I looked up this article, although not at the site linked above. The article seems to be making its rounds on the internet. All the hate sites, and lots of others that allow people to post. I actually read it at open.salon.com.
Quick summary: University employee of the history department publishes (self published at 320 copies) a holocaust denial book, gets fired and prosecuted. Ten years later, found dead in a car. Ruled a suicide, which the author doubts.
There's one question I have about this to Mondial.
It refers to the guy (whose name I can't remember, because of the unfamiliar Polish spelling, Dariusz something or another) as one of the country's most promising young historians, prior to the time he suffered a campaign of slander that ruined his life after he touched on a taboo subject.
Do you think that's really true? I don't. What I mean is that I don't think he was a promising historian. He was 37 years old and Wikipedia gives his publication list, and there are only 8 entries. Also, the article didn't call him a "professor". I know that US and Western European systems may not translate to other cultures, but I would expect someone with that promise to have lots of publications and be tenured by that age.
It is my experience in studying fringe history topics that if a source can't get the little details right, they are usually wrong about the "big stuff" too. So, I think that this guy was someone whose career was going nowhere, and who was regarded as, to be charitable, eccentric. He slipped into paranoia and delusion and committed suicide before his 50th birthday, all the while blaming THEM for his downfall. (In his case, THEM was probably the international Jewish conspiracy and their allies in the Polish government.)
But, please, if you have information about this guy beyond the link you posted, do enlighten us. Just keep in mind that on a topic like this, multiple sources are best, because, throught experience, we expect lies from single sources.
His name is Dariusz Ratajczak.
I doubt you'll get much information from Mondial. My interest was piqued by the mention in the wiki-page that he were the European representative of the Adelaide Institute, so I decided to try my Google-fu on this. I haven't found evidence of that fact, but hang on.
There's little in the way of original English writing in trustworthy sources. I haven't found more than:
BBC news, 16 November 1999
Times (London), 21 April 2000 article
both reporting on the prosecution. There should also be articles in German papers, but they're not online. I did find an interview in Polish:
Gazeta Wyborszka interview, 25 December 2007 (in Polish) (the leading Polish liberal quality paper)
and an interview in Polish with a Polish expat (?)
Zbyszek Koreywo interview, 15 October 2002 (
English translation)
Finally, some of Ratajczak's own writings are online:
Niebezpieczne tematy ("Dangerous topics"), the 1999 booklet with which the whole affair began
His own Blogspot site
in particular:
Amerykańska piąta kolumna ("America's Fifth Column"), 19 January 2009
The Koreywo interview, and Ratajczak's writings can be found in many other places, invariably neo-Nazi and/or antisemitic - as are the links I gave. For a moment I thought the link I gave above for the 1999 booklet ("Library in memory of Prof. Feliks Koneczny") was respectable, but his wiki entry says he was a flaming anti-semite.
I don't know Polish, so I had to rely on Google translator for all the Polish sources. My apologies beforehand if I misrepresent things because of that; I'd be grateful if someone who knows Polish checks the Polish sources I gave. I may also have forgotten to mention some links from which I took some details.
From the above, I can piece together the following history.
Ratajczak completed his Master's thesis in 1986, entitled "Polacy na Wileńszczyźnie 1939-1944" (Poles in the Wilno district), and later published it as a book. In 1988, he got a position at Opole university. He published two books there and taught on modern history. In 1994, he started working on his Ph.D thesis, which was about the post-WW2 military court sentences in Opole itself, and got the Ph.D. title. In 1997, he started on his
habilitation, a third thesis that is required to get tenure. In 1999, he published the non-scientific booklet "Dangerous topics", which sparked the controversy.
I can't really say if his academic output is big or small, that depends entirely on the culture. I did my Ph.D. thesis in Germany (in CS), and there it was normal to not publish before your Ph.D., but rather to publish parts of your Ph.D. thesis as articles after you finished the Ph.D. We also don't know if he published articles besides the books. And maybe he did publish articles besides the books. But I think the point is moot, his own writings say the lot.
In 1999, he published his "Dangerous topics" in small circulation (230 copies, according to other sources 320 copies), and according to himself, gave some copies to the Dean, but the outrage only came when the director of the Auschwitz museum read it. He was prosecuted for Holocaust denial. The court found him guilty but imposed no penalty. The prosecutor appealed, and the appeal court affirmed the verdict and the punishment. Meanwhile, though, Opole university suspended him for 3 years from teaching.
He was shunned by (former) colleagues and friends, his wife divorced him and in the end he worked as a night porter and lived in his car. 11 June 2010, he was found dead in the back of his car. The death was ruled a suicide. I haven't found much in the way how his slide from assistant professor to night porter proceeded. In the 2007 Wyborzca interview, he seems still to be quite OK and also relates that in 2005, he published a revised version of the "Dangerous Topics".
Social ostracism in itself - especially loss of job combined with divorce - can easily explain his slide into homelessness and suicide. But as you rightly questioned, let's also look at his track record, as far as we can see from his own words.
In the 2002 Koreywo interview, he largely blames the establishment at the university for his downfall: they are still products of the communist era, and he doesn't go out of his way to criticize what people did during that era. He mentions this especially in relation to his Ph.D. thesis which mentions, according to him, many daddies of current professors. However, he also confesses to bring up "incorrect topics", and some of the titles may already raise your eyebrows: "Starve the rat, or critically about American feminism", "Freemasonry yesterday and today", "Hitlerism and Communism common roots", "Does colonialism deserve to be unconditionally condemned ?".
Let's then turn to the subject of antisemitism. He implores that
the Jewish subject was not the center of my historic interest.
However, let's look how often "the Jewish subject" features in this interview:
the murder of Bogdan Piasecki (19) (because Jews committed the murder, so it is not proper to speak about it),
Not proven, the murder was never solved.
the Gehenna of the Trockists from the
KOR
Of course, all Trotskists are Jews.
over all this the Holocaust Industry is watching, and talking with the teachers' mouths into young people our alleged offenses against the Jews.
And
During the lectures, more than once, I touched on the so-called Jewish subject. This was most justified, especially in the context of most recent history of Poland. When I was speaking of the functions, structure, and make-up of the Ministry of Public Security, the grim ubecja , I would mention that in this institution there was an overrepresentation of individuals of Jewish extraction, especially on the decision level.
The ubecja was the Polish secret service.
When I mentioned the case of the monstrous murder of Boleslaw Piasecki’s son, I would say, in accordance with truth, that all the traces of the murder led to Israel. When, finally, I was discussing the attitude of the majority of Jews toward Poland’s regaining independence in 1918, and their conduct in the years of the Polish-Bolshevik war, as well as after the Soviet invasion of September 17, 1939, I would state that they were not, by any means, the paragon of patriotic virtue. This irritated the university acabus. The end came eventually, under some pretext, in 1998, when my classes on most recent history of Poland got cut back; they were "transferred" to the 19th century. This did not help much, because the Jewish ubeks could always be replaced with the Jews-Litwaks (30), who were equally anti-Polish. All in all, this was painful to me, the more so that, firstly, I would always base my lectures on sources, and, secondly, the Jewish subject was not the center of my historic interest.
Let's rephrase that second-last sentence: in the 20th Century, it was all Jews in the Communist secret service, and in the 19th Century, it was all (Lithuanian) Jews in the Czarist secret service.
Speaking of the Jewish revolution in Russia (because it was the Jews who crammed the decision-making posts of the Bolshevik revolutionaly machinery),
Ah, the old canard that Jews were overrepresented among the Bolsheviks.
By the way, today the "Holocaust Industry" stresses Jewish suffering during WWII, but I’ve got the irresistible impression that this practive is but a screen for the Jewish considerable part in the crimes of Communism.
And
Perhaps gratitude is the Jewish national trait that is not excessively developed ?
And there are many more passages. He denies being an anti-semite, and in the same paragraph, refers to the writings of Israel Shahak, undoubtedly alluding to his invented Talmud passages.
It's not only the Jews, though, that stand in the way of this staunch Polish nationalist. The other group has already been mentioned in one of his "incorrect topics" above. Some more quotes:
we are moving toward the post-Freemason hybrid called the European Union
and
The French Revolution. What an insult to France. After all, the spur for the revolution came from international Freemasonic circles, or, more precisely, deeply initiated Freemasonic circles, the "illuminates", who picked out France - the key and richest country in Europe - as their first victim. [...] Real France is the Capetians and bleeding Vendee (43) during the bandit revolution, not the handpicked society of Freemasons and their allies.
The picture is clear: Mr. Ratajczak is not a bona-fide historian, but a full-blown CT-er who sees a world conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons. Now, you may say: this is in 2002, when he was booted from university and already had descended into delusions as a result of that. But let's then review the book it all began with, the "Dangerous Topics". The book consists of three parts. The first is about half of it and has as chapter titles:
JUDAICA
Jews against anti-Polish Jews
Karl Marx - the revolutionary Jews - leftist Antisemitism
Jews - Talmud - Healing
Mystery of the origin of Adolf Hitler
National Armed Forces and The Jews
Holocaust Revisionism
Is Israel a Democratic State?
The second, smaller part is:
Masonica
Masonry and conspiracy theory of history
Freemasonry - Rites
And the third part contains various subjects, mostly of a nationalistic nature. Most of the chapters had already been published, not in scientific journals but in right-wing papers.
For a taste, a translation of a paragraph from "Masonry and conspiracy theory of history":
Freemasonry strives to master all areas of intellectual life and social life. This is an indispensable factor to take power over the entire world. Many of her demands have already been implemented. Gold International, rich in unlimited funds, control the mass - media, banks, politicians, penetrating the church (a good example being the Netherlands, Poland and recently even the Father Tischner and paramasońskiej katolewicy) and universities, at least managed to undermine Christianity, raise doubts among the people its validity and usefulness, and finally liberate them lying in beds of permissiveness, materialism, relativity and primitive.
Finally, let's focus on the Holocaust chapter. It begins with:
Since the mid-70s the Holocaust, regarded as a religion, as something exceptional, which has no precedent in the history of the world, begins to meet with resistance on the part of historians, revisionists.
They criticize not only its uniqueness but also reviewing the existing version of events. In other words, shall review the officially given the number of Jews exterminated during the war, as well as ways of killing.
These people are treated by the followers of religion, the Holocaust, so supporters of censorship and forcing a false world opinion, propaganda image of the past, as charlatans, neo-Nazis and extreme anti-Semites.
The tone is totally uncritical towards revisionists. It even calls them "historians". As we've seen in every thread here, revisionists are indeed charlatans, who don't critically treat their subject, nor are trained as a historian.
He praises Leuchter and lies about his exploits:
Fred Leuchter, the only U.S. expert on the construction of equipment for capital punishment-the gas chambers
Quod non.
In the same year Leuchter, professional quality, a man devoid of any political inclination "(he knows just the gas chambers and killing substances-such and so many) went along with the Polish team, which examined the gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek. Thesis developed by him after returning expertise proved to be deadly for the supporters of the official version of the Holocaust,
Leuchter was not a professional but an amateur who illegally worked as an engineer. He took samples of the gas chambers alone and, in fact, illegally without consent from the Polish authorities. His report has been thoroughly debunked, in fact, from the moment it was used in Zündel's trial. And this all happened 10 years before Ratajczak wrote this all. He should have known better.
He emphatically denies being a Holocaust denier, both in the 2002 Koreywo interview and the 2007 Wyborzca interview, and claims that he told his students that, yes, the Holocaust did happen. However, this chapter is wholly uncritical in its approach to revisionist claims, and moreover, he even affirms some of those claims:
To sum up this topic we can say without making a major mistake that the Zyklon B used in concentration camps to disinfect rather than murdering people (so famous selection of the gas "was a mere division newcomers by age, gender, health status)"
In other words, Ratajczak agrees with the revisionist claim that Zyklon-B was not used for gassing people. He concludes with the sentence:
it appears that the number of 2.5 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust will not be far from the truth.
after having suggested the extermination camps didn't exist and that the Einsatzgruppen were there for killing partisans and only accidentally killed Jews who stayed in those areas. As far as I can read from the Google translation, these paragraphs were not written as a rendering of revisionist arguments, but as a conclusion of the author.
So yes, from what I've read, Ratajczak is a Holocaust denier, or at least, minimizer. The booklet doesn't have footnotes or a bibliography - it was not a scientific publication - but it's clear that his use of sources is either lacking or purposefully selective. In fact, the 3 year suspension he got for teaching was very lenient, IMHO, as all I've read thus far from his hand betrays sheer incompetence as historian and incorrigible CT behaviour.
