Auschwitz: photo - sheppard/wikipedia/cc
The remarks by Professor Jasiewicz were made in a special edition of Focus magazine to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising this April.
In the interview for the magazine, Jasiewicz - an employee at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the author of many academic papers on Polish/Jewish and Polish/Soviet history - said: “For many generations, the Jews, not the Catholic Church, worked to bring the Holocaust about. It looks like the Jews haven’t learned their lesson and haven’t come to any conclusions yet.”
On pogroms committed by Poles on Jews – such as in the village of Jedwabne in 1941 when hundreds of Jews were burnt to death in a barn by their Polish neighbours – Jasiewicz told Focus magazine: “I am completely convinced that the crime at Jedwabne and other pogroms were not committed to seize Jewish property or as revenge for the many terrible things that Jews did to Poles in the past. The pogroms were mostly motivated by great fear of Jews.”
“I am convinced that there is no point in dialogue with the Jews, because it doesn’t lead anywhere,” said Jasiewicz in another part of the interview with the popular science magazine.
Under Articles 256 and 257 of the Polish Penal Code, the historian, who is a member of the Polish PEN club, could face up to three years in prison for incitement to hatred and publicly insulting a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
In April, the Scientific Council of the Political Studies department at the Polish Academy of Sciences concluded that Jasiewicz had insulted the victims of the Holocaust and diminished the guilt of the perpetrators.
"The Scientific Council regrets recent statements about Jews contained in Focus magazine by Professor Krzysztof Jasiewicz, a member of staff at the Academy. These were an expression of his personal views, which the Council does not share,” a council communiqué said after the meeting.
“On behalf of the Jewish community of Warsaw we are deeply indignant at the words of Professor Krzysztof Jasiewicz,” the board of the Jewish Community of Warsaw said after the interview was published, days before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising anniversary on 19 April and opening to the public for the first time of Warsaw's new Museum to the History of Polish Jews.
“We are deeply concerned by this interview, and especially by the decision of the editor-in-chief of Focus to allow such an embarrassing article to be published,” the statement continues.
Editor of Focus magazine, Michal Wojcik has written that though the 61 year-old Jasiewicz's views are "extreme and outrageous, we decided to publish this interview, because in our opinion, however paradoxical this sounds, it shows something very important. […] We have shown that anti-Semitism, even among men of science, does not just belong to the past”. (pg)