Shira Klein
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Shira Klein is an associate professor of history at Chapman University, specializing in the history of Italian Jews.
Career
Klein got her PhD from New York University before joining Chapman University in 2012. In 2018, her book Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism won the double finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. She teaches the history of Jews, Europe and the Holocaust at her university.
Research
Klein's research areas include the history of Italian Jews, and online antisemitism.
Research on Holocaust distortion on Wikipedia
In February 2023, Klein and Jan Grabowski published the 57-page article Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust in The Journal of Holocaust Research in which they said to have found widespread distortion of Poland's Holocaust history on English Wikipedia, which involved the exaggeration of Jewish collaboration with Nazi/Soviet occupiers, invention of Jewish "war crimes" against Poles, downplaying of Polish collaboration with Nazi/Soviet occupiers and blaming Jews for their own suffering in the Holocaust.
Klein and Grabowski also criticized English Wikipedia's administrators and the Wikimedia Foundation's lack of will to handle, leaving the site vulnerable to disinformation:
Wikipedia's administrators have largely failed to uphold Wikipedia’s policies [. ...] unable to deal with the issue of persistent distortion [...] Wikipedia's articles [...] have become a hub of misinformation and antisemitic canards.
Some misconceptions about the Holocaust in Poland discussed in their article are summarized as follows:
| Type | Summary |
|---|---|
| Death toll | Myth 1: "3 million non-Jewish Poles were killed in WWII." Fact: The number was claimed in 1946 by Jakub Berman, the head of the Polish communist secret police, to create a false equivalence between Jewish and Polish victimhood. The death toll of non-Jewish Poles was 1.8 million as per the most recent estimates. |
| Scale of helping Jews | Myth 2: "Thousands of Poles were executed for helping Jews." Fact: 800 Poles were executed for helping Jews as per the most recent estimates. |
| Scale of hiding Jews | Myth 3: "450,000 Poles hid Jews in their houses during the Holocaust." Fact: The number was promoted by Władysław Żarski-Zajdler, a writer propagandizing for the Polish communist regime during the 1968 antisemitic campaign. Fewer than 30,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust. |
| Scale of Polish collaboration | Myth 4: "<1% Poles collaborated with Nazi occupiers." Fact: Several independent research showed otherwise. |
| Polish Blue Police | Myth 5: "Many Polish Blue Police were executed for refusing to follow Nazi orders to arrest Jews." Fact: Proven cases have not been found by mainstream historians yet. Instead, the Polish Blue Police helped Nazi occupiers kill Jews enthusiastically. |
| Polish Underground State | Myth 6: "The Polish Underground State's court investigated 17,000 suspected Polish collaborators and sentenced 3,500 to death." Fact: No more than seven collaborators were sentenced to death by the Polish Underground State's court, despite desperate requests from the Committee to Aid Jews (Żegota). |
| Policies against helping Jews | Myth 7: "Poles were specifically targeted by the Nazis for helping Jews. The Nazis imposed death penalty on Poles because of this." Fact: Nazi laws against helping Jews were applied equally to millions of non-German subjects under Nazi occupation. The death penalty was introduced on October 15, 1941, long before any obvious help could have been noticed. |
| Revelation of the Holocaust | Myth 8: "Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki told the Allies about the Holocaust via Polish government-in-exile courier Jan Karski." Fact: Jan Karski did not tell the Allies about the Holocaust. Karski left Poland in fall 1942, while Pilecki did not write a report about the Holocaust until summer 1943, when most Polish Jews had already been killed. Pilecki could not have given Karski a report that did not exist when Karski left. |
| Nazi reprisals against Poles helping Jews | Myth 9: "The Nazi murdered 20,000 Polish villagers in Białka over some of them helping Jews." Fact: It is true that individual shootings of Białka's Polish villagers happened, but the confirmed death toll was 96. |
| Post-war pogroms against Jews | Myth 10: "The July 1946 Kielce pogrom was planned by the Soviet occupiers." Fact: The claim has been roundly rejected by mainstream scholars, including Joanna Tokarska-Bakir who won the 2019 Yad Vashem International Book Award for a book that disproved the claim, which is only held by some Polish nationalists and conspiracy theorists. |
Selected works
Books
2020s
- Klein, S.; Levitsky, H.; Mueller, A.; Aarons, V.; Painitz, S.; Kaminsky, A.; Lander, J.; Mostowski, L.; Nadel, I.; Omer-Sherman, R.; Grinberg M. The Holocaust Across Borders: Trauma, Atrocity, and Representation in Literature and Culture, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.
2010s
- Klein, S. Italy's Jews from emancipation to fascism, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Articles
2020s
- Klein, S. (2025). The Growing Rift between Holocaust Scholars over Israel/Palestine. The Journal of Genocide Research, 1‒21.
- Grabowski, J. & Klein, S. (2023). Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust. The Journal of Holocaust Research, 37(2), 133‒190.
2010s
- Klein S. (2019). Review of Levis Sullam, Simon, The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy.
- Klein S. (2018). Using Wikipedia in Israel Studies Courses. Israel Studies Review, 33(1), 102‒109.
- Klein S. (2017). Challenging the Myth of Italian Jewish Assimilation. Modern Judaism-A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, 37(1), 76‒107.
2000s
- Klein S. (2008). An Army of Housewives: Women's Wartime Columns in Two Mainstream Israeli Newspapers. Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues, 88‒107.
Related pages
Footnotes
- ↑ Chair Professor of History at University of Ottawa
References
- 1 2 3 4 5
- "Shira Klein, Ph.D." USC Shoah Foundation. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
- "Shira Klein". The Forward. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
- "Shira Klein - A Place in the Sun: Italian Jews and the Colonization of Africa (11/14/2018)". Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. November 14, 2018. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- "Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies to host history professor Shira Klein". Penn State University. October 23, 2023. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
- ↑
- "Shira Klein Archives | Chapman Newsroom". Retrieved March 14, 2025.
- "'Always Remember Your Name' documentary: What happened to the Jews of Italy during the Holocaust?". KCRA. October 27, 2024. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- "Auschwitz: History, memory, commemoration". K. Les Juifs, l'Europe, le XXIe siècle. January 30, 2025. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 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 October 24, 2024.
- 1 2 3 4 5
- "'Jews Helped the Germans Out of Revenge or Greed': New Research Documents How Wikipedia Distorts the Holocaust". Haaretz. February 14, 2023. Retrieved December 3, 2024.
- Klein, Shira (June 14, 2023). "The shocking truth about Wikipedia's Holocaust disinformation". The Forward. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Wikipedia article, “Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust,” Wikipedia, revision from 8:06, May 24, 2022,
- ↑ Karyn Ball and Per Anders Rudling, “The Underbelly of Canadian Multiculturalism: Holocaust Obfuscation and Envy in the Debate about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights,” Holocaust Studies, vol. 20, no. 3 (2014): pp. 33–80.
- ↑ C. Łuczak, “Szanse i trudności bilansu demograficznego Polski w latach 1939–1945,” Dzieje Najnowsze 2 (1994): pp. 9–15.
- ↑ Ryszard Walczak et al. (eds.), Those Who Helped: Polish Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (Warszawa: IPN, 1997).
- ↑ Martyna Grądzka-Rejak and Aleksandra Namysło, (eds.), Represje za pomoc Żydom na okupowanych ziemiach polskich w czasie II wojny światowej, vol. 1 (Warsaw: IPN, 2019), p. 464.
- ↑ Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), p. 15.
- ↑
- "The Stalinist roots of "left" anti-semitism". Workers' Liberty. April 28, 2011. Retrieved October 6, 2024.
In the 1970s the rulers of the USSR launched a sustained 'anti-Zionist' campaign, in fact anti-semitic [...] much of what many British and international leftists [...] say about Israel is an indirect and unwitting copy of the Stalinists' efforts at constructing a Marxist-sounding gloss on old anti-semitic themes [...] an anti-semitic show-trial was due to be staged, in which five Jewish doctors from the Kremlin's own hospital were to face charges of poisoning and plotting.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link) - Gansinger, Simon (2016). "Communists Against Jews: the Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland in 1968". Fathom Journal. Archived from the original on January 30, 2025. Retrieved October 6, 2024.
- Bash, Dana; Sharpe, Abbie (May 1, 2022). "In 1968, Poland's communist government forced Jews to leave. Today, the country embraces refugees". CNN. Archived from the original on October 5, 2024. Retrieved October 6, 2024.
But Poland's tiny Jewish population diminished even further in 1968, when the communist government forced thousands to leave the country in an anti-Semitic purge [...] Scapegoating the Jews was a tried-and-true tactic used by leaders for millennia, and it worked just as the communists [...] After Israel's victory over its Arab neighbors in 1967's Six-Day War, Poland's communist party leader Władysław Gomułka spoke out against a "fifth column" of Polish Jews, in what became known as the "Zionist" speech – evoking a wave of anti-Semitism...some 13,000 Polish Jews who were given a one-way ticket out of his country.
- "The Stalinist roots of "left" anti-semitism". Workers' Liberty. April 28, 2011. Retrieved October 6, 2024.
- ↑ Natalia Sawka, “Antysemita Leszek Żebrowski poprowadzi wykład o ‘żołnierzach wyklętych,’” Gazeta Wyborcza, March 1, 2016
- ↑ The “Israeli War Crimes Commission” statistics seem to originate from an essay from the 1960s by one Leo Heiman, which provides no footnote. Leo Heiman, “Ukrainians and the Jews,” in Ukrainians and Jews, Articles, Testimonies, Letters and Official Documents Dealing with Interrelations of Ukrainians and Jews in the Past and Present: A Symposium (New York: The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, 1966), p. 60.
- ↑ Machcewicz and Persak, (eds.), Wokół Jedwabnego; Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, (eds.), Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland), 2 vols. (Warsaw: Polish Center for Holocaust Research, 2018).
- 1 2 3 Engelking and Grabowski, (eds.), Dalej jest noc; Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, “Polnische Bürgermeister und der Holocaust im Generalgouvernement Besatzung, Kollaboration und Handlungsmöglichkeiten,” Bulletin des Fritz Bauer Instituts, (2021), pp. 26–35.
- ↑
- "The Polish Police: Collaboration in the Holocaust" (PDF). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). November 17, 2016. Retrieved March 5, 2025.
- "Polish police murdered Jews during the Holocaust with gusto and even without Nazi orders, new book claims". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. December 10, 2024. Retrieved March 5, 2025.
Jan Grabowski spent more than 10 years conducting his research, including going through Polish archives, private diaries and records from more than 100 small towns where Jews lived in high concentrations.
- "Polish police took initiative in Jewish killings, new book explores". The Jerusalem Post. December 10, 2024. Retrieved March 5, 2025.
Polish police murdered Jews during the Holocaust with gusto and even without Nazi orders, according to new resesarch.
- 1 2 Andrzej Żbikowski, Polacy i Zydzi pod okupacja niemiecką, 1939-1945: Studia i Materiały (Warsaw: IPN, 2006), pp. 482–84.
- 1 2 3 The Third Decree of General Governor Hans Frank concerning restrictions on residency in the Generalgouvernement and introducing the death penalty for aid rendered to Jews, October 15, 1941; Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement. Dziennik Rozporządzeń dla Generalnego Gubernatorstwa, Cracow, October 25, 1941, p. 595.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Adam Puławski, “Revisiting Jan Karski’s Final Mission,” Israeli Journal of Foreign Affairs, vol. 15, no. 2 (2021): pp. 289–97; Adam Puławski, Wobec niespotykanego w dziejach mordu. Rząd RP na uchodźstwie, Delegatura Rządu RP na Kraj, AK a eksterminacja ludności żydowskiej od wielkiej akcji do powstania w getcie warszawskim (Chełm: Stowarzyszenie Rocznik Chełmski, 2018).
- ↑ Wikipedia article, “Nazi Crimes Against the Polish Nation,” Wikipedia, revision from 14:14, June 15, 2022,
- ↑ Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) (Washington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009), p. 692.
- ↑ "Omer Bartov and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir Were Awarded with the 2019 Yad Vashem International Book Prize". Yad Vashem. December 8, 2019. Retrieved March 5, 2025.
- ↑ Klein, Shira; Levitsky, Holli; Aarons, Victoria; Painitz, Sarah; Kaminsky, Amy; Lander, Joshua; Mostowski, Lizy; Nadel, Ira; Omer-Sherman, Ranen; Grinberg, Marat (2021). "The Holocaust Across Borders: Trauma, Atrocity, and Representation in Literature and Culture". Rowman & Littlefield. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781793612076. Archived from the original on March 25, 2025. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link) - ↑ Kaplan, Brett Ashley (March 1, 2024). "Review of The Holocaust across Borders: Trauma, Atrocity, and Representation in Literature and Culture. Hilene S Flanzbaum". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 38 (2): 276–278. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcae009. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- ↑ Klein, Shira (2018). "Italy's Jews from emancipation to fascism". Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108539739. ISBN 9781108539739. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link) - ↑ Harrowitz, Nancy (2019). "Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism by Shira Klein (review)". Journal of Jewish Identities. 12 (2). Johns Hopkins University Press: 223‒224. doi:10.1353/jji.2019.0026. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- ↑ Klein, Shira (January 8, 2025). "The Growing Rift between Holocaust Scholars over Israel/Palestine". Journal of Genocide Research. doi:10.1080/14623528.2024.2448061. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- ↑ Bergstra, J. A.; Düwell, M. (April 15, 2025). "Genocide Accusations and the Logic of Genocide". Transmathematica. doi:10.36285/tm.111. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- ↑
- Haber, Gordon (January 1, 2019). "Mussolini's Executioners: The Genocide Of Italy's Jews". The Forward. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- Morgan, Philip (March 16, 2020). "Book Review: The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy". The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms. Princeton University Press. doi:10.1080/10848770.2020.1741263. Retrieved June 22, 2025.
- Fenoglio, Luca (May 18, 2022). "Book Review: The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy". Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. 21 (4: Special Section: Dunkle Denker: Jewish Readings of the Counter-Enlightenment (Guest Editor: Philipp Lenhard)): 506‒507. doi:10.1080/14725886.2022.2058363. Retrieved June 22, 2025.