Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

(Bogdan Musial’s Review of Judenjagd), 2011

AntiPolish JUDENJAGD: Polonophobe Jan Grabowski Does Not Have a Leg to Stand On

Bogdan Musial wrote his analysis of Grabowski in the March 27, 2011 issue of DZIEJE NAJNOWSZY. (Volume 43, Number 2, pages 159-170).

Jan Grabowski, has been identified by some historians as a neo-Stalinist. A neo-Stalinist is one who copies Stalinist-era propaganda methods of demonizing patriotic and devout Catholic Poles as fascists, Nazis, and (what else?) anti-Semites.

Grabowski has authored JUDENJAGD, and this has recently been translated into English, and titled THE HUNT FOR THE JEWS. See my review:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/jew-killing-wwii-by-poles-200000-fake-news-pushed-grabowski/

[BTW, I wrote my own review before reading Musial, so that I could render an independent analysis of Grabowski.]

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Historian Bogdan Musial has written a devastating analysis of Jan Grabowski’s JUDENJAGD. Musial has extensively studied the Nazi German administration. He is well qualified to speak on German policies in German-occupied Poland. Musial has also long been studying the history of Dabrowa County, because it was his home. See my review of a detailed work, on Dabrowa County, by Bogdan Musial’s brother, Adam:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/grabowski-judenjagd-corrected-musial/

BOGDAN MUSIAL EXPOSES GRABOWSKI

It turns out that Grabowski continues to misrepresent events, and to omit, brush off, or downplay inconvenient material facts. Here are some issues raised by Musial:

• Grabowski selectively focuses on prewar Polish anti-Semitism in Dabrowa County. He neglects the rural economic downturn that afflicted the area, and was quite relevant to local Polish-Jewish relations.
• Grabowski copies Jan T. Gross in willfully exempting Jewish testimonies from any scrutiny (also while subjecting the testimonies of Poles to the normal historical scrutiny). This violates the most elementary canons of historical objectivity. Grabowski also accepts German denials of Jew killing with little question.
• Grabowski ignores Polish testimonies on the events. (To emphasize the Jewish experience is one thing: To ignore the Polish perspective is inexcusable.)
• There was a significant population of deportees, moved to this county, in the wake of Poland’s defeat in the 1939 war. This aggravated tensions between peoples, and contributed to rootlessness and lawlessness.
• The Pole-on-Jew misconduct in this area cannot be divorced from the broader context of extensive Pole-on-Pole misconduct in the same. Thousands of Poles are known to have been robbed, and hundreds of Poles are known to have been murdered.
• Multiple sources of information indicate that many more fugitive Jews survived in Dabrowa County than Grabowski is willing to acknowledge.
• Were the denunciations of fugitive Jews some sort of Polish hobby? Hardly! Bogdan Musial demonstrates that the Germans not only imposed the death penalty for Poles aiding Jews. The Germans also imposed the death penalty on Poles merely for failing to report fugitive Jews! Poles are known to be burned alive by the Germans for failing to report fugitive Jews.
• Poles who denounced fugitive Jews caused not only the deaths of the Jews. They also caused the deaths of the Poles who were helping the Jews.
• The Polish Underground ARMIA KRAJOWA (A. K., Home Army) fought against the plague of lawlessness in Dabrowa County. In addition, it executed some Poles known to have identified the hiding places of Jews. Grabowski ignores important works on this subject in this specific county.
• The account of Polish volunteer firefighters killing Gypsies is unsupported by the source used by Grabowski.
• Members of Polish units formed by the Germans were subject to the death penalty for the slightest disobedience, or even for no reason at all.
• Some versions of the crimes committed by the likes of Engelbert Guzdek, who was a German gendarme, indicate all-around violence, not only against Jews.
• Though professing to know German, Grabowski commits some elementary blunders that tend to lessen the responsibility of the Germans in the killings of the Jews of Dabrowa County.
• Based on his knowledge of the Nazi German administrative structures, Bogdan Musial concludes that the Germans organized and led the JUDENJAGDs to a much tighter extent than Grabowski leads the reader to suppose.
• Grabowski misrepresents the Junaks and the BAUDIENST. The latter was a form of German forced labor, and disobedience was punished very harshly. The Germans used the BAUDIENST not only for such things as building roads, but also for hunting Jews. Poles in the BAUDIENST had no choice. For a German scholar’s confirmation of this fact, see:
  https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/02/17/limited-poles-mired-in-baudienst-little-jew-killing-polish-autonomy/
• Bogdan Musial includes a document proving that Polish village mayors were forced to sign an agreement, for the German occupation authorities, in which they stated that they would not tolerate the presence of a single fugitive Jew. The Germans treated village mayors (soltys) as hostages to enforce compliance.

For a 2023 update on the mendacity of the so-called Polish Center for Holocaust Research, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2026/02/21/judenjagd-judeocentric-fabrications-gontarczyk/