Poland: The public prosecutor in Krakow has launched a preliminary investigation into a US historian who says post-war Poland continued where the Nazis left off in persecuting Jews.
Jan Tomasz Gross could, under a law passed by the Kaczynski government, face a prison sentence if found guilty of "accusing the Polish nation of participating in communist or Nazi crimes".
The new Polish edition of Dr Gross's 2006 book, Fear - Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, has caused a storm for challenging the country's self-image as the heroic, leading martyr of the second World War.
The book documents post-war pogroms that claimed the lives of up to 3,000 of Poland's 300,000 Holocaust survivors .
The most notorious pogrom happened on July 4th, 1946, in Kielce, when a mob rounded up and killed 42 returned Holocaust survivors after a false rumour spread that Jews had kidnapped and killed a local boy. The post-war pogroms prompted the mass exodus of tens of thousands of Jews who had hoped to rebuild their lives in Poland.
Fear was the motivating factor for the attacks, according to Dr Gross: fear returning Jews could demand the return of property or implicate people in wartime crimes.
"Poland's communist rulers fulfilled the dream of Polish nationalists by bringing into existence an ethnically pure state," he writes.
Anti-Semitic actions, says Dr Gross, were widely accepted by broad sections of Polish society and enjoyed the passive support of the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwicz of Krakow, secretary to Pope John Paul II, wrote to the book's Polish publisher that the book had caused him "great pain".
In his opinion, publishers should "propagate historical truth, not awaken anti-Polish and anti-Semitic demons".
Poland's chief rabbi, Burt Schuman, has said the book threatens reconciliation between Poles and Jews. "It's good that the book has triggered a debate, but both sides have now gone into lockdown rather than seeking dialogue," he told Polish radio.
Dr Gross became a household name in Poland seven years ago with his book Neighbours, documenting how 1,600 Jewish villagers in Jedwabne were massacred by Polish locals and not by Nazi troops as previously believed.
National conservative critics complain that, unlike in Neighbours,Dr Gross's new book contains little new information and contents itself with tarnishing Poland's reputation.
The historian rejects criticism of bias, pointing out that his book notes the thousands of ordinary Poles who risked their lives to save Jewish friends and neighbours.
Poland has the largest number of individuals recognised by Holocaust body Yad Vashem as "righteous among the nations".
Dr Gross was born and raised in Poland but left in the wake of an anti-Semitic campaign by the communist authorities in 1969. He has shrugged off news of an investigation in Poland.
"If they will take me to court, I will bring witnesses, Jews and Poles, to say exactly what happened after the war," said Dr Gross to Ha'aretznewspaper.
"It will be a big scandal."