Jan Grabowski (historian)

Prof. Jan Zbigniew Grabowski (born June 24, 1962) is a Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa.^[1] Grabowski holds a PhD from Université de Montréal and an MA from the University of Warsaw.^[1] He specializes in the Holocaust in Poland,^[1] especially the topic of Polish collaboration with Nazi occupiers,^[1] for which he has faced harassment from Polish nationalists.^[2] As of June 2025, he has an h-index of 17 and an i10-index of 28.^[3]

Prof. Jan Grabowski at a University of Ottawa event.

Life

Prof. Jan Grabowski speaking at the 2019 Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków.

Grabowski was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Jewish father and Catholic mother. Grabowski's father was a Holocaust survivor from Kraków who fought in the Warsaw Uprising.^[4] While at the University of Warsaw, Grabowski joined anti-communist activities. After receiving his MA in 1986, he emigrated to Canada.^[4] Grabowski has been a professor at the University of Ottawa since 1993.^[4]

Awards

• Yad Vashem Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung senior research scholar award (2005)^[5]
• Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research (2014)^[6]
• Arie van Mansum Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education (2019)^[5]
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2020)^[5]
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's Insight Award (2022)^[7]

Incidents

Libel lawsuit

In February 2021, Profs. Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking were sued in a Polish court over a book about the role of Catholic Poles in the Holocaust.^[8] In August 2021, the Warsaw Court of Appeal dismissed the lawsuit against them.^[9]

Research on Holocaust distortion on English Wikipedia

In February 2023, Profs. Jan Grabowski and Shira Klein published a 57-page article,^[10] reporting the widespread distortion of Holocaust history on English Wikipedia,^[10][11] which involved the exaggeration of Jewish collaboration with Nazi/Soviet occupiers,^[10][11] invention of Jewish "atrocities" against Poles,^[10][11] downplaying of Polish collaboration with Nazi/Soviet occupiers and blaming Jews for their own suffering:^[10][11]

Four distortions dominate Wikipedia’s coverage of Polish–Jewish wartime history: a false equivalence narrative suggesting that Poles and Jews suffered equally in World War II; a false innocence narrative, arguing that Polish antisemitism was marginal, while the Poles’ role in saving Jews was monumental; antisemitic tropes insinuating that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland, and that Jews bear responsibility for their own persecution.

A photo that (in this version) is featured as figure 1 in the paper, with the caption "Photograph of a sign in Białystok, wrongly captioned as a Jewish welcoming banner for the Soviets" (referring to this edit)

Grabowski and Klein also criticized English Wikipedia's administrators and the Wikimedia Foundation's lack of will to handle,^[10][11] leaving the site vulnerable to disinformation:

Wikipedia's administrators have largely failed to uphold Wikipedia's policies [. ...] unable to deal with the issue of persistent distortion [...] Wikipedia’s articles [...] have become a hub of misinformation and antisemitic canards.

On another occasion, Prof. Grabowski said,

As a historian, I was aware [...] of various distortions [...] of the Holocaust on Wikipedia. What I found shocking, was the sheer scale [...] and the small number of individuals needed to distort the history of one of the greatest tragedies in the history of humanity.

Some misconceptions about the Holocaust in Poland are summarized as follows:^[10]

Type	Summary
Death toll	Myth 1: "3 million non-Jewish Poles were killed in WWII."[10][12] Fact: The number was claimed in 1946 by Jakub Berman, the head of the Polish communist secret police, to create a false equivalence between Jewish and Polish victimhood.[10][13] The death toll of non-Jewish Poles was 1.8 million according to the most recent estimates.[10][14]
Scale of helping Jews	Myth 2: "Thousands of Poles were executed for helping Jews."[10][12] Fact: 800 Poles were executed for helping Jews according to the most recent estimates.[15][16]
Scale of hiding Jews	Myth 3: "450,000 Poles hid Jews in their houses during the Holocaust."[10][17] Fact: The number was promoted by Władysław Żarski-Zajdler, a writer propagandizing for the Polish communist regime during the 1968 antisemitic campaign.[10][18] Fewer than 30,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust.[10][19]
Scale of Polish collaboration	Myth 4: "<1% Poles collaborated with Nazi occupiers."[10][20] Fact: Several independent research showed otherwise.[10][21]
Polish Blue Police	Myth 5: "Many Polish Blue Police were executed for refusing to follow Nazi orders to arrest Jews."[10][22] Fact: Proven cases have not been found by mainstream historians yet.[22] Instead, the Polish Blue Police helped Nazi occupiers kill Jews enthusiastically.[23]
Polish Underground State	Myth 6: "The Polish Underground State's court investigated 17,000 suspected Polish collaborators and sentenced 3,500 to death."[10] Fact: No more than seven collaborators were sentenced to death by the Polish Underground State's court,[24] despite desperate requests from the Committee to Aid Jews (Żegota).[24]
Policies against helping Jews	Myth 7: "Poles were specifically targeted by the Nazis for helping Jews.[10][12] The Nazis imposed death penalty on Poles because of this."[10][12] Fact: Nazi laws against helping Jews were applied equally to millions of non-German subjects under Nazi occupation.[25] The death penalty was introduced on October 15, 1941,[25] long before any obvious help could have been noticed.[25]
Revelation of the Holocaust	Myth 8: "Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki told the Allies about the Holocaust via Polish government-in-exile courier Jan Karski."[10][12] Fact: Jan Karski did not tell the Allies about the Holocaust.[26] Karski left Poland in fall 1942,[26] while Pilecki did not write a report about the Holocaust until summer 1943,[26] when most Polish Jews had already been killed.[26] Pilecki could not have given Karski a report that did not exist when Karski left.[26]
Nazi reprisals against Poles helping Jews	Myth 9: "The Nazi murdered 20,000 Polish villagers in Białka over some of them helping Jews."[10][27] Fact: It is true that individual shootings of Białka's Polish villagers happened, but the confirmed death toll was 96.[10][28]
Post-war pogroms against Jews	Myth 10: "The July 1946 Kielce pogrom was planned by the Soviet occupiers."[10] Fact: The claim has been roundly rejected by mainstream scholars, including Joanna Tokarska-Bakir who won the 2019 Yad Vashem International Book Award for a book that disproved the claim,[29] which is only held by some Polish nationalists and conspiracy theorists.[10]

Physical assault

On 30 May 2023, Grabowski gave a seminar on Poland's history of antisemitism in Warsaw. Grzegorz Braun, a far-right MP, smashed Grabowski's microphone and forced the seminar to be cancelled.^[30] During the 2023 Hanukkah, the same MP put out a menorah with a fire extinguisher in the Polish parliament,^[31] who was expelled by the parliament and charged with hate crimes.^[31] Braun's behavior caused a global uproar.^[32] Despite Braun's actions, he was elected to the European Parliament in June 2024.^[33]

Selected works

Books

2020s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	Grabowski, J. On Duty: The Polish Blue and Criminal Police in the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, 2024.[23][34] Grabowski, J. & Engelking, B. Night without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland, Indiana University Press, 2022.[35]

2010s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	Grabowski, J. Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland, Indiana University Press, 2013.[36]

2000s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	Grabowski, J. Rescue for Money: 'Paid Helpers' in Poland, 1939-1945, Yad Vashem, 2008.[37]

Articles

2020s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	Grabowski, J. & Klein, S. (2023). Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust. The Journal of Holocaust Research, 37(2), 133‒190.

2010s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	“A Study in the Microhistory of the Holocaust: The Liquidierungsaktion in Węgrów Ghetto.” (2018). Proceedings of XIV Lessons & Legacies, Claremont McKenna College, (P. Jaskot & A. Garbarini Editors), HEF, Chicago, 2018. “The Holocaust and Poland’s “History Policy.” (2017). Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 11, 2017, p. 1–6. „The Polish Police. Collaboration in the Holocaust”,. (2017). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Occasional Paper, April 2017. p. 33 “Microhistory of the Holocaust in Poland: New Sources, New Trails”, in: p. 131–151. (2017). Microhistories of the Holocaust”, Claire Zalc and Tal Bruttmann (Editors), Berghahn, New York, Oxford, 2017. Grabowski, J., & Libionka, D. (2017). “Distorting and Re-writing the History of the Holocaust in Poland: The Case of the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews During World War II in Markowa". Yad Vashem Studies, (45), 2017, p. 29–61. The Holocaust as a Polish Problem. (2016). Eastern European Culture, Politics and Societies, 2016, p. 16–27. The Role of “Bystanders” in the Implementation of the “Final Solution” in Occupied Poland. (2015). Yad Vashem Studies, (43), 1, 2015, p. 113–133. Grabowski, J. (2013). Post-war Police Investigations in France, or an Attempt at. Zaglada Zydow, 9. Grabowski, J. (2012). Rural Society and the Jews in Hiding: Elders, Night Watches, Firefighters, Hostages and Manhunts. Yad Vashem Studies, 40(1), 1–26.

2000s

	Publications
List (year in descending order)	Grabowski, J. (2009). German Anti-Jewish Propaganda in the General gouvernement, 1939-1945: Inciting Hate through Posters, Films, and Exhibitions. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 23(3), 381–412. Grabowski, J. (2008). Rewriting the History of Polish-Jewish Relations from a Nationalist Perspective: The Recent Publications of the Institute of National Remembrance. Yad Vashem Studies, 36(1), 253–270. Grabowski, J. (2007). Jewish Defendants in German and Polish Courts in the Warsaw District. Yad Vashem Studies, 35(1), 49–81. Grabowski, J. (2005). Polish managers of Jewish Property Seized by the Nazis. Zaglada Zydow, 1(1), 253–260. Grabowski, J. (2005). Warsaw Jews Expelled from Switzerland to the Generalgouvernement. A Case Study. Zaglada Zydow, 1(1), 261–269. Germans in the Eyes of the Gestapo, Ciechanow District, 1939-1945. (2004). Contemporary European History, 13(1), 21–43. Grabowski, J. (2004). A Holocaust in Northem Mazovia (Poland) in the Light of the Archives of Ciechanow Gestapo. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 18(3), 460–477.

Related pages

• Yehuda Bauer
• Shimon Redlich
• Jeffrey Kopstein
• Deborah Lipstadt
• Izabella Tabarovsky

Footnotes