Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Jews, Poles, WW II, and Double Standards: Jan Grabowski and the New Anne Frank Book

On January 17, 2022, the New York Times published a stellar review of the new book, "The Betrayal of Anne Frank." The book was scrupulously researched, the Times reported, and its authors concluded that Anne Frank was betrayed by Arnold van den Bergh, who happens to have been Jewish. The Times said that the evidence the authors adduced was "convincing if not conclusive." 

Sixty Minutes also covered the book. 

The book became available on January 18, 2022, and it shot up the Amazon charts

The book's arrival was beset with objections. 

Today, February 1, "Dutch publisher pulls book that names suspect who betrayed Anne Frank," announced the New York Post. “We offer our sincere apologies to anyone who might feel offended by the book," the publisher said. 

One can't help but compare the fate of this previously well-reviewed book with the work of Jan Grabowski, who has made inflammatory comments about Poles and Poland.  Grabowski has been widely criticized. Interested readers can search the names "Jan Grabowski" and "Mayor Edward Malinowski." 

One can't help but note that in one case, a well-reviewed book is "pulled" after it names a Jewish man as a potential collaborator, and, in the other case, the role a Polish man played is debated, and yet the author who condemns him is not abandoned by his publishers or academic colleagues. 

I don't know if the Anne Frank book is as good as the New York Times and Sixty Minutes episode present it as being. I don't know if Mayor Malinowski was scum or heroic. 

We do know the following: some Poles helped Jews. Some Poles were criminal scum. All Jews were victimized by Nazis, but some Jews purchased whatever scrap of life they could by collaborating with Nazis, by betraying other Jews, for example. 

Why the difference between the treatment of Grabowski's scholarship and that of Rosemary Sullivan and the investigators whose work she documents in "The Betrayal of Anne Frank"? I try to answer that question in my own book, "Bieganski." 

3 comments:

  1. No mystery at all. Pro-Jewish double standards are as old as the hills.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anti-Jewish double standards have had a disastrous impact on the entire human race.

      Delete
  2. The writer Barbara Engelking (Grabowski was the editor) has admitted that there were two people named Edward Malinowski. The Mayor (sołtys) helped the Jews and the other one collaborated. Both professors have refused to apologize 80-years old Filomena Leszczynska, who died shortly after the verdict. In the name of freedom of research.

    ReplyDelete

Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
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