Jan Grabowski and Tanya Gold
Tanya Gold Interviews Jan Grabowski on His New Book “Whitewash: Poland and the Jews”
Summary
In partnership with the Jewish Literary Foundation and the Jewish Quarterly
Poland, the epicentre of the Holocaust, began denying responsibility as soon as the Nazi atrocities ended. The nation’s distortion of history continues today - with disturbing consequences. In this groundbreaking essay produced for the Jewish Quarterly, Jan Grabowski, a world-renowned Holocaust historian, examines how the government, museums, schools and state institutions became complicit in delivering a message of Polish national innocence during the Holocaust. He recounts his own experience as the victim of smears and a notorious lawsuit for questioning the complicity of Poles in the destruction of the country’s Jews, and examines the far reaching consequences of Poland’s historical distortions, which have been repeated and replicated worldwide to challenge the truth of the holocaust. Jan is in conversation with journalist Tanya Gold.
Jan Grabowski
Jan Grabowski is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specialising in Jewish–Polish relations in German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust in Poland.
Co-founder in 2003 of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research, in Warsaw, Poland, Grabowski is best known for his book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland which won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize.
Tanya Gold
Tanya Gold is a freelance journalist. She writes for the Spectator, the New Statesman, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, and others. She won feature writer of the year at the 2009 British Press Awards and arts and culture story of the year at the 2015 Foreign Press Association Awards.