative files, which reveal day-to-day Jewish-Christian encounters and post-war accountability efforts. Grabowski also integrates judicial archives from post-war trials in , the USSR, , and , alongside German occupation-era materials like police reports, to trace individual perpetrators and bystanders. Oral histories form a critical component, sourced from the Jewish Historical Institute in (over 7,000 testimonies collected between 1945 and 1947), the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive (more than 50,000 interviews), and the of the Warsaw Uprising's collections, enabling cross-verification of written records with survivor accounts. This combination supports causal reconstructions in works like Dalej jest noc (2018), where micro-studies of six Polish localities utilize public and private archives, memoirs, newspapers, and investigatory files to quantify rates—often below 1% in rural areas—and document patterns of , , and by locals. By emphasizing sources generated proximate to events, Grabowski's method seeks to illuminate empirically grounded mechanisms of and indifference, though critics have questioned the completeness of his source integration, particularly regarding rescuer testimonies.

Key publications

Hunt for the Jews (2013)

"Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland" examines the organized German searches known as Judenjagd for who escaped ghetto liquidations and deportations to death camps in 1942 and attempted to hide among the Polish population in rural areas. The book focuses on Dąbrowa Tarnowska county, a rural district in southeastern with a prewar Jewish population of approximately 5,000, where Grabowski reconstructs events from July 1942 onward through detailed case studies of individual and local interactions. Published in English by in October 2013 (ISBN 9780253010742), it draws on the author's earlier Polish-language research and spans 303 pages, including appendices, notes, bibliography, photographs, tables, and maps. Grabowski contends that local Poles, motivated by antisemitism, economic gain from plundering Jewish property, and fear of German reprisals, actively participated in detecting, denouncing, and directly murdering in hiding, often independently of direct German oversight. He argues this "self-policing" by the Polish contributed to the deaths of the vast of fugitives in the county, estimating that only about 1% of the prewar Jewish (roughly 51 individuals) survived the war, with most of the 300 or so who fled to local forests and villages perishing at Polish hands rather than solely through German action. The analysis portrays rural Polish society as complicit in extending beyond formal Nazi operations, with bystanders enabling or joining hunts that Grabowski describes as an "orgy of murder." The study's methodology employs a microhistorical approach, prioritizing granular reconstruction of events over broad generalizations, using cross-verified wartime and postwar sources such as German police reports, Polish underground records, survivor testimonies, and local court investigations conducted after liberation. Grabowski supplements these with demographic data and material evidence like hidden bunkers to trace the trajectories of specific , highlighting patterns of while acknowledging limited instances of aid. This archival aims to illuminate causal mechanisms in Polish-Jewish relations under occupation, though the selection emphasizes negative interactions.

Dalej jest noc (2018)

(Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland) is a two-volume study co-edited by Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, published in 2018 by the Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów (Association for the Center for Research on the Genocide of Jews). The 1,700-page work applies a micro-historical methodology, drawing on archival records, survivor testimonies, and local documentation to analyze the experiences of Jews in nine rural Polish counties during the German occupation from 1942 to 1945. It focuses on Jews who escaped ghettos and sought refuge in forests, villages, and among Polish families, emphasizing local dynamics over broader national narratives. The book's chapters, contributed by multiple historians including Grabowski and Engelking, reconstruct events in counties such as Dąbrowa Tarnowska and , revealing patterns of Polish civilian involvement in the of hidden . Key findings indicate that survival rates for in hiding varied by locale, with higher chances in isolated villages compared to small towns, but overall, about two-thirds of those attempting to survive outside ghettos perished due to denunciations, , or direct by Polish neighbors rather than solely German actions. It argues that anti-Jewish sentiment permeated Polish across classes, including peasants, , and elites, facilitating a "hunt" for motivated by greed, fear of German reprisals, and ideological hostility. Reception has been polarized, with scholarly praise for its granular use of sources and illumination of bystander agency, though some reviewers note an emphasis on Polish actions that risks minimizing the German-orchestrated genocide's centrality. The publication prompted legal challenges, including a 2019 by a Polish villager against the authors over a passage alleging her uncle's role in murders, resulting in a 2021 court ruling partially upholding the claim and ordering a partial apology, despite appeals. Critics from Polish historical circles have questioned selective source use and omission of evidence on Polish aid to or German coercion. An abridged English edition appeared in 2022 from and , condensing the original while retaining core analyses.

The Polish Police and other works on collaboration

In 2017, Grabowski published The Polish Police: Collaboration in the Holocaust as part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Ina Levine Annual Lecture series. The work examines the Granatowa Policja, or Blue Police, reestablished by German authorities in late 1939 after purging prewar Polish officers deemed unreliable, expanding to around 20,000 personnel by late 1943. Grabowski contends, based on German occupation records, Polish police reports, and eyewitness accounts, that the force systematically enforced anti-Jewish decrees, such as requiring armbands and restricting food access, while independently pursuing extortion and violence against Jews. Specific cases include fines imposed on Jews in Opoczno for armband violations in April 1940 and the execution of over 30 Jews by 32 Warsaw policemen at Gęsia Street prison on November 17, 1941. Grabowski further documents the police's involvement in ghetto liquidations and fugitive hunts, often acting without direct German supervision due to motives including antisemitism and material gain. In Węgrów on September 22, 1942, Polish policemen assisted in killing over 1,000 Jews on site and deporting 8,000 to Treblinka; individual officers like Józef Machowski fired 36 shots during the Wodzisław liquidation on November 20, 1942, and Lucjan Matusiak killed four Jews with two bullets near Łochów in June 1943. He also addresses the Polish Criminal Police (Kripo), which uncovered hidden Jewish bunkers, such as the "Krysia" site in Warsaw on March 7, 1944, leading to 38 arrests. Grabowski concludes that the police were integral to the extermination process, contributing to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews through both ordered and autonomous actions. Expanding this research, Grabowski's 2024 book On Duty: The Role of the Polish Blue and Criminal Police in , published by on June 20, details how ordinary prewar officers evolved into facilitators of , drawing on Polish and Jewish diaries, German documents, and police archives. The volume highlights their participation in ghetto clearances, searches for hidden Jews, and enforcement of Nazi policies, including independent murders motivated by as German oversight waned toward war's end. While some policemen engaged with the Polish underground, Grabowski argues their overall compliance enabled the destruction of Polish Jewry. Beyond police-specific studies, Grabowski's works on incorporate archival evidence of civilian and auxiliary involvement in . In contributions to edited volumes and articles, he analyzes phenomena like szmalcownictwo—profiteering through betrayal and extortion of —prevalent in rural districts where local Poles, including groups, tracked fugitives without German prompting. These efforts, often quantified through survival rate disparities (e.g., lower Jewish evasion success in areas with active local ), underscore systemic bystander under occupation constraints.

Recent works including Whitewash (2024)

In 2023, Grabowski co-authored with Shira Klein an article in The Journal of Holocaust Research analyzing Polish "szmalcowniks" (extortionists who blackmailed in hiding during the German occupation), drawing on archival records to estimate their prevalence and impact on Jewish survival rates in specific regions. The study emphasized micro-level evidence of networks, arguing that such actors contributed significantly to the failure of hiding strategies in rural . Grabowski's 2024 publication Whitewash: Poland and the Jews, issued by University of Toronto Press, critiques contemporary Polish approaches to , positing that outright denial has evolved into " distortion" through mechanisms like de-Judaization (minimizing Jewish victimhood) and selective emphasis on Polish suffering. He attributes this shift to state-sponsored "history " under governments prioritizing national narratives, including legal restrictions on attributing crimes to the "Polish " as a whole, such as the 2018 amendment to the Institute of National Remembrance Act. Grabowski draws on examples from , monuments, and to argue that these distortions erode accurate remembrance of Polish agency in Jewish deaths, estimated by him elsewhere at up to 200,000 from non-German perpetrators. The work references ongoing litigation, including the 2021 defamation suit against Grabowski and over claims in Dalej jest noc (2018) regarding Polish collaboration, which he frames as emblematic of efforts to suppress research challenging heroic national myths. Grabowski calls for safeguarding integrity against "envy" toward Jewish memory, advocating international scrutiny of Poland's policies. An adapted version appeared as the lead in Jewish Quarterly issue 257 (August 2024), expanding on distortion's export to via Polish diplomacy. He delivered related lectures, such as the Hugo Valentin Lecture in May 2024 at , titled "? Holocaust Distortion in ," reinforcing these themes.

Claims of Polish complicity in the Holocaust

Arguments on bystander behavior and hunting of Jews

Grabowski has argued that the notion of passive Polish bystanders during is a misconception, asserting instead that "there are no Polish bystanders to ." In his analysis, drawn from archival records including Polish, German, and sources, he contends that local Poles in rural areas actively contributed to the who sought refuge after the 1942 ghetto liquidations and deportations, often through denunciations, direct violence, or collaboration with German forces in the Judenjagd—the systematic hunt for hidden . Central to this view is Grabowski's microhistorical study of Dąbrowa Tarnowska county, where he documents that the majority of attempting to survive "on the side" perished not primarily due to German actions alone, but through betrayal and murder by Polish neighbors motivated by , material gain, or fear of reprisals. He describes scenarios where Poles organized searches for in forests and villages, delivering them to German authorities or killing them outright, filling what he terms a "moral vacuum" left by the German occupiers' policies. Examples include cases in Sadowne, where villagers collectively hunted and handed over Jewish survivors for execution, as evidenced by post-war court testimonies and survivor accounts. Grabowski estimates that Polish involvement extended to the deaths of approximately 200,000 outside camps, attributing this to widespread societal rather than isolated acts, with pre-war intensifying under occupation into active complicity. He draws on sources such as Jan Karski's early reports of Polish-German alignment on the "Jewish question" and 1947 judicial files to argue that bystander indifference enabled or directly facilitated these hunts, challenging narratives that emphasize Polish victimhood or efforts as overshadowing patterns of . This framework posits that the local population's behavior was causally linked to the Holocaust's implementation in , where faced threats from both Germans and a complicit populace.

Estimates of Jewish deaths attributed to Poles

Jan Grabowski's research emphasizes the role of Polish civilians in the deaths of who sought refuge outside and camps during the German occupation of from 1942 to 1945. In his 2013 book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland, a microhistorical study of Dąbrowa Tarnowska , Grabowski analyzed archival to conclude that of approximately 300 to 400 who fled to hiding places in forests and villages after ghetto liquidations, only about 30 survived the war. He attributed the deaths of the majority to direct killings by Polish perpetrators, betrayals leading to German roundups, or assaults facilitated by local collaboration, often motivated by , greed for property, or fear of German reprisals. Extrapolating from this county-level evidence to the national scale, Grabowski estimated that Polish civilians were responsible, directly or indirectly, for at least 200,000 deaths among those attempting to hide across occupied . This figure encompasses denounced to German authorities, murdered outright by Poles acting independently or in small groups, and those killed in joint actions with German forces. The estimate aligns with patterns observed in German reports and survivor testimonies, where Judenjagd operations—systematic hunts for fugitive —relied heavily on local informants and enforcers. In the 2018 two-volume study Dalej jest noc: Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (co-edited with ), Grabowski and contributors examined additional counties, documenting survival rates for hiding as low as 10-20 percent in some regions. County-specific data revealed Polish involvement in 70-90 percent of recapture or killing incidents, with perpetrators including blue-collar police (granatowa policja), vigilante groups, and ordinary villagers. These findings reinforced the broader 200,000-death estimate, portraying a countryside where social networks actively contributed to the elimination of evading deportation to death camps. Grabowski argued that such filled a gap left by strained German resources, enabling the near-total destruction of Poland's Jewish population beyond extermination sites. Grabowski revisited these figures in a peer-reviewed article, describing 200,000 as a conservative total for killed by Poles or denounced to while in hiding, building on earlier assessments by historians like . He contended that prewar and wartime antisemitic attitudes, combined with economic incentives from German rewards and unclaimed Jewish property, drove widespread participation, though not universal among Poles. These estimates exclude deaths in ghettos, camps, or direct German massacres, focusing solely on the "gray zone" of rural evasion and local agency.

Criticisms and scholarly debates

Methodological challenges and source selection

Critics of Grabowski's research, particularly in works like Hunt for the Jews (2013) and Dalej jest noc (2018), have raised concerns about selective source selection that prioritizes survivor testimonies and fragmentary archival records while omitting or downplaying Polish underground reports, church documents, and evidence of aid to . For example, in analyzing Dąbrowa Tarnowska county, Grabowski overlooked 34 individuals recognized by as for rescuing , including 20 cases of documented assistance, instead emphasizing denunciations and bystandership. This approach, critics argue, stems from a methodological favoring sources that highlight Polish complicity, such as accounts from the Jewish Historical Institute, without equivalent weight given to Polish perspectives like those in the Home Army's , which condemned anti-Jewish violence. Such selectivity risks constructing a of widespread societal guilt by extrapolating from localized incidents, as noted in reviews pointing to the failure to integrate works like Adam Kazimierz Musiał's Lata w ukryciu (2002), which details Polish hiding networks. Grabowski's heavy reliance on survivor testimonies has drawn scrutiny for methodological vulnerabilities inherent to oral histories, including potential distortions from trauma, postwar displacement, and selective recall that may amplify betrayals over acts of . In Hunt for the Jews, testimonies like those of Helena Ausenberg and Chaja Rosenblatt were allegedly misrepresented—omitting Polish in the former and exaggerating clerical in the latter—to fit a pattern of routine Polish "hunting" of Jews, without cross-verification against church archives, which Grabowski claimed were inaccessible despite their availability. Critics, including historians affiliated with Poland's (IPN), contend this underutilizes corroborative Polish sources, such as execution records of rescuers or dispatches, leading to unverified claims like Yehuda Erlich's account of 24 peasant murders, later debunked through local investigations. The IPN's analysis of Dalej jest noc further highlights over-interpretation of sparse documents, such as partial reports, to infer systematic , while ignoring contradictory evidence of German coercion and Polish resistance constraints. Microhistorical methodology, Grabowski's preferred framework for bottom-up reconstruction in rural Polish counties, faces challenges in scalability and representativeness, as local anomalies—often in heavily Germanized or bandit-plagued areas—are generalized to national patterns without accounting for broader occupational dynamics like the death penalty for aiding or economic desperation. Reviews note discrepancies in source handling, such as inconsistencies between Molly Applebaum's diary excerpts and endnotes in Hunt for the Jews, or unsubstantiated assertions about roles versus involvement. While Grabowski defends his use of as uncovering suppressed truths via untapped archives like Ringelblum's materials, detractors from IPN and scholars like Musiał argue it privileges ideologically aligned sources—often from or survivor collections with potential anti-Polish undertones—over comprehensive archival triangulation, potentially inflating estimates of Polish-attributed Jewish deaths. These critiques, emanating largely from Polish institutions amid debates over national memory, underscore tensions between empirical rigor and interpretive framing, though Grabowski's defenders attribute them to efforts to minimize documented .

Counter-evidence on Polish aid and contextual constraints

The German occupation authorities in uniquely criminalized aid to with the death penalty, extended collectively to rescuers' families and sometimes entire villages, as formalized in Hans Frank's of October 15, 1941. This policy, absent in Western European occupations, led to the execution of over documented Poles for sheltering or assisting , alongside countless others deported to camps or subjected to reprisal killings. Such pervasive terror, enforced through public hangings and village razings, systematically deterred potential by elevating the personal and communal costs of defiance far beyond those in other Nazi-occupied territories. Countering narratives of minimal Polish involvement, empirical records indicate significant rescue efforts under these conditions. has awarded status to 7,177 Poles—the largest tally from any nation—for verified acts of saving at mortal risk. Broader estimates, derived from survivor testimonies and archival , place the number of Poles aiding at 100,000 to 300,000, facilitating the survival of 30,000 to 50,000 in hiding across occupied . The Żegota Council for Aid to , operational from , coordinated false identities, financial support, and shelters, rescuing several thousand individuals through a network of Polish and Jewish operatives. Specific rebuttals to Grabowski's emphasis on Polish betrayal in works like Hunt for the Jews (2013) point to undercounted aid in his focal Dąbrowa Tarnowska county, where he reported only 51 survivors out of 337 hidden , attributing most deaths to local Poles. Independent archival reviews, incorporating files and local testimonies, document over 120 survivors supported by Polish networks, including 34 recognized rescuers who saved at least 62 named via shelter, forged documents, and food provisions. Overlooked cases include like Rev. Wojciech Dybiec, who issued false certificates, and families such as the Gibes and Kaczówkas, who hid for years despite denunciation risks. Historians Musiał and Mark Paul contend Grabowski's selective sourcing—favoring denunciation records while discounting positive survivor accounts and Polish police coercion under German oversight—distorts survival dynamics, as evidenced by higher verified rates in areas with documented networks. In , Gunnar S. Paulsson's analysis estimates 27,000 endured in hiding, aided by 50,000–60,000 Poles providing shelter or , with success tied to urban anonymity rather than absence of support. Szymon Datner, a Jewish , similarly projected around 100,000 Jewish survivors owed to Polish assistance, underscoring that while antisemitism and opportunism contributed to failures, German-engineered fear and resource scarcity imposed structural limits on scale, not a blanket refusal to help. These findings, grounded in cross-verified archives, highlight aid's prevalence amid existential constraints, challenging underemphasis on rescues in complicity-focused studies.

Responses from Polish historians and nationalists

Polish historians affiliated with the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) have issued detailed rebuttals to Grabowski's claims, particularly in response to Dalej jest noc (2018). In a 2020 publication titled Korekty ciąg dalszy ("Correction Continued"), IPN historian Tomasz Domański argued that the book engages in over-interpretation of sources, falsifications, and insufficient critical analysis, leading to unverifiable statistical claims about Jewish deaths and Polish involvement. He highlighted the unrepresentative selection of case studies—focusing on four counties in the district rather than a broader geographical sample—and accused the authors of altering the meaning of primary texts, such as memoirs, without justification. Domański further contended that Grabowski and co-authors responded to initial critiques with personal attacks rather than substantive engagement, underscoring methodological flaws that distort the dynamics of German-occupied Poland. Other Polish scholars have criticized Grabowski for selective source usage and omission of contextual evidence. In analyses of his work on relations in occupied counties like Węgrów, historians note his failure to incorporate documents transferred from Communist Poland to West Germany between the 1960s and 1980s, which detail German enforcement mechanisms and include testimonies from Polish victims, Jewish survivors, and even German gendarmes—materials recently rediscovered by the Pilecki Institute. These omissions, they argue, understate the scale of German terror, including the presence of approximately 300 personnel (, SS, and Ukrainian auxiliaries) exerting control through collective punishments, while over-relying on potentially coerced post-war Polish court records and misrepresenting survivor accounts, such as alterations to Najman's . Critics maintain that such approaches ignore the post-war leniency in German prosecutions, like the 1973 acquittal of gendarme Karl Tedsen, which reveals the occupational hierarchy's primary responsibility for anti-Jewish actions. Nationalist commentators and groups in have framed Grabowski's scholarship as part of a broader effort to defame the nation by exaggerating Polish complicity while minimizing the risks of aiding under Nazi rule. They contend that estimates of widespread "hunting" or bystander-enabled deaths overlook the over 7,000 Poles officially recognized as by for sheltering , often at the cost of their lives, and the estimated 3,000 ethnic Poles killed by Germans for such aid. Figures aligned with nationalist outlets accuse Grabowski of relying on biased survivor narratives that attribute unverified killings to Poles without accounting for the German-orchestrated pogroms, such as those in Węgrów in 1941, and view his work as ideologically driven to equate Polish actions with perpetrator roles, disregarding the existential threats under occupation. These responses often invoke the Polish government's 2018 "Holocaust law" amendments as a necessary counter to what they term historical revisionism that erodes national sovereignty over WWII memory.

Defamation lawsuit over Dalej jest noc

In 2018, Jan Grabowski and edited and contributed to Dalej jest noc: Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski, a two-volume study examining Jewish strategies under German occupation, including instances of Polish bystander and active in selected counties. The work drew on archival documents, survivor testimonies, and local records to argue that many Jews evading ghettos relied on hiding in forests or with Polish acquaintances, often facing betrayal by locals incentivized by German rewards or antisemitic motives. The defamation suit originated from Engelking's chapter on Bielski , which cited a interview with survivor Estera Grinbaum recounting that Malinowski—the prewar and wartime village elder of Malinowo—had informed German gendarmes of approximately 22 (including her family members) concealed in a forest, resulting in their roundup and execution in 1943. Grinbaum's account, recorded after her emigration to amid Poland's 1968 antisemitic campaign, also alleged Malinowski robbed her of valuables before facilitating her to German labor camps, which inadvertently spared her from local killings. Filomena Leszczyńska, Malinowski's niece and sole heir, filed the civil claim in Warsaw District Court around late 2019, asserting the passage violated Polish civil code provisions on personal honor by portraying her uncle as a collaborator without adequate verification. Supported by the Reduta Dobrego Imienia foundation—a nongovernmental group combating perceived of Poland's wartime record—Leszczyńska presented evidence including Malinowski's 1950 postwar by a Polish court on charges of aiding in the deaths of 18 , witness statements attesting to his aid for other , and arguments that Grinbaum's conflicted with contemporaneous records lacking direct proof of . Grabowski and Engelking countered that their prioritized survivor voices as primary evidence in underdocumented rural atrocities, where German records were sparse and Polish perpetrators rarely prosecuted, and that historians bear no legal duty to preemptively disprove every claim amid evidentiary gaps from destroyed archives and witness trauma. The case highlighted tensions between civil standards—requiring protection of individual reputation—and academic practices relying on potentially fallible oral histories, with plaintiffs critiquing the book's selective sourcing as amplifying unverified anecdotes over exculpatory data.

Outcomes and appeals

In February 2021, the District Court ruled partially in favor of Leszczyńska, the niece of Edward Malinowski, a wartime village administrator accused in Dalej jest noc of aiding Germans in the deaths of approximately 20 in 1943; the court found liable for defamation due to reliance on uncorroborated survivor testimony without sufficient verification, ordering her to issue a public apology stating that Malinowski did not hand over , while was not held personally responsible as he had not authored that specific section. The historians were also required to cover partial court costs, though the court acknowledged the book's overall scholarly value in documenting Jewish fates under occupation but criticized selective source usage in this instance. Grabowski and Engelking appealed the decision, arguing it infringed on and historical inquiry rights under Polish law and the . On , 2021, the Court of Appeal overturned the district court's ruling in its entirety, dismissing Leszczyńska's claims and absolving the historians of liability; the appellate judges emphasized that historical research inherently involves interpretive risks based on fragmentary evidence, and the contested passage reflected a good-faith assessment of eyewitness accounts rather than deliberate falsehood, protected as expression of scientific truth under Article 54 of the Polish Constitution. No further appeals were pursued by Leszczyńska, rendering the appellate decision final as of that date, with Grabowski describing it as a vindication of evidence-based scholarship against personal reputational claims.

Involvement in public and digital historiography

Critiques of Polish state history policy

Jan Grabowski has argued that the Polish state's historical policy, particularly under the (PiS) government from 2015 to 2023, systematically distorts by promoting a narrative that emphasizes Polish victimhood and heroism while minimizing or denying widespread Polish complicity in the genocide of Jews. In his 2021 Cleveringa Lecture, Grabowski described this as a "semi-official policy" that intensified after the publication of Jan Tomasz Gross's Neighbors in 2000, involving state-funded institutions that prioritize myths over empirical evidence, such as the claim that Poles were primarily rescuers rather than bystanders or perpetrators. He cited surveys indicating that around 30% of Poles believe Jews committed more crimes against Poles during the war than vice versa, attributing this to state-sponsored education and media that foster such views. A focal point of Grabowski's critique is the January 2018 amendment to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) Act, which imposed criminal penalties of up to three years' imprisonment for publicly attributing Nazi crimes to the Polish nation, even when supported by historical of individual or collective Polish actions. Grabowski contended that this "Holocaust law" not only chilled academic research but also served as a tool for the state to enforce a sanitized version of , deterring discussions of Polish Blue Police collaboration or local pogroms like Jedwabne. Although the law's criminal provisions were later softened amid international backlash, Grabowski argued its civil enforcement persisted, enabling lawsuits against historians documenting Polish involvement, as seen in the 2021 court case against him and over their book Dalej jest noc. Grabowski has highlighted the role of state institutions like the IPN and the Witold Pilecki Institute in propagating this policy through selective archival access, funding biased research, and public campaigns that equate criticism of Polish actions with antisemitism or defamation of the nation. In his 2024 book Whitewash: Poland and the Jews, he details how these bodies distort evidence—for instance, by underrepresenting Polish perpetrators in official memorials or school curricula—while ignoring primary sources like German reports and survivor testimonies that document active local participation in hunts for Jews. He maintains that such policies undermine causal understanding of the Holocaust, portraying Poles as passive victims under German occupation rather than agents in a context of antisemitism, economic incentives, and weak central authority, thereby perpetuating national myths at the expense of truth-seeking historiography.

Wikipedia editing controversies

In February 2023, Jan Grabowski and Shira Klein published an essay in The Journal of Holocaust Research titled "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the ," alleging that a network of approximately 30 volunteer editors had systematically manipulated articles on the in occupied over more than a decade. The authors claimed these edits promoted a narrative aligned with Polish nationalist historiography by minimizing evidence of Polish antisemitism and collaboration in Jewish deaths, exaggerating Polish suffering under Nazi occupation, overstating instances of Polish aid to Jews, and elevating fringe or discredited sources while downplaying peer-reviewed on bystander complicity. They identified patterns such as the routine removal of references to Polish-perpetrated against and the insertion of unsubstantiated claims about Jewish-Soviet collaboration, arguing that this constituted not outright denial but a form of distortion that absolved broader Polish of responsibility. Grabowski and Klein's analysis drew on edit histories, user talk pages, and off-wiki communications, asserting that the editors coordinated via lists and external forums to enforce their revisions, often invoking Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" policy to justify inclusions of contested material from sources like the . The essay highlighted specific articles, such as those on the and the , where they contended reliable sources documenting Polish involvement were systematically marginalized. Their work received coverage in outlets like , which echoed concerns about Wikipedia's vulnerability to organized campaigns rewriting to portray Poles as primary victims. The publication prompted formal complaints to 's Arbitration Committee, culminating in a 2022–2023 case titled "Conduct in Eastern European history articles." On May 22, 2023, the committee sanctioned several editors identified in the disputes, imposing indefinite topic bans on three for violations including allies, battleground behavior, and using as a battleground for ideological advocacy rather than neutral editing. However, the committee explicitly declined to evaluate the underlying historical claims, stating its remit was editor conduct, not factual adjudication, and a majority of members rejected broader remedies like a dedicated noticeboard for contentious topics. Grabowski expressed dissatisfaction with the limited scope, arguing it failed to address persistent systemic biases, while some participants countered that the overstated coordination and ignored the platform's reliance on verifiable sources from multiple perspectives. The controversy underscored tensions between academic historians and Wikipedia's volunteer-driven model, with Grabowski and Klein advocating for heightened scrutiny of edit wars in genocide-related topics. Subsequent reporting noted that while sanctions curbed some disruptions, core articles retained disputed content, fueling ongoing scholarly critiques of the encyclopedia's handling of Polish-Jewish wartime relations.

Legacy and impact

Influence on Holocaust scholarship

Grabowski's monograph Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (2013), based on archival records from Dąbrowa Tarnowska county, introduced the concept of Judenjagd—the organized, post-deportation manhunts for in hiding conducted by German forces with frequent local Polish assistance—to English-language , estimating survival rates in rural areas at under 1% due to betrayals motivated by , fear, and material incentives. This microhistorical method, drawing on German police reports, survivor testimonies, and property records, shifted emphasis from centralized extermination to decentralized, community-level perpetrator dynamics, influencing subsequent studies on bystander and the 's "second phase" in occupied . The book's 2014 International Book Prize underscored its role in expanding perpetrator-focused beyond traditional camp and narratives. His co-edited two-volume work Dalej jest noc: Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland, 2018 Polish edition; 2022 English), analyzing Jewish fates across seven counties using over 50,000 documents, quantified local collaboration in murders and denunciations, reporting that Poles killed or aided in killing thousands of Jews outside formal ghettos. This empirical aggregation prompted specialized research into rural hiding networks and "gray zones" of interaction, cited in peer-reviewed volumes on microhistories of genocide, though contested for prioritizing Jewish survivor accounts over Polish administrative sources, potentially inflating complicity estimates. Grabowski's framework has informed training of emerging scholars, as evidenced by his 2022 SSHRC Impact Award for fostering quantitative approaches to survival data in Holocaust studies. The ensuing debates, including Polish archival counter-studies estimating higher rescue incidences, have catalyzed broader historiographical scrutiny of source biases in Polish-Jewish wartime relations, with Grabowski's outputs referenced in over 20 contributions to journals like Holocaust Studies and Materials. His lectures at institutions such as the USC Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashem have integrated these findings into curricula, promoting causal analyses of local agency under occupation constraints over generalized victim-perpetrator binaries. Despite nationalist critiques alleging selective evidence to undermine Polish self-image, the work's archival rigor has enduringly elevated attention to undocumented "wild" killings, comprising up to 20% of Polish Jewish deaths per some estimates.

Broader reception and ongoing disputes

Grabowski's scholarship, particularly works like Hunt for the Jews (2013) and the co-edited Dalej jest noc (2018), has elicited polarized responses within Holocaust studies, with acclaim from many Western and Israeli scholars for its granular analysis of rural Jewish survival rates and local-level collaboration under German occupation. These studies estimate that in areas like Dąbrowa Tarnowska county, fewer than 10% of fugitive Jews survived hiding, attributing high mortality to denunciations and active hunts by Polish civilians and auxiliary forces amid German incentives like rewards and reduced quotas. Supporters, including reviewers in the American Historical Review, praise the empirical depth drawn from archives, survivor accounts, and German records, viewing it as advancing understanding of the Holocaust's decentralized mechanisms beyond extermination camps. However, such estimates have fueled debates, as they challenge narratives emphasizing widespread Polish indifference or heroism while privileging Jewish testimonies that may reflect trauma-induced recall over comprehensive cross-verification. Critics, primarily Polish historians affiliated with institutions like the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), contend that Grabowski's methodology exhibits selectivity, such as over-reliance on unverified survivor narratives while omitting Polish sources and Yad Vashem-recognized rescuers, leading to inflated perpetrator counts and deflated aid figures. For instance, in Hunt for the Jews, Grabowski reports approximately 38 Jewish survivors in Dąbrowa Tarnowska aided by Poles, but archival reviews identify around 123, including networks like Franciszek Borsa's that sheltered 18–21 Jews, which are absent from his analysis. Similar issues arise in Dalej jest noc, where case studies allegedly misrepresent events, such as downplaying Polish assistance in testimonies like Helena Ausenberg's or distorting priestly roles without contextualizing German reprisals that executed entire villages for aiding . These scholars, including Bogdan Musiał, argue that Grabowski's framework minimizes the occupation's coercive structure—death penalties for sheltering, economic desperation, and German-orchestrated "Judenjagd"—potentially overstating autonomous Polish agency and undercounting verified rescuers, whose risks are documented in over 7,000 awards by as of 2023. Ongoing disputes center on interpretive scales, with Grabowski's claims of over 200,000 killed by Polish auxiliaries or civilians contested against IPN estimates emphasizing German directives and lower direct Polish killings, around 1,000–2,000 documented pogroms but within a framework of total occupation terror claiming 3 million Polish non-Jewish lives. These tensions reflect broader clashes between survivor-centered , often prioritized in international academia, and contextual analyses stressing empirical balance against national memory policies; Polish critiques highlight potential biases in sources favoring complicity narratives, while Grabowski's defenders see resistance as defensive nationalism obscuring data. Such debates persist in forums like peer-reviewed journals and public discourse, influencing global perceptions of Polish-Jewish wartime dynamics without resolution, as evidenced by continued archival disputes over county-level survival rates post-2018.

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  56. https://eng.ipn.gov.pl/download/2/31543/PJSskladKorektaobrazuang.pdf
  57. https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/2021/11/19/second-annual-alfred-wiener-lecture-holocaust-history-under-siege/
  58. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2021-02-09/ty-article/.premium/historians-lose-libel-suit-in-polish-court-involving-holocaust-era-mayor/0000017f-e6a3-dea7-adff-f7fbbea60000
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  60. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/12/a-gift-for-holocaust-deniers-how-polish-libel-ruling-will-hit-historians
  61. https://balticworlds.com/jan-grabowskis-research-is-facing-a-lawsuit-in-poland/
  62. https://notesfrompoland.com/2021/02/09/holocaust-scholars-lose-polish-libel-case-and-must-apologise-for-inaccuracies-in-book/
  63. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/university-of-ottawa-professor-wins-libel-case-1.6143539
  64. https://www.euronews.com/2021/08/16/polish-appeals-court-dismisses-libel-complaint-against-holocaust-book
  65. https://www.timesofisrael.com/holocaust-scholars-in-poland-win-closely-watched-libel-case-on-appeal/
  66. https://theconversation.com/by-policing-history-polands-government-is-distorting-the-holocaust-198049
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  68. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939
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  73. https://www.jta.org/2023/05/22/united-states/wikipedia-disciplines-editors-in-holocaust-distortion-dispute-but-sidesteps-debate-over-polish-complicity
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  75. https://news.chapman.edu/2023/11/17/exposing-the-holocaust-lies-on-the-dark-side-of-wikipedia/
  76. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-846563
  77. https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/121/4/1382/2581787
  78. https://thesocietypages.org/holocaust-genocide/microhistories-of-the-holocaust/
  79. https://www.uottawa.ca/research-innovation/news-all/professor-jan-grabowski-granted-2022-sshrc-impact-award-his-research-holocaust
  80. https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/cey/article/download/5585/3569/33137
  81. https://www.holocaustresearch.pl/nowy/photo/recenzja_Kassow_YVS.pdf
  82. https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/righteous
  83. https://verfassungsblog.de/historians-on-trial/
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