Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (born July 15, 1962) is an American historian. He has been described as nationalist by mainstream historians.
Chodakiewicz was born in Warsaw, Poland. He earned a BSc from San Francisco State University in 1988, an MA from Columbia University in 1990, an MPhil from Columbia University in 1992, and a PhD from Columbia University in 2001.
Chodakiewicz has promoted controversial views about the Holocaust, including:
Chodakiewicz also appeared in traditionalist Catholic media, like Radio Maryja, promoting conspiracy theories about Jews. In a 2001 interview by this radio, he accused "Jewish memoirists of bragging about the shooting of hundreds of Poles by "Jewish partisans". Despite Chodakiewicz's record of antisemitic writings, US President George W. Bush made him a member of the oversight board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He served until 2010.
Many historians, including Princeton University professor Jan T. Gross and University of Toronto professor Piotr Wróbel criticized Chodakiewicz, saying that Chodakiewicz had written several pieces that trivialized the Holocaust and the violent antisemitism of many Polish Catholics. In his 2003 book After the Holocaust: Polish Jewish Relations in the Wake of World War II, he underestimated the number of Jews that Polish Catholics had killed in post-war pogroms. He also accused Holocaust victims of being "Jewish Communists".
Historian Jan Grabowski criticized Chodakiewicz's views as "copious victim blaming". Other historians, including David Engel, Joanna Michlic and Laurence Weinbaum, shared the same opinion as Grabowski. In particularly, Weinbaum wrote,
| “ | Chodakiewicz and like-minded historians seem reluctant to forgive the Jews for Jedwabne and the Kielce pogrom, and are hard at work explaining why the murdered—not the murderers—are guilty. | ” |
referring to the Polish nationalists being upset with the revelation of the Jedwabne pogrom.
In 1968, the Polish Communist party declared thousands of Jews enemies of the state and forced them to leave Poland. Fifty years later, historians and witnesses warn of a revival of Polish anti-Semitism.
Here anti-communism merged with antisemitism as concepts such as Polish żydokomuna (Jewish Communism) suggest.
Dr. Jan Grabowski, a distinguished Holocaust historian, has been an outspoken critic of Poland's distortion of history, facing harassment and even death threats over his scholarly research.
Chodakiewicz's 2003 book, After the Holocaust, engaged in copious victim blaming, stating, 'violence against Jews stemmed from a variety of Polish responses to at least three distinct phenomena: the actions of Jewish Communists … ; the deeds of Jewish avengers … ; and the efforts of the bulk of the members of the Jewish community, who attempted to reclaim their property … ' Chodakiewicz's 2004 book, Between Nazis and Soviets, similarly held Jews responsible for Polish animosity toward them, stating that 'Jewish fugitives had alienated much of the majority population by robbing food and necessities to survive,' and that 'between 1942 and 1944, Jewish supply raids and not Polish antisemitism ultimately determined the nature of mutual relations.' This type of writing garnered scathing critiques from experts in the field, including David Engel [...] Joanna Michlic [...] Laurence Weinbaum [... .]
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