Polish court rules that historians must apologize for part of Holocaust pogrom research

(JTA) — In the verdict of a lawsuit seen by some as significant for the future of Holocaust research and freedom of expression in Poland, a Warsaw court ordered two historians to publicly apologize for part of their research into a Holocaust pogrom.

In their 2018 book “Night Without an End,” a 1,700-page tome about Polish collaboration during World War II, historians Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking wrote that Edward Malinowski, the late mayor of the village of Malinowo, told Nazi officers where a group of Jews were hiding in a forest. The group of “dozens” were all killed.

Malinowski was acquitted in a postwar trial of collaborating with Nazis, and his niece sued the scholars for $26,000, alleging that they tarnished her uncle’s legacy.