Polish professor axed for blaming Holocaust on Jews

Historian says he’ll appeal academy decision to oust him over remarks that Jews ‘worked for centuries’ to bring about Shoah

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Polish historian Prof. Krzysztof Jasiewicz was dismissed from the Polish Academy of Sciences following an interview in which he partly blames Jews for the Holocaust.

Jasiewicz, 61, will lose his position as head of the Department of Analysis of Eastern Issues on June 1 but announced that he will appeal the decision.

In the interview, which was published in April in a special edition of Focus magazine on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Jasiewicz said that “generations of Jews worked for centuries to bring about the Holocaust,” that “without the active participation of the Jews the Holocaust would have been impossible,” and that “it is a waste of time to dialogue with the Jews.”

Director of the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Professor Eugeniusz Cezary Krol, said in a statement that Jasiewicz was fired for violating the elementary standards of scientific rigor.

Scholars and historians at the academy protested against what Jasiewicz said in the popular scientific magazine, saying his opinions were harmful.

“The Jews accuse us [Poles] of the worst of everything; they are violent and arrogant against us. Our role in this dialogue is limited to apologizing,” Jasiewicz told “Do Rzeczy” magazine in an article about the controversy.