Jan Grabowski

Holocaust Distortion And the Future of Holocaust Memory: The Case of Poland

March 7, 2021, Noon, Eastern Time (US and Canada)

The issue of Holocaust distortion has become, in the recent years, one of the greatest threats to the memory of the Shoah. Unlike outright Holocaust deniers, distortionist do not deny the factuality of the event – they only deny any significant involvement of their national or ethnic group in the tragedy of European Jews. Unlike Holocaust denial (which developed without major institutional assistance), the distortion of the Holocaust has become a semi-official policy of several European states in matters of history. Therefore, the institutions involved in Holocaust distortion are nowadays armed in huge budgets, acquire legitimacy which they do not deserve, and they challenge - more and more openly - historians in an attempt to rewrite history in order to defend national myths.

Jan Grabowski is a Professor of History at the University of Ottawa and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His interests focus on the Holocaust in Poland and, more specifically, on the relations between Jews and Poles during the war. Professor Grabowski’s book: Hunt for the Jews. Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland has been awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for 2014. In 2020 Grabowski was appointed a Distinguished Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich,Germany. His most recent book “On Duty. The Role of the Polish “Blue” Police in the Holocaust” (“Na Posterunku. Udział Polskiej Policji Granatowej i kryminalnej w Zagładzie Żydów”, Czarne Publishing House), has been published in Poland, in March 2020.