Dariusz Ratajczak - Holocaust Denial

Holocaust Denial

According to Ruth E. Gruber report, Dariusz Ratajczak, in his book Tematy Niebezpieczne ("Dangerous Themes"), appears to agree with Holocaust deniers who claim that for technical reasons it was not possible to kill millions of people in the Nazi gas chambers, that Zyklon B gas was used only for disinfecting, that there was no Nazi plan for the systematic murder of Jews and that most Holocaust scholars "are adherents of a religion of the Holocaust". Rajtaczak would defend himself claiming that he only reproduced the Holocaust deniers claims to illustrate their point of view but did not endorse them. Ratajczak's book triggered widespread public criticism and drew protests from numerous sources, including the director of the museum at the former Auschwitz death camp, senator Wladyslaw Bartoszewski Polish mainstream academic community and bishop of Lublin.

The University of Opole suspended Dariusz Ratajczak from his teachings in 1999. In the same year he was brought to local court, as denying the existence of the Holocaust is a criminal offence in Poland. In December 1999 a court in Opole found Ratajczak guilty of breaching the Institute of National Remembrance law that outlawed the denial of crimes against humanity committed by Nazi or by communist regimes in Poland, but that his crime had caused "negligible harm to society". The reason for the low sentence was that Ratajczak's self-published book had only 230 copies and that in the second edition and public appearances he criticized the Holocaust denial.

The verdict was criticized by some, like former victims of Nazi crimes, as too lenient. Two mainstream liberal Polish newspapers like Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita criticized the verdict in support of Ratajczaks' freedom of speech. For Ratajczak support spoke and one of the leaders of League of Polish Families party Ryszard Bender, who during Radio Maria broadcast, denied the fact that Auschwitz was a death camp, which caused another scandal in Poland.

At the end Dariusz Ratajczak was fired from University of Opole in 2000 and banned from teaching at universities for three years. During this time he worked as storeman. In 2000 he became the European Associate for Adelaide Institute, Australia. Ratajczak remained defiant and denied all charges, appealing for an outright acquittal; his critics also appealed demanded a harsher sentence, including a prison term. Eventually after a series of appeals the verdict was upheld and the case dismissed in 2002.

A scandal surrounding a Ratajczak’s book whose publication represents what some described as the first serious case of Holocaust denial in the Poland (although there have been others).

Ratajczak revised the book in 2005, attributing the claims regarding Zyklon B to historical revisionists.

In 2000 he became the European Associate of the Revisionists at Adelaide Institute, Australia.

Ratajczak believed that charge of anti-Semitism had become a sort of exceptionally brutal weapon, which the "establishment" uses ruthlessly against independent thinking men.

"What hurts me most is that I found myself in a group of historians who have been muzzled. After all, please see: from 45 years to now the number of Jews murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau has dropped from six million to less than one million. It's official data. Indeed, even if they had killed one man, that would be a tragedy. But how is it that some historians may legitimately question the numbers of the Holocaust, and others can not? How is it that some people can reduce the six million to less than a million and nothing bad is happening to them? How is it that some people are not allowed to examine this subject and even be wrong, while other historians are allowed all this?" Ratajczak commented.