The Rewriting of Holocaust History on the World’s 7th Most Popular Website

For the past few years, a group of Wikipedia editors has been spreading disinformation on the history of the Holocaust. With no obvious ties to any government, they slowly but relentlessly hack away at reason and accuracy to promote ideological zeal, prejudice, and bias. Due to this group’s handiwork, Wikipedia’s coverage of Holocaust history follows a narrative touted by right-wing Polish nationalists. Its articles whitewash the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolster stereotypes about Jews, spinning fantastical tales about Jews’ involvement in large-scale crimes against Poles, and wildly inflating the scope of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.

Jewish minority has been a part of Polish society for over 1000 years, during which the country has experienced alternating periods of development and destruction. Polish-Jewish relations were particularly affected by the tragic period of the Holocaust. After the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel and the tightening of Soviet-dominated Poland, the problematic knowledge of shared history with widely different interpretations translated into the complexity of Polish-Israeli relations. It contributed to a build-up of mutual distrust.[…]

Our webinar with Goldie Morgentaler will discuss her mother Chava Rosenfarb’s Yiddish novel of Lodz, Poland January 1939 until the end of Lodz Ghetto in 1944. Dr. Morgentaler translated the book from Yiddish to English. Now there is an excellent Polish translation by Dr. Joanna Lisek .[…]

Karen Goodman will introduce a folkloric trope of Ashkenazic dance through the work of four artists: S. An-sky, Nathan Vizonsky, Judith Berg and Benjamin Zemach.

S. An-sky wrote the 1915 play, The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds, which was based on his ethnographic research between 1912-14 amongst rural Jews in what is now Ukraine.[…]