Wydmuszka. Lektura krytyczna Miast śmierci Mirosława Tryczyka

The author deconstructs Mirosław Tryczyk’s monograph entitled Miasta śmierci. Sąsiedzkie pogromy Żydów [Towns of death. Pogroms of Jews organized by their neighbors]. This book on the anti-Jewish violence inflicted by Poles in the Białystok region in 1941 was received as revealing and innovative. It gained prominence in the media and a favorable reception in the intellectual milieus, and eminent scholars opined it as excellent. Eventually, however, it proved a cognitively reproductive work lacking professional research methodology and formulating theses unable to withstand scholarly criticism. Using the case of Tryczyk’s book’s popularity, Persak inquires about the condition of scholarly criticism and the quality of the public debate in Poland