So, /u/kieslowskifan and I have previously tackled the work of Jan Gross and its criticism on this sub, including the pitfalls of his work in the sense of the dynamic of groundbreaking work often pushing its thesis further than it is really supported by evidence.

But what this discussion on Gross shows and especially comes across in the criticism leveled against him by Musial is that the works of both Gross and Grabowski opened up a rather vicious debate in Poland around their own national past, at a point in time when there was a state-instituted backlash against such research driven by the wish to create a nationalist narrative based on an unambivalent story of Polish victimhood on the hands of Germans, Soviets and – in one peculiar version of this narrative – Jews in the form of Żydokomuna, meaning the assumption – strong in Polish nationalist circles – of Judeo-Communism and Jewish collaboration with the Soviets. Recent legal efforts by the current Polish government both against the usage of "Polish Death Camp Auschwitz" (which, to be frank, is complete rubbish moniker) as well as against "defaming the Polish nation", the latter of which has caused serious concerns that the Polish government plans to silence historians such as Gross and Grabowski by means of criminally persecuting them.

I mention this because a lot of the criticism leveled at Gross and Grabowski is only half or not at all motivated by a criticism of their historical method and interpretation but often rather by contemporary political reasons and by the fact that their research is positioned against what many see as the rightful and just narrative of Polish history. The letter you linked needs to be viewed in that context also. Not just because its origins lie with the "Polish League Against Defamation" but also because it alleges that Grabowski would besmirch the Polish nation, which is a distortion of what he actually writes.

In the same vein as for example, Halik Kochanski, whose book The Eagle Unbowed was hailed in Poland and elsewhere for her varied portrayal of Polish activities during WWII, Grabowski makes it very clear from the outset that he intends to treat this subject with the differentiation it deserves, writing in his introduction "It is more complicated than just blaming the Poles for betraying their Jewish neighbors. On the one hand there were extraordinarily brave Poles who risked their lives to save Jews, and on the other hand there was no great love between Poles and Jews before World War II.", and that during the war, relations between Poles and their Jewish neighbors became even more hostile in many cases.

This does echo Kochanski, who writes

Poles are all too frequently dismissed as unrepentant anti-semites who stood back as the Germans exterminated the Jews on Polish territory. (...) Some Jews claim that the Poles not only supported the extermination of the Jews but did nothing to help them, even assisting the Germans by betraying the Jews hiding in their midst. In response there are extreme nationalist Polish claims that the Jews did not deserve to be saved, because of their strong support for communism before the war and during the 1939-41 Soviet occupation of the eastern provinces and also the pro-Soviet actions of Jews after 1944. (...)

The reality is that there were Polish anti-semites who betrayed Jews to the Germans, and, indeed, a few who participated in the killings, but there were many Poles who did all they could to save Jews.

Similarly, the number Grabowski gives, 200.000, needs to be put in the same context that Grabowski puts it in. This number has been reported in the press as "Poles killed 200.000 Jews", which is not exactly what Grabowski writes about. This number according to Grabowski, includes both direct and indirect factors, meaning that it is comprised of

• the number of Jews killed by the so-called Blue Police, a Polish auxiliary police in the Generalgovernment created by the Germans to cut down the number of German personnel required to police the Polish population. This number is, as the letter you linked mentions, comparatively small.

• the number of Jews rounded up with the help of said Blue Police and its Polish informants who were previously in hiding.

• and the number of Jews betrayed by Poles to the Gestapo according to the surviving German Gestapo files in Poland.

His sources are the files of the Blue Police, post-war trials of collaborators, and the, already mentioned, Gestapo files, which Grabowski has also previously discussed in articles such as The Holocaust in Northern Mazovia (Poland) in the Light of the Archive of the Ciechanów Gestapo (an article in which he, as it bears to mention, makes the point that survivors of the Ghetto liquidations found refuge among the local Polish population).

The overall point of his research is not the same as both his detractors as well as the press have reported it, to assert that Poles were responsible for the Holocaust or directly killed 200.000 Jews but rather that Polish-Jewish relations during the war were not as straightforward as they are often portrayed in the sense of Poles being the saviors of Jews. Rather he intends to point out that this relationship as well as the issue of Polish collaboration with the Nazi occupation was complex and less than straightforward. He highlights that indeed many Poles saved Jews out of solidarity and other motives but that other Poles hid Jews for financial gain and when their money ran out, betrayed them to the Germans. This is not an exaggeration or a false report – this happened, extensively. And it is something that deserves historical attention. As does the role and motivations of the Blue Police and Polish informants of Blue Police and Gestapo alike.

This research that parts of the Polish population took part in the hunt for Jews and collaborated highlights the conditions of occupation, the difficult choices many people had to make, the systematic factors the Germans put in place to encourage such actions and also, a historical legacy of anti-Semitism in Poland that differs from the German one but nonetheless had a historical influence and role both before, during and after the war– and these are topics that deserve attention because they can deepen our understanding of the occupation and Nazi rule.

Both those who have taken Grabowski's number out of context to soapbox as well as those attacking Grabowski without the proper context have missed both the larger point as well as significance of his scholarship and often do so purposefully for questionable political reasons.

In order to represent Jan Grabowski's own positions in this matter, here is an excerpt from an interview he gave the Times of Israel:

Q: Do you feel that Poles are beginning to courageously deal with their past crimes and are admitting to some of them, or do you believe that most of the Poles are still not ready to face the past?

Grabowski: I think that when you look at the international community, then the Polish society seems to have done the most in terms of attempting to reconcile with the Polish-Jewish past. I was very pleased to see that after the publication of my book or Jan Tomasz Gross’s book you could see that Polish intellectuals are ready to re-examine the past.

For many parts of the Polish society it is very difficult, since for decades they were victims themselves, first of the Nazis and then of the Communists. If you look at the countries around Poland, such as Ukraine or the Baltic states, you will not find the same level of public debate about their relationship with their own Jewish minority.

Q.: Are you not worried that revealing the responsibility of Polish peasants for the murder of many Jews will increase the perception of Poland as an anti-Semitic country?

Grabowski: That is the reason why in the last two chapters of my book I bring the stories of Poles, who despite the negative image of Jews and the enormous pressure from their relatives took a huge risk in hiding them. It is undeniable that certain things have happened but you must understand the atmosphere in which it happened.

I emphasize the heroism of those who risked their lives to hide Jews from the Nazis, and did so despite the pressure exerted on them from their relatives and neighbors.

We should all remember that the Germans were responsible for this tragedy; it is they who murdered most of the three million Jews who lived in Poland before World War II. My book explains how the Germans were able to mobilize segments of the Polish society to take part in their plan to hunt down the Jews and help them carry out their Final Solution.

Sources:

• Jan Grabowski: Hunt for the Jews. Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland.

• Jan Grabowski: Rescue for Money: ‘Paid Helpers’ in Poland, 1939–1945.

• Halik Kochaniski: The Eagle Unbowed.

• Ringelblum, Emanuel (1992). Joseph Kermish, ed. Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War.

• Marek Getter (1996). "Policja Polska w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie 1939-1945"