Piotr Gontarczyk

Piotr Gontarczyk

Piotr Gontarczyk (born 29 April 1970 in Żyrardów, Poland) is a Polish historian with a doctorate in history and political science.

He is employed by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and specializes in the history of the Polish communist movement during World War II and in contemporary history.

Career

Piotr Gontarczyk studied journalism and political science at Warsaw University, in 2003 receiving a doctorate for his thesis, The Polish Workers' Party: The Road to Power, 1942-1945.[1] In 2004 the thesis was honored with a Jerzy Łojek Award.[2]

Gontarczyk has also studied at the Warsaw University Institute of History.

In 1998–2005 he worked in the office of the Commissioner for the Public Interest with its deputy commissioner, Judge Krzysztof Kauba.[3] Since 2006 he is vice-director of the Office of Archivization of Documents at the Institute of National Remembrance. In September 2007 he was named Deputy Director of the Lustration Office at the Institute of National Remembrance.

In 2006 Gontarczyk identified Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) as a former agent, in 1945–53, of the Polish Security Service.[4]

Gontarczyk is a former member of the academic corporation, Respublica.[5]

In 2012 he criticized the Polish Foreign Ministry's recommendation of a book—Inferno of Choices: Poles and the Holocaust, about Polish antisemitism—as an act of incompetence which may tarnish Poland's reputation.[6][7]

Wałęsa controversy

In 2008 Gontarczyk and Sławomir Cenckiewicz published a book, SB a Lech Wałęsa. Przyczynek do biografii (The Security Office and Lech Wałęsa: A Contribution to a Biography). While the book seemed more like a political indictment than a work of scholarship, it caused a major controversy in Poland.[8][9] Gontarczyk and Cenckiewicz argued that in the 1970s the Solidarity leader and later President of Poland Lech Wałęsa was a secret informant of the Polish communist Security Service.[10] Michael Szporer writes that the book should have been more nuanced in its judgements of anti-communist leaders, and that it unfairly singled out Wałęsa.[11]

Views on the Jedwabne Pogrom

According to Gontarczyk the involvement of some Jewish members in communist atrocities during the Soviet occupation can't be used as an excuse to justify the events that happened in Jedwabne, even if this contributed to anti-Jewish violence.[12] Gontarczyk has criticized historian Jan T. Gross, whose 2001 book Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland described the Jedwabne Pogrom. Gontarczyk criticizes Gross for giving different weight to witness statements based on their ethnicity, lack of objectivity, and treating witness statements as reliable solely on the basis if the person was a potential victim of Holocaust. According to Gontarczyk, this method goes against the established tools of historic craftsmanship, where every statement should be judged objectively.[13] He also points out that Gross ignores the relations between Jewish and Polish populations during the Soviet occupation.[14] Gontarczyk places responsibility for the pogrom in the hands of two criminal ideologies, Nazism and Communism, and supports the exhumation of Jewish bodies which is opposed by many Jews on religious grounds. According to Efraim Zuroff, "revisionist statements among officials such as Gontarczyk are a new development".[15]

Gontarczyk's views on the Jedwabne pogrom, as those of similar Polish historians, were cited by the extreme nationalist Polish press as the chief historical authorities on the pogrom and Gross's book. According to Dorota Glowacka and Joanna Zylinska, Gontarczyk's position subscribes to the "martyrological historiography" model, which sanctifies the Polish nation based on ethnicity, regardless of its actions.[16]

Criticism

In 2000 Gontarczyk published a book about the Przytyk pogrom, Pogrom? Zajścia polsko-żydowskie w Przytyku 9 marca 1936 r. Mity, fakty, dokumenty (Pogrom? Polish-Jewish Events at Przytyk on 9 March 1936: Myths, Facts, Documents). It has been reviewed critically by Jacek Walicki who questioned Gontarczyk’s objectivity, who said the publication could not been as a scientific publication the intent of the author being to create a mythologised image of history, trying to convince the reader that Jews were a foreign object, a closed society, whose basic aim was to harm Poles.[17]

According to Jolanta Żyndul the title itself indicates the thesis of the book that no pogrom occurred. According to Żyndul, Gontarczyk omitted all the facts that did not fit his thesis of "Polish-Jewish conflict".[18]

According to Jerzy Tomaszewski the work is a "very weird book indeed, Gontarczyk relied exclusively on Polish legal and administrative documentation, and dismissed all foreign publications, along with previous Polish ones, as propaganda, seeing Jewish and American publications as based almost exclusively on pre-war Jewish press and books published in Communist times. According to Tomaszewski this rejection was irrational and wrong, proving insufficient knowledge.[19]

According to Joanna Michlic, Gontarczyk implies Jews were responsible for anti-Jewish violence as they sought to defend themselves. Michlic sees Gontarczyk's work as a highly rationalized form of the entho-nationalist approach, justifying anti-Jewish violence as a form of national defense as the Jews are not part of the Polish nation but rather an "alien and harmful nation".[20]

Personal life

Gontarczyk is married to Aneta Gontarczyk.[21] In 2009 Ms. Gontarczyk, who had worked for the Military Intelligence Services verification commission, had her security clearance revoked. According to Piotr Gontarczyk, this was political retribution by Donald Tusk's administration for Gontarczyk's book about Lech Wałęsa.[21]

Books

  • Tajne oblicze GL-AL, PPR. Dokumenty (1997–1999) ISBN 83-87654-03-5 - co-author
  • Pogrom? Zajścia polsko-żydowskie w Przytyku 9 marca 1936 r. Mity, fakty, dokumenty (2000), ISBN 83-909046-4-0
  • Polska Partia Robotnicza. Droga do władzy 1941-1944 (2003), ISBN 83-60335-75-3
  • Tajny współpracownik "Święty" (2005) ISBN 83-919221-8-9
  • Kłopoty z historią (2006) ISBN 83-60533-03-2
  • SB a Lech Wałęsa. Przyczynek do biografii (2008) ISBN 83-60464-74-X (with Sławomir Cenckiewicz)
  • Najnowsze kłopoty z historią. Publicystyka z lat 2008-2012 (2013)

References

  1. ↑ Template:Ludzie nauki
  2. ↑ {{}}
  3. ↑ {
  4. ↑ Zygmunt Bauman: Why Good People do Bad Things, Shaun Best, page 12.
  5. ↑ Polityka (in Polish). Wydawn. Prasowe "Polityka". 2006.
  6. ↑ Behr, Valentin. "Genèse et usages d’une politique publique de l’histoire. La «politique historique» en Pologne." Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest 46.46-3 (2015): 21-48.
  7. ↑ Gontarczyk o "Inferno of Choices": to obraz będący raczej pochodną niekompetencji i nieodpowiedzialności MSZ, a nie stanu wiedzy, wpolityce, 7 August 2012
  8. ↑ Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition: Essays in memory of Victor Zaslavsky, pages 406-7, Vladislav Zubok, CEU Press
  9. ↑ Wikinews: Row over Lech Wałęsa's alleged collaboration with communists escalates
  10. ↑ Harry de Quetteville (14 June 2008). "Lech Walesa was Communist spy, claims book". Daily Telegraph. Berlin. Retrieved 4 October 2008.
  11. ↑ Solidarity: The Great Workers Strike of 1980, Michael Szporer, Lexington Books, 2012, p. 286.
  12. ↑ "Gross kontra fakty" Piotr Gontarczyk Życie 28.02.2001
  13. ↑ "Gross kontra fakty" Piotr Gontarczyk Życie 28.02.2001
  14. ↑ "Gross kontra fakty" Piotr Gontarczyk Życie 28.02.2001
  15. ↑ 75 years after Jedwabne pogrom, Poland wrestles with evidence of complicity, JTA, Cnaan Lipshiz, 12 July 2016
  16. ↑ Imaginary neighbors: mediating Polish-Jewish relations after the Holocaust, Dorota Glowacka and Joanna Żylińska, 2007, University of Nebraska Press, page 33, ""Strzembosz insisted that it was the Germans and not the ethnic Poles who were responsible for the Jedwabne massacre.28 He also claimed that individual Jewish testimonies used by Gross were unreliable sources, while at the same time insisting that Polish testimonies were reliable. Finally he dismissed Neighbors altogether as a “weak” and “fake” work that could not be taken seriously as historical writing. Four other historians—Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Bogdan Musiał, Leszek Żebrowski, and Piotr Gontarczyk—endorsed and propagated a similar position.29 The extreme nationalist press came to cite them as the chief historical authorities on both Gross’s book and the Jedwabne massacre.30 The position of these professional historians, as well as that of the journalists, shows that they all subscribe to the model of “martyrological historiography” (historiografia martyrologiczna), which “sanctifies” the Polish nation understood as an ethnic entity, regardless of its actions. This phenomenon alone provides clues to their dismissive reactions toward Neighbors. The murders of the local Jewish communities by their ethnic Polish neighbors in Jedwabne and other towns in northeastern Poland go against the traditional historical conceptualization of Polish society and therefore constitute a subject that many historians are still far from willing to explore."
  17. ↑ Jacek Walicki, Tygiel Kultury, 2002 nr 1/3, pp. 180-184
  18. ↑ Jeśli nie pogrom, to co?, Gazeta Wyborcza, Jolanta Żyndul, 7 March 2001, nr 74, p 1, " Od kilku miesięcy można spotkać w księgarniach książkę Piotra Gontarczyka (wyd. Rekonkwista, Biała Podlaska–Pruszków 2000), która mogłaby tej potrzebie sprostać. Złudzenia rozwiewa jednak już sam tytuł: Pogrom? Zajścia polsko–żydowskie w Przytyku 9 marca 1936 r. Mity, fakty, dokumenty”. Od razu wiemy, że jest to książka z jasno określoną tezą: żadnego pogromu nie było!" (For several months you can find in bookstores a book by Piotr Gontarczyk (published by Rekonkwista, Biała Podlaska-Pruszków 2000), which could meet this need. However, the title itself deludes the illusion: Pogrom? Polish-Jewish incidents in Przytyk, March 9, 1936. Myths, facts, documents. " We know at once that this is a book with a clearly defined thesis: no pogrom was there!), "Przedstawiając tło wydarzeń przytyckich, Gontarczyk skrzętnie usunął z niego wszystkie fakty, które mogły zaburzać precyzyjnie budowany przez obraz „konfliktu polsko – żydowskiego”. Gdzieś mu się zapodziały antysemickie wypowiedzi posłów Sejmie wzywające do pozbycia się Żydów z Polski i ograniczenia ich praw. Nie wspomina nawet o projekcie ustawy zakazującej uboju rytualnego, która kilka tygodni przed wydarzeniami przytyckimi została złożona w Sejmie i wkrótce została w złagodzonej formie uchwalona, wzbudzając rozgoryczenie społeczności żydowskiej." ("Presenting the background of the events in Przytyk, Gontarczyk carefully removed from it all the facts that might have disturbed the precisely constructed "Polish-Jewish conflict". Somewhere, the Sejm's anti-Semitic statements disappeared, calling for the Jews to be removed from Poland and their rights restricted. It does not even mention a draft law prohibiting ritual slaughter, which a few weeks before the insurrection took place in the Sejm and was soon enacted in a relaxed form, arousing the bitterness of the Jewish community.")
  19. ↑ Przegląd Historyczny, 2001, nr 2, pp. 259-261
  20. ↑ Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present, Joanna Michlic, page 110-111, University of Nebraska Press
  21. 1 2 Historyk IPN: Urzędnicy Tuska łamią prawo, 8 July 2009 updated 9 June 2010, Dziennik
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