Jan Żaryn
Jan Żaryn | |
|---|---|
| Senator for the 40th district | |
| In office November 12, 2015 – November 11, 2019 | |
| Preceded by | Anna Aksamit |
| Succeeded by | Jolanta Hibner |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Jan Krzysztof Żaryn 13 March 1958 Warsaw, Poland |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Political party | Independent[a] |
| Spouse(s) | Małgorzata Żaryn |
| Children | 3 |
| Parents | Stanisław Żaryn, Aleksandra Żaryn (née Jankowska) |
| Education | University of Warsaw (master's degree); Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences (PhD, habilitation) |
| Occupation | Historian, politician |
| Signature | |
Jan Krzysztof Żaryn (born March 13, 1958)[1] is a Polish nationalist[2] historian[1] who was a Senator[3] between 2015 and 2019.[4]
Early life
Żaryn was born in Warsaw, Poland into an intellectual family. He studied history at University of Warsaw between 1979 and 1984.[4]
Career
After his graduation, Żaryn taught history in high schools. He received a PhD in history in 1996, joined the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1997, and earned the habilitated doctor degree in 2004.[4] He also became a professor in humanities in 2013.[5]
Institute of National Remembrance
Żaryn joined the Bureau of Public Education of Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, which he directed from January 2006 until April 2009.[6]
Boards of historical societies
Żaryn also sat on the boards of historical societies, including the Society of Soldiers of the National Armed Forces,[7] Committee for Commemoration of Poles Rescuing Jews,[8] Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk,[9] Museum of the Cursed Soldiers and Political Prisoners of People's Republic of Poland,[10] and among others. He starting heading the Roman Dmowski and Ignacy Jan Paderewski Institute for the Legacy of Polish National Thought in 2020.[2]
Senate of Poland
Żaryn won a seat in the Senate of Poland in 2015, serving until 2019.[4]
Controversies
Historical revisionism
In terms of Holocaust historiography, Żaryn holds controversial views that are rejected by mainstream historians. For instance, he blamed Jews for the 1946 Kielce pogrom[b] by falsely claiming that "a significant proportion of Jewish individuals either supported the communist authorities or else simply joined their ranks. Many worked … in censorship and propaganda, slandering the memory of the PPP [Polish underground state], the AK [Home Army], and deceitfully remaining silent about Soviet massacres".[2][13]
Żaryn also denied that the Polish state was responsible for the 1968 antisemitic campaign in Poland[14] where the communist regime forced out as many as 25,000 Polish Jews, most of whom were Holocaust survivors.[15] He also called for the prosecution of Polish-American historian Jan Tomasz Gross[c] over Gross' books that revealed the scale of WWII Polish collaboration with Nazi occupiers.[14] He dismissed Gross' books as "part of a certain kind of Jewish literature and historiography that is soaked with deep resentment towards Poland and the Poles".[17]
Related pages
Footnotes
- ↑ Affiliated with the Law and Justice party, which gives him endorsement during elections
- ↑ A pogrom is a form of riot that targets an ethnic or a religious group. It is derived from the Russian word погром ("pogrom"); from "громить" IPA: [grʌˈmitʲ] ‒ to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.[11][12]
- ↑ Commonly known as Jan T. Gross. Gross is an emeritus professor of history at Princeton University.[16]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej: Dane osoby z katalogu osób "rozpracowywanych"". Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej (in Polish). 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Grabowski, Jan; Klein, Shira (February 9, 2023). "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". The Journal of Holocaust Research. 37 (2): 133–190. doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939. Retrieved January 20, 2025.
Jan Żaryn, a fervent nationalist, a darling of Polish right-wing populists, and the current chief of the newly established, government-funded Roman Dmowski Institute of National Thought (Dmowski was a prewar Polish politician, an unrepentant antisemite, and a great admirer of Adolf Hitler).
- ↑ "Polish senator calls for Israeli ambassador's expulsion". Jewish News. March 11, 2018. Retrieved May 29, 2025.
A Polish senator for the ruling party said he would not shake hands with Israel's ambassador and that he favors her expulsion from Poland for saying anti-Semitism was on the rise there [. ...] The crisis began with the passing of a law in January that criminalises blaming Poland for Nazi crimes. Several Jewish groups said the law impedes open debate and risks censoring research. Some critics of the law said it whitewashes what they called Polish complicity.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Senate of the Republic of Poland / Senators / List of Senators". www.senat.gov.pl. Archived from the original on 2021-04-22. Retrieved 2021-07-16.
- ↑ "Postanowienie Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 26 lutego 2013 r. nr 115-3-13 w sprawie nadania tytułu profesora" (PDF). Monitor Polski. 2013-02-26. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
- ↑ "Żaryn został odwołany "Nie umiem kłamać"". TVN24 (in Polish). 2009-04-09. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
- ↑ "List of Senators: Jan Żaryn". Senate of the Republic of Poland. Archived from the original on 2021-04-22. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
- ↑ Wóycicka, Zofia (2019-01-14). "Global patterns, local interpretations: new Polish museums dedicated to the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust". Holocaust Studies. 25 (3): 256. doi:10.1080/17504902.2019.1567660. ISSN 1750-4902. S2CID 165974012.
- ↑ Szostkiewicz, Adam (2018-02-10). "Zamiast Muzeum II Wojny Światowej – placówka polityki historycznej rządu PiS". Polityka (in Polish). Retrieved 2021-06-06.
- ↑ "Powołano Radę Muzeum Żołnierzy Wyklętych i Więźniów Politycznych PRL". TVP, via Informacyjna Agencja Radiowa (in Polish). 2020-09-09. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
- ↑
- "Pogrom | Meaning, History, & Facts". Britannica. September 23, 2024. Retrieved November 9, 2024.
- "Pogroms | Holocaust Encyclopedia". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 9, 2024.
- "Pogroms". Encyclopédie d’histoire numérique de l’Europe. Retrieved November 9, 2024.
- "What Were Pogroms?". My Jewish Learning. Retrieved November 9, 2024.
- "Global leaders react to Amsterdam pogrom". The Jerusalem Post. November 8, 2024. Retrieved November 9, 2024.
- ↑
- Klier, John D. (1993). "The Pogrom Tradition in Eastern Europe". Racist Violence in Europe. pp. 128–138. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-23034-1_9. ISBN 978-0-333-60102-0. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
- Dekel-Chen, Jonathan; Gaunt, David; Meir, Natan M; Bartal, Israel (2010). Anti-Jewish violence: rethinking the pogrom in East European history. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-00478-9. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
- Brass, Paul R (2016). Riots and pogroms. Springer. ISBN 978-1-349-24867-4. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
- Bemporad, Elissa (2019). Legacy of blood: Jews, pogroms, and ritual murder in the lands of the Soviets. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-046645-9. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
- Becker, Sascha O.; Mukand, Sharun; Yotzov, Ivan (August 10, 2022). "Persecution, pogroms and genocide: A conceptual framework and new evidence". Explorations in Economic History. 86 (101471). doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101471. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
- ↑ Korycki, Kate (2023). Weaponizing the Past: Collective Memory and Jews, Poles, and Communists in Twenty-First Century Poland. Vol. 11 (1 ed.). Berghahn Books. doi:10.2307/jj.5501079. ISBN 978-1-80539-050-3. S2CID 260671686.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "How Ewa Kurek, the Favorite Historian of the Polish Far Right, Promotes Her Distorted Account of the Holocaust". Tablet. May 3, 2018. Retrieved May 29, 2025.
[Ewa] Kurek was not the only participant in the Smolensk commemoration with a history of problematic statements about Jews [. ...] Jan Zaryn, who was also listed as attending the event, is a far-right parliamentarian who introduced a resolution denying most Polish responsibility for the 1968 purges, and has called for the prosecution of the Princeton Holocaust historian Jan Tomasz Gross.
- ↑
- Joanna Tokarska-Bakir (2023). Cursed: A Social Portrait of the Kielce Pogrom. Cornell University Press. ISBN 9781501771484. Retrieved October 16, 2024.
- William W. Hagen (2023). "The Expulsion of Jews From Communist Poland: Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties". Slavic Review. 82 (2). Cambridge University Press: 519–520. Retrieved October 16, 2024.
- "'It Changed Our Society Entirely': TV Series Shows How Poland Expelled 16,000 Jews in 1968". Haaretz. September 15, 2024. Retrieved October 17, 2024.
The Polish TV series 'End of Innocence,' about the communist government's brutal clampdown on 'Zionists' in March 1968, explores a rarely discussed tragedy for thousands of Jews – as told by a writer-director who lived through it
- Lappin, Shalom (2025). "The Nazification of the Postmodernist Left". Fathom Journal. Retrieved February 9, 2025.
When Jews insisted on highlighting antisemitism [...] they were accused of reactionary particularism [. ...] much of the left resisted attempts to present the Nazi genocide as a Jewish cataclysm [. ...] It did not see the oppression of Soviet Jewry, or the desperate flight of Ethiopian Jews, as issues [. ...] Stalinist purges [...] Jews [...] as cosmopolitans and Zionist agents. In 1968-69 the Polish Communist Party conducted an anti-Zionist attack on [...] its Jewish population of 35,000, resulting in the forced emigration of approximately 25,000 of them.
- ↑ "Jan Tomasz Gross | Department of History". Princeton University. Retrieved May 29, 2025.
- ↑ Woleński, Jan (2017-06-30). "Pamięć zbiorowa jako alibi". Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Philosophica. Ethica-Aesthetica-Practica (in Polish) (29): 21–36. doi:10.18778/0208-6107.29.03. ISSN 2353-9631.