Piotr Gontarczyk

Piotr Gontarczyk (born 29 April 1970 in Żyrardów, Poland) is a Polish historian with a doctorate in history and political science.

Piotr Gontarczyk studied journalism and political science at Warsaw University, in 2003 receiving a doctorate for his thesis, The Polish Workers' Party: The Road to Power, 1942-1945.

[9][10] He has published articles in such scholarly publications as Zeszyty Historyczne, Arcana [pl], Glaukopis, Dzieje Najnowsze, Zeszyty Historyczne WiN, Biuletyn Kwartalny Radomskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego, Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, and Aparat Represji w Polsce Ludowej 1944–1989.

Jerzy Tomaszewski, praises Gontarczyk for efforts aiming at describing in details the events, and his critical approach to press reports, but criticizes him for restricting sourcing to almost exclusively on Polish legal and administrative documentation, seeing Polish, Jewish and American publications as being based almost exclusively on the prewar Jewish press and on books published in the communist period.

[13] Gontarczyk placed responsibility for the Jedwabne pogrom at the doorstep of two criminal ideologies, Nazism and communism, and supported the exhumation of the Jewish victims' bodies, which was opposed by many Jews on religious grounds.

[15][16] Gontarczyk and Cenckiewicz argued that in the 1970s the Solidarity leader and later President of Poland Lech Wałęsa was a secret informant of the Polish communist Security Service.

[17] Michael Szporer wrote that the book should have been more nuanced in its judgments of anticommunist leaders, and that it unfairly singled out Wałęsa.