Jan Grabowski Makes Archival Sources Say Whatever He Wants Them to Say.
By Jan Peczkis
GRABOWSKI VERSUS REDUTA is the title of this Polish-language article by a respectable historian Piotr Gontarczyk, where the author presents side-by-side comparisons of Grabowski claims and the actual sources. The article was published in SIECI Nr. 6/2021 (8 Lutego 2021), pp. 50-52. The title refers to the lawsuit, filed against REDUTA OBRONY DOBREGO IMIENIA POLSKI by Jan Grabowski, accusing the organization of harming Grabowski’s good name.
Gontarczyk’s side-by-side comparisons of Grabowski’s claims and the actual sources comes at a time when anti-Polish Holocaust scholars Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking have been elevated into martyrs by the media, in the wake of the case of Filomena Leszczynska v. Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, in which the court has agreed that the latter two have been making false accusations against a Polish relative of Leszczynska. Has the media finally learned its lesson and beguan a little bit of questioning of Grabowski and Engelking? Far from it. Any doubting or criticism of Grabowski and/or Engelking has hystercally been viewed by the media as an “attack on Holocaust scholarship”, moreover by the big, bad conservative Polish government.
GRABOWSKI FRAUDS: HE ONCE AGAIN – BY SELECTIVE OMISSION- EFFORTLESSLY TRANSFORMS ANTI-JEWISH GERMAN ACTS INTO ANTI-JEWISH POLISH ACTS
In Bransk, there was a directive forbidding Jews to live with Christians, with Jews being required to leave; however, Grabowski makes his cited source imply that those “horribly intolerant” Poles made that cruel decision. Gontarczyk has looked up and posted the source (p. 51), which unambiguously states that the Germans decreed this directive. Grabowski has conspicuously and conveniently omitted those statements that put the blame where it belongs–on the Germans!
GRABOWSKI CHANGES WORDS, IN SOURCES, FOR A BETTER ANTI-POLISH STORY
Grabowski extends the Poles-are-Jew-killers theme of Judenjagd (Hunt for Jews), this time citing a statement from the mayor of Wegrow, which accuses the Polish Underground of taking no sides in the “murder of Jews”. In actuality, the original source says, “pathological incidents of conduct of certain Poles.’ Grabowski twists this phrase to say, “murderous incidents of conduct of certain Poles.” Quite a difference!
THE GERMANS USED JEWS, NOT POLES, TO HELP UNCOVER HIDING PLACES OF JEWS
The Germans, “relying on help from the locals”, evacuated the Jews of the Wegrow Ghetto, and Grabowski loses no time to blame the Poles for assisting the Germans. The actual report by Nazi German Friedrich Katzmann indeed mentions help from the locals. Only that Katzmann never mentions Poles, but clearly mentions Jews as the ones that helped the Germans uncover the well-camouflaged hiding places of Jews! (p. 152). So this time, Grabowski has transformed Jewish denouncers of Jews into Polish denouncers of Jews.
POLISH FIREFIGHTERS, FAR FROM TORCHING JEWISH BUILDINGS, ACTUALLY HELPED PUT GERMAN-SET FIRES OUT
Grabowski accuses Polish firemen of helping the Germans to set fire to Jewish homes in the Wegrow Ghetto. Precisely the opposite happened. The article-copied statement of eyewitness Adam Sasim plainly states that Polish firefighters actually put out the fires in the Wegrow Ghetto. (p. 51).
FOLLOWUP
The media has spun falsehoods, such as these, as “innocent mistakes commonly made by scholars”. They are anything but. They are blatant fraud–if ever there was such a thing!
