Shira Klein

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:

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."Wikipedia article, “Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust,” Wikipedia, revision from 8:06, May 24, 2022,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.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. The death toll of non-Jewish Poles was 1.8 million as per the most recent estimates.C. Łuczak, “Szanse i trudności bilansu demograficznego Polski w latach 1939–1945,” Dzieje Najnowsze 2 (1994): pp. 9–15. 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.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. Scale of hiding Jews Myth 3: "450,000 Poles hid Jews in their houses during the Holocaust."Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), p. 15.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.Natalia Sawka, “Antysemita Leszek Żebrowski poprowadzi wykład o ‘żołnierzach wyklętych,’” Gazeta Wyborcza, March 1, 2016 Scale of Polish collaboration Myth 4: "<1% Poles collaborated with Nazi occupiers."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.Fact: Several independent research showed otherwise.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). Polish Blue Police Myth 5: "Many Polish Blue Police were executed for refusing to follow Nazi orders to arrest Jews."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.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,Andrzej Żbikowski, Polacy i Zydzi pod okupacja niemiecką, 1939-1945: Studia i Materiały (Warsaw: IPN, 2006), pp. 482–84. 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 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. 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.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). 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."Wikipedia article, “Nazi Crimes Against the Polish Nation,” Wikipedia, revision from 14:14, June 15, 2022,Fact: It is true that individual shootings of Białka's Polish villagers happened, but the confirmed death toll was 96.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. 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

 Havi Dreifuss
 Shimon Redlich
 Saul Friedländer
 Izabella Tabarovsky

Footnotes

References

Category:Living people
Category:Historical studies
Category:Jewish academics