| Dear Professor Byrnes. We lead a number of community organisations which bring together Polish immigrants in Australia spanning several generations. It has come to our attention that your organisation, in conjunction with Network for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law, has invited Professor Jan Tomasz Gross to Australia to give a lecture entitled On the periphery of the Holocaust – Jews and their Polish neighbours, on June 21st.
We fully respect the right of the AHRC to invite guest lecturers in line with your objectives, and naturally do not question the choice of subject matter at hand. However, given that we represent a significant portion of the Polish Australian community, we would like to express our views on the way Professor Gross has represented relations between Poles and their Jewish compatriots during the Second World War, as described in his works: "Neighbours: Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland"; "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz"; and especially in the recently published "Golden Harvest". We are also hopeful that the management of the AHRC is able to fulfil our request, which is outlined at the end of this letter.
Professor Jan Tomasz Gross is a highly controversial figure in Poland. Each one of his published works has met with protests and even street demonstrations. We write to you because we identify with those who believe that Professor Gross’s books give a false picture of Polish-Jewish relations in Poland. They are biased and denigrate the dignity of the Polish people, who were also greatly afflicted by the horrors of Nazi occupation.
A number of highly respected historians have roundly criticised Professor Gross’s work, highlighting its lack of academic rigour, selectiveness and failure to put the facts described in context. It is worth noting that the executive director of the Polish publisher of "Golden Harvest", Ms Danuta Skora, herself described the book as tendentious and hurtful to many people – and publicly apologised for this fact. It has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt, for instance, that an infamous photograph included in the book purporting to show Polish peasants digging up graves at the Majdanek concentration camp, in fact shows something entirely different.
I’m sure you’ll agree that it will not be possible during such a brief appearance to present all of the claims which have been levelled against Professor Gross’s publications. Nevertheless we would like to inform you that we, along with many of our compatriots in Poland, believe that the work of Professor Gross has done nothing to help redress historical differences in the Polish-Jewish dialogue.
Having lived for many years in our second homeland – Australia – we are eager for the citizens of this country to have access to full and objective information about Poland, its history and its present. This can only be made possible by giving voice to those of differing points of view, political outlook and nationality.
For this reason, we kindly ask the AHRC to also invite and alternative guest lecturer to Australia to speak on the above-mentioned issues – namely Professor Marek Jan Chodakiewicz of the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC. Professor Chodakiewicz holds a PhD (with distinction) from Columbia University; his areas of expertise include history, democracy building, communism and American foreign policy. In April 2005 he was appointed by former President George W. Bush for a five-year term to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Employing meticulous research and academic rigour, Prof. Chodakiewicz has conducted scathing critiques of all three aforementioned books by Professor Gross. Prof. Chodakiewicz has recently edited "Hearts of Gold or a Golden Harvest?", which rejects the pop-cultural-cum-post-modernist image of a Polish Christian benefiting from the Holocaust and, instead, recognises a variety of nuanced attitudes of the ‘gentiles’ towards the great Jewish tragedy.
We firmly believe that the principles of free and open debate, the right of reply and natural justice so cherished by Australians support our request and hope it will be given serious consideration by the AHRC.
We look forward to your response in due course.
Yours Faithfully
HUBERT BLASZCZYK
President, Polish Political Prisoners Association
ADAM GAJKOWSKI
President, Nasza Polonia Inc.
TADEUSZ TARMAS
President, Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen Association, NSW Branch, Australia
Prof. Gross's Public Lecture - where and when
Press Conference for Gross' Golden Harvest
"But in his book, Gross examines some uncomfortable facts. The majority of Polish Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis, but an estimated 250,000 managed to hide to avoid the death camps. However, only about 40,000 survived the war. What happened to the remaining 210,000? asks Gross. In his book, he states that along with illnesses and harsh conditions, it was Poles who killed tens of thousands of Jews or revealed them to the Nazi occupiers.
"That book challenges our willingness to forget," says Henryk Wozniakowski, head of Znak, a leading intellectual publishing house in Poland, which put out the book. Znak has received many e-mails that oppose the book, and its offices in the southern Polish city of Krakow have been sprayed with graffiti.
Leading Polish public figures have criticized the book, saying the incidents described by Gross were rare and are by no means representative of Polish society. "Gross presents extreme behavior of some demoralized persons as behavior of the whole community," says Tomasz Nalecz, a historian and an adviser to President Bronislaw Komorowski. "Hyenas are everywhere. But the Polish society passed extremely well the test, which was the war. I am not ashamed of Poles."
quoted from time.com | 
