Polish prof. to be axed for anti-Semitic views

In interview professor for the Polish Academy of Sciences says "Jews worked for centuries to bring the Holocaust about."

By NISSAN TZUR, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
Prof. Krzysztof Jasiewicz370 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Prof. Krzysztof Jasiewicz370
(photo credit: Courtesy)
KRAKOW – Prof. Krzysztof Jasiewicz, from the Polish Academy of Sciences, who caused an international outrage after he blamed the Jews for participating in the killing of their own people during the Holocaust, will be dismissed from his position at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
Jasiewicz, 61, the head of the Department of Analysis of Eastern studies and a well known expert on Polish-Jewish relations, revealed his anti-Semitic views during an interview he gave in April to a special edition of the popular Polish magazine Focus – published on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
In the interview, titled “Are the Jews themselves guilty?” Jasiewicz said: “The Jews worked for centuries to bring the Holocaust about” and added that, “the scale of the German crime was only possible because the Jews themselves participated in the murder of their own people.”
Jasiewicz also referred in the interview to the pogroms perpetrated by Poles on their Jewish neighbors during World War II, saying: “The pogroms were mostly motivated by a great fear of the Jews,” and “It is a waste of time to dialogue with the Jews because it doesn’t lead anywhere” and blamed the Jews for killing their Arab neighbors.
Prof. Jasiewicz’s anti-Semitic remarks caused outrage among leaders of Jewish organizations around the world who demanded his expulsion from the institute.
Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal center’s director for International Relations, sent a letter to the president of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Michal Kleiber and called upon him to dismiss Jasiewicz from his position.
“[The] Academy’s august reputation had, last week, been stained with the dark scourge of anti-Semitism,” Samuels wrote.
A statement issued by Eugeniusz Cezary Krol, director of the Institute of Political Studies at the Academy, confirmed that Prof. Jasiewicz was fired for his anti-Semitic remarks and for “violating the elementary standards of scientific rigor.”
Shortly after the Jasiewicz interview, Krol apologized and said that he and his friends at the Academy are “shocked and disturbed” and added that the Stuermer’s slogan, “Everything is the fault of the Jews” came through Jasiewicz’s interview and that the interview hurts the image of the institute. Scholars and other professors at the Academy of Sciences also protested Jasiewicz’s opinions which appeared in the article.
Jasiewicz himself declined to comment and was not ready to answer questions of the media. He will be permanently dismissed from his position on June 1, but announced that he is planning to appeal that decision.