Jan Żaryn

Jan Żaryn
Jan Żaryn's official Senate portrait, 2015
Senator for the 40th district
In office 12 Novermber 2015 – 11 November 2019
Preceded by	Anna Aksamit
Succeeded by	Jolanta Hibner
Personal details
Born	Jan Krzysztof Żaryn 13 March 1958 Warsaw, Poland
Political party	Independent
Spouse	Małgorzata Żaryn
Children	3
Parent(s)	Stanisław Żaryn, Aleksandra Żaryn (née Jankowska)
Education	University of Warsaw (master's degree); Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences (PhD, habilitation)
Occupation	Historian, professor, politician
Signature
Website	http://janzaryn.pl/

Jan Krzysztof Żaryn (born 13 March 1958) is a Polish historian, professor and politician, who was a Senator in the Senate of Poland from 2015 to 2019.

Born in Warsaw into a family of inteligencja, Żaryn studied history at the University of Warsaw in 1979-1984, as well as in an underground education society. As a student he engaged with anti-Communist movements. Following an incident with the Citizen's Militia officers, he was briefly detained by the Security Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa) in late 1982. After finishing his studies, he taught history before first enrolling, and then joining the Polish Academy of Science in 1997. There, he continued his scientific career, earning a doctorate in 1996 and a habilitation in 2004; he was later awarded the title of professor by President Bronisław Komorowski in 2013.

Żaryn has worked in senior positions in the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, and, from its creation in 2020, he has been directing the Institute for Legacy of Polish National Thought. Żaryn specialises in the history of the Catholic Church, nationalist-conservative movements and Polish-Jewish relations in twentieth-century Poland, as well as in the history of post-war Polish emigration. Some of his views and commentaries have sparked controversy.^{[under discussion]}

Affiliated with the conservative Law and Justice party (though formally not being its member), Żaryn ran unsuccessfully for Senator in 2011 but managed to win a seat in 2015 elections. He served one term until 2019, when he lost a bid for reelection.

Early life

Jan Żaryn was born on 13 March 1958 in Warsaw as the youngest of five children. His father, Stanisław Żaryn, was one of the more prominent architects in post-war Poland and fought in the Warsaw Uprising, while his mother Aleksandra was a lawyer and a translator. Both of his parents were posthumously recognised as the Righteous among the Nations.

Having finished the XV Narcyza Żmichowska general education liceum in Warsaw in late 1970s, he then enrolled in the University of Warsaw, participating at the same time at the lectures of the Towarzystwo Kursów Naukowych, an organisation that sought to break the monopoly of education by the state. He also belonged to the Young Poland Movement (Polish: Ruch Młodej Polski), a group of conservative students opposing the Communist regime, and, additionally, in 1980-1984, to the students' union of the University of Warsaw. At the time, he dismissed the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and the Independent Students' Association (NZS) as factions in an internecine fight of the communists, and opined that the only organisation that could be trusted was the Catholic Church; despite that, he cooperated with the anti-Communist opposition and joined the Solidarity movement in 1989.

On 10 November 1982, during martial law in Poland, Jan Żaryn was arrested during a demonstration, allegedly because of "shouting enemy slogans and pelting stones at vehicles"; after a month in the Białołęka prison in Warsaw, he was set free. Finally, in spring 1983, Żaryn was cleared by the District Court of Warsaw of all charges related to the incident.

He finished his master's degree in 1984, specialising in archival science, and also passed pedagogy courses a year later. Żaryn later taught in various schools in Warsaw until 1990.

Żaryn has been engaged with the Catholic Church from a very young age - at the age of 6, Żaryn started helping the clergy of the St. Alexander's Church as an altar boy. Already a young adult, he, with his wife, have joined the Christian Culture Studio, organised by the Saint Trinity Church in Warsaw. In 1989, he has co-founded the Catholic Tutors' Association, and has presided over the Warsaw branch of the organisation in the 1990s.

Scholarly career

In the mid-1990s, Żaryn continued to pursue his career as a historian. In 1996, he defended his doctoral thesis in the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which he joined the following year. He also wrote his habilitation thesis there in 2004 before quitting the institute two years later.

In 2000, Żaryn became employed in the Bureau of Public Education of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which he directed from January 2006 until April 2009. He was then appointed as an advisor to the director of the Institute, Janusz Kurtyka, until the latter died in the Smolensk air disaster.

He sat on scientific boards of some historical societies, such as the Society of Soldiers of the National Armed Forces and the Committee for Commemoration of Poles Rescuing Jews (which he heads since 2004). Żaryn became a co-founder of the Foundation of the "Cursed Soldiers" and a member of the program council of the Foundation Work of the New Millenium, among others. Since 2018, Żaryn is a member of the board of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, while two years later, he was appointed to that of the Museum of the Cursed Soldiers and Political Prisoners of People's Republic of Poland. Also since 2020, he heads the Roman Dmowski and Ignacy Jan Paderewski Institute for Legacy of Polish National Thought, a newly created institute by the Polish Ministry of Culture.

Żaryn is a lecturer at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University since 2000, where serves as director of the Department of the History of the Church; he also used to work at the University of Warsaw in 2003-2006.

Publishing

Żaryn has published in conservative and Catholic media outlets, such as Przegląd Katolicki, Ład, Gazeta Niedzielna, Gazeta Polska, Gazeta Polska Codziennie, Więź, W Sieci, WPolityce.pl, and Arcana. In late 1990s, he has also been the editor-in-chief of Szaniec Chrobrego, a publication for the veterans of the National Armed Forces. Since 2012, he presided over the editorial board of Na poważnie, a historical monthly magazine, which was reorganised as W Sieci Historii the following year, where he retained his position as editor-in-chief.

Electoral career

Jan Żaryn made several attempts to get into national politics. First, in 1993, he placed his bid for a seat in the Sejm as a protégé of Wojciech Ziembiński, but lost. He then made three attempts to win a Senate seat - in 2011, 2015 and 2019 - but only won it in 2015, when the Law and Justice party won by a landslide. Since 2011, he has also headed an organisation called Polska Jest Najważniejsza, a political action committee for the election of Jarosław Kaczyński, of which he was a member before that promotion. Żaryn was also part of the support committee of the Independence March, an event frequently described as far-right, and has otherwise supported it.

2011 Senate election: 85th district (Iława)

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	PO	Stanisław Gorczyca (incumbent)	33,627	35.70	-
	PSL	Piotr Żuchowski	24,121	25.61	-
	PiS	Jan Żaryn	18,700	19.85	-
	Democratic Left Alliance	Jan Nosewicz	12,767	13.55	-
	Independent	Wincenty Szarmach	4,975	5.28	-

2015 Senate election: 40th district (Legionowo)

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	PiS	Jan Żaryn	119,870	52.78	-
	PO	Anna Aksamit	107,238	47.22	-

2019 Senate election: 40th district (Legionowo)

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	PO	Jolanta Hibner	146,318	51.52	+4,30
	PiS	Jan Żaryn	137,574	48.48	-4,30

Historical and political views

Jan Żaryn is commonly considered to be a conservative historian arguing from the ethnonationalist and anti-communist side of historical debate. Żaryn is also thought of as one of the main proponents of the historical policy of the Law and Justice party, though he denies that it is dictated by the party. He sees Poles as “loving freedom, Catholicism, patriotism and especially being proud of their history.”, and he sees his role as creating "positive myths" on Polishness.

Polish-Jewish relations

Żaryn argues that the tensions between Jews and other nations in Interwar Poland were mostly due to economic reasons. Scholars dispute this characterization.

Żaryn, a co-editor of a two-volume monograph on the Kielce pogrom, has stated that "a significant proportion of Jewish individuals... supported the communist authorities or... joined their ranks"; he blames those individuals for "censorship and propaganda, slander... and deceitfully remaining silent about Soviet massacres." This, he believes, "intensified anti-Semitic attitudes" that resulted in the Kielce pogrom. His critics characterize these opinions as resorting to the stereotype of Żydokomuna. Kate Korycki writes that this narrative "unwittingly recycles many Polish anti-Semitic tropes", adding that Żaryn "[uses] a description of the post-war pogrom in Kielce, perpetrated on Jews by Poles, [as] an opportunity to blame the Jews".

Żaryn has stated that the Germans were directors of the Jedwabne pogrom and also assigned blame to the Volksdeutsche and "outsiders" who came from other villages. Poles, in his opinion, were provoked and oftentimes coerced to participate in it. He added that "even if some of the Polish locals participated in this 'spectacle' under duress... the majority looked in disgust at what the Germans have done..." and that the "deceitful narrative [of Jedwabne] burdens the Poles and Poland with co-responsibility for the Holocaust", since, according to Żaryn, there were no Poles who collaborated with the Germans on the crime scene. Żaryn has stated that the current narrative about the Jedwabne events had become a "founding myth" about the "allegedly proven" organized massacres of Jews by Poles, supposedly rooted in inherent Polish anti-Semitism. He has suggested that these stereotypes stem from insufficient documentation of some World War II events in Poland. Consequently, Żaryn has supported the efforts to exhume the bodies of Jedwabne's victims, led by Ewa Kurek over objections of the Jewish community, for both scientific and political reasons.

On several separate occasions, he argued that there existed szmalcownik Jews, alongside Ukrainians, the Volksdeutsche, and Germans.

Żaryn is a vocal critic of Jan Tomasz Gross, and has condemned various books of his, indicating that they "are part of a certain kind of Jewish (mainly testimonial, but also scholarly) literature and historiography that is soaked with deep resentment towards Poland and the Poles".

National Radical Camp

Jan Żaryn argues that the interwar National Radical Camp (ONR) was not a fascist organization and that its interwar iteration was unlawfully banned. In an ongoing court investigation in Kraków, his Institute for Legacy of Polish National Thought submitted an expert opinion which argued against delegalization of the ONR, while two other expert opinions supported banning the organisation. Privately, Żaryn said and wrote that the (old) National Radical Camp had nothing to do with Nazi ideology and "consisted of people believing in the Christian God" and that "if one wants to condemn ONR for its main ideas, then should be all others who have alluded to the concept of corporatism and Christian nationalism, which, therefore [includes] not only nationalists but also prelate Stefan Wyszyński"

Controversy

In the late 1990s, the Polish Information Agency commissioned Żaryn to write a concise history of Poland that could be translated in several languages and distributed at the Polish embassies. However, a public outcry followed when it appeared that Żaryn expressed what some considered fringe views on the contemporary history of Poland. For instance, Żaryn argued that the Polish Round Table Agreement had been a sort of a conspiracy and that the government of Jan Olszewski had been overthrown in a coup d'état. While the book has been published in Polish, its English translation has been called off.

In a 2009 interview to TOK FM, Żaryn accused Lech Wałęsa, the leader of the opposition Solidarity movement in the 1980s, of having perjured himself in court in order to illegally obtain the status of a person repressed by the communist government. These remarks cost him his job as the director of the Bureau of Public Education at the IPN. Żaryn later reiterated his view that Lech Wałęsa collaborated with the communist Security Service in 1970s.

In 2018, two controversies arose connected with the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the March 1968 political crisis. In late February that year, Żaryn entered a project of Senate resolution to commemorate the event, an excerpt from which said that "the communist government, by arranging anti-Semitic demonstrations and forcing Poles to take part in them, and also by introducing pathological anti-Jewish sentiments into public discourse, did not represent the will of the People, but only of Moscow and its intra-communist and international interests". The wording has been criticised by historians Jacek Leociak from the Polish Center for Holocaust Research and Piotr Osęka as an attempt of whitewashing Polish history; and it proved controversial even among party colleagues and was therefore abandoned. Two weeks later, a scandal erupted when Anna Azari, Israel's ambassador to Poland, stated that the anti-Semitic events that had happened in Poland in March 1968 occurred nowhere else in the Soviet Bloc. Żaryn perceived this as an attempt to associate the current ruling party with these events and suggested in harsh words that the ambassador should be expelled for such statements.

Personal life

He is married to Małgorzata, whom Jan Żaryn met in high school and who also became a historian. They have three children: Anna, Stanisław and Krzysztof.

Awards

In 2005, Żaryn received the Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis from the Minister of Culture. In 2009, President Lech Kaczyński bestowed upon Żaryn the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, for his "extraordinary achievements in documenting and commemorating the truth about the contemporary history of Poland".

Historiography

• Głębokie. Historia i zabytki [Hlybokaye. History and monuments]. (co-authored with Małgorzata Żaryn), 1992.
• Historia Polski do roku 1795 [History of Poland until 1795]. (co-authored with Alicja Dybkowska), 1995.
• Polskie dzieje od czasów najdawniejszych do współczesności [Polish history from the oldest times to contemporaneity]. (co-authored with Alicja Dybkowska and Małgorzata Żaryn), 1995.
• Stosunki między władzą państwową a Kościołem katolickim w Polsce w latach 1945-1950 (Relations between the government and the Catholic Church in Poland in 1945-1950), doctoral thesis, 1996.
• Polacy wobec przemocy 1944-1956 [Poles' attitude towards violence 1944-1956] (co-authored with Barbara Otwinowska)
• Kościół a władza w Polsce. 1945–1950 [The Church and the government of Poland. 1945-1950], 1997.
• Stolica Apostolska wobec Polski i Polaków w latach 1944–1958 w świetle materiałów ambasady RP przy Watykanie. Wybór dokumentów, [The Holy See's relations with Poland and the Poles in 1944-1958 in light of the materials of the Polish Embassy in Vatican. Selected documents.] 1998.
• Leszek Prorok – człowiek i twórca [Leszek Prorok - personality and creator], 1999.
• Kościół w Polsce w latach przełomu (1953–1958). Relacje ambasadora RP przy Stolicy Apostolskiej [The Church in Poland in the years of change (1953-1958). Accounts of the ambassador of Poland at the Holy See], 2000.
• Dzieje Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce (1944–1989), [The history of the Catholic Church in Poland (1944-1989)]. Habilitation thesis, 2003.
• Kościół w PRL [The Church in the People's Republic of Poland], 2004.
• Wokół pogromu kieleckiego [Around the Kielce pogrom], 2 vol., 2007-8 (co-edited with Łukasz Kamiński (vol. 1), Andrzej Jankowski and Leszek Bukowski (vol. 2)) - official IPN investigation.
• Kościół, naród, człowiek, czyli opowieść optymistyczna o Polakach w XX wieku [The Church, the people and the person, or an optimist story about the Poles in the 20th century], 2013.
• Polska na poważnie [Poland seriously], 2013.
• Polacy ratujący Żydów. Historie niezwykłe [Poles rescuing Jews. Unusual stories], 2014, 571 s.
• Polska pamięć. O historii i polityce historycznej, [Polish remembrance. On history and the politics of memory], 2017.
• Polska wobec zagłady Żydów [Poland in face of the Holocaust], 2019;
• Własna i niepodległa, czyli o Polakach walczących za własną Ojczyznę, [Own and independent, or on Poles fighting for their own Fatherland], 2020.