Whitewash? Holocaust Distortion in Poland
- Date: 26 September 2024, 17:15–18:45
- Location: University Main Building, Main Univeristy Building, Lecture Hall IV
- Type: Lecture
- Lecturer: Professor Jan Grabowski
- Web page
- Organiser: Hugo Valentin Centre
- Contact person: Roland Kostic
- Phone: 0704250801
The 21st Hugo Valentin Lecture will be delivered by Professor Jan Grabowski. His research has resulted in monographs such as "Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-occupied Poland" (2013) and "The Polish Police: Collaboration in the Holocaust" (2017). In recent years, Professor Grabowski has devoted a significant portion of his research to memory culture and Holocaust denial.
In contrast to previous years' Holocaust denial, it is more common for states, institutions, and individuals today who engage in distorting the Holocaust not to question the Jewish catastrophe as a historical fact. Instead, they accept that six million European Jews were murdered by the Germans. What they refuse to acknowledge is that their own people, their nation, participated in the German genocide project.
This also applies to present-day Poland, where the distortion of the Holocaust has become an almost official state policy. During the lecture, Professor Jan Grabowski will show how this policy has received extensive support in Polish society and contributed to a gradual transformation of one of the greatest tragedies in European history into a myth about the Polish nation's freedom from historical guilt.
Jan Grabowski is a professor of history at the University of Ottawa. Throughout his career, he has served as a visiting researcher at institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, Leiden University, and Hebrew University. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Lund University in 2024.