HEFNU Support for Polish Scholars Engelking and Grabowski
February 9, 2021
The Director and the Academic Council of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University offer unwavering support for our colleagues Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, who currently face legal and media attacks in Poland. Both are internationally acclaimed scholars in the field of Holocaust Studies whose work is grounded in meticulous archival research and rigorously vetted through peer review by experts in the field. The current attacks threaten to stifle independent, unbiased inquiry into the Holocaust in Poland and could have a chilling effect on future scholarship in a wide range of disciplines.
There is no country in Europe that found itself unscathed or untarnished by the events of the Holocaust, including Poland. Scholarly analyses of this event remain a critical part of reckoning with that past. Research should not be penalized due to its findings. We call on Poland, and all countries, to encourage and protect unfettered academic investigation into difficult histories. The obfuscation of the past prevents civil society from productive engagement with history in the present day.
Academic Council:
Doris Bergen, University of Toronto (Canada)
Winson Chu, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Humboldt Fellow, Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ), Munich
Sara Horowitz, York University (Canada)
Jonathan Huener, University of Vermont
Paul Jaskot, Duke University
Anne Knowles, University of Maine
Erin McGlothlin, Washington University in St. Louis
Brad Prager, University of Missouri
Barry Trachtenberg, Wake Forest University
Sue Vice, University of Sheffield (UK)
Director:
Sarah Cushman, Northwestern University