Whitewash: Holocaust Distortion in Poland and Beyond

Class starts Jan 7 1:00pm-2:15pm

Tuition: $360 | YIVO members: $270**

Registration for this class is now full. To be added to the waitlist, please fill out this form.

This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.

Instructor: Jan Grabowski

Since the end of World War II, the commemoration and the history of the Holocaust have entered the heart of political struggles in Poland. In order to defend the “good name of the nation,” Polish authorities created institutions and legislated laws intended to enforce the official, state-approved version of history. This narrative, which shifts the focus away from the Jewish victims of the Shoah and places it on Righteous gentiles, real or imagined, has been well-received by the Polish society and, over the decades, helped to distort the history of the Jewish catastrophe.

It is within this context that old antisemitic tropes have come alive and acquired new currency. This unprecedented state-sponsored assault on the memory of the Shoah is known today as Holocaust distortion, a particularly insidious brand of Holocaust denial. The course will shed light on the origins of the current situation as well as its impact on Holocaust memory and Holocaust education in Poland, Europe, and beyond.

Course Materials:
Students should purchase the following texts:

Whitewash: Poland and the Jews by Jan Grabowski (Purchase)

All other materials provided by the instructor digitally on Canvas.

Questions? Read our 2025 Winter Program FAQ.

Jan Grabowski is a Professor of History at the University of Ottawa and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His interests focus on the Holocaust in Poland and, more specifically, on the relations between Jews and Poles during the war. He has authored/co-authored or edited twenty books and published more than eighty articles published in learned journals in many languages. Professor Grabowski’s book: Hunt for the Jews. Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland has been awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for 2014. In 2018 he co-edited and co-authored “Dalej jest noc” [Night Without End] (a two-volume study of the fate of the Jews in selected counties of occupied Poland). Night Without End has been published in 2022 in English by Indiana University Press. Grabowski’s most recent book “On Duty. The Role of the Polish “Blue” Police in the Holocaust” has been published in Poland, in March 2020 and the English edition was published in May 2024 by Yad Vashem Presses.

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