Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (born July 15, 1962) is an American historian.^[1] He has been described as nationalist by mainstream historians.^[2]

Early life

Chodakiewicz was born in Warsaw, Poland.^[1] He earned a BSc from San Francisco State University in 1988, an MA from Columbia University in 1990, an MPhil from Columbia University in 1992, and a PhD from Columbia University in 2001.^[3]

Controversies

Holocaust revisionism

Chodakiewicz has promoted controversial views about the Holocaust, including:^[1]

• "Many Jews collaborate[d] with Soviet Communists"
• "Jews [are] more likely to kill Poles after World War II"
• For these "reasons", the murder of Jewish survivors returning to their homeland^[4] was "not antisemitic"^[1]

Chodakiewicz also appeared in traditionalist Catholic media, like Radio Maryja, promoting conspiracy theories about Jews.^[1] In a 2001 interview by this radio, he accused "Jewish memoirists of bragging about the shooting of hundreds of Poles by "Jewish partisans".^[1] Despite Chodakiewicz's record of antisemitic writings, US President George W. Bush made him a member of the oversight board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.^[1] He served until 2010.^[1]

Reception

Many historians, including Princeton University professor Jan T. Gross^[a] and University of Toronto professor Piotr Wróbel^[b] criticized Chodakiewicz, saying that Chodakiewicz had written several pieces that trivialized the Holocaust and the violent antisemitism of many Polish Catholics.^[1] In his 2003 book After the Holocaust: Polish Jewish Relations in the Wake of World War II, he underestimated the number of Jews that Polish Catholics had killed in post-war pogroms.^[4][7] He also accused Holocaust victims of being "Jewish Communists".^[1]

Historian Jan Grabowski^[c] criticized Chodakiewicz's views as "copious victim blaming".^[9] Other historians, including David Engel, Joanna Michlic and Laurence Weinbaum, shared the same opinion as Grabowski.^[2][9] In particularly, Weinbaum wrote,^[2][9]

“

Chodakiewicz and like-minded historians seem reluctant to forgive the Jews for Jedwabne and the Kielce pogrom, and are hard at work explaining why the murdered—not the murderers—are guilty.

”

referring to the Polish nationalists being upset with the revelation of the Jedwabne pogrom^[d].

Related pages

• Jan Żaryn
• David Irving
• Louis Farrakhan
• Richard C. Lukas
• Polish Memory Law

Footnotes

1. Jan T. Gross is an emeritus professor of history at Princeton University.^[5]
2. Piotr Wróbel is an emeritus professor of history, specialized in Polish history, at University of Toronto.^[6]
3. A chair professor of history at University of Ottawa who won several awards for his books about the Holocaust in Poland.^[8]
4. A pogrom started by ethnic Poles in the town of Jedwabne in Nazi-occupied Poland on July 10, 1941, where 40+ Poles killed as many as 1,600 Jews.^[10][11]