A Polish-American scholar doesn't know if he will be charged with "publicly insulting the nation", after being questioned by prosecutors over his assertion that Poland killed more Jews than it did nazis in World War II.  Once Europe's post-Soviet success story, the new ruling party's creeping authoritarian nature threatens to make Poland a blight on the continent.

"I told him straight that I was not trying to insult the Polish nation.  I was trying to raise awareness about the problem of refugees in Europe," said Princeton University history professor Jan Tomasz Gross.  "I am just telling the truth and the truth sometimes has a shocking effect on people who are not aware of what the truth is," he explained.

Prosecutors say that Polish citizens filed several complaints over Mr. Gross's accusations which appeared in a column he wrote for European magazines last year.  He criticized those in Europe who refused to accept refugees from the Middle Eastern wars as "heartless", and he linked their attitudes to Europe's "murderous past".  But the line that infuriated said:  "Consider the Poles, who, deservedly proud of their society's anti-Nazi resistance, actually killed more Jews than Germans during the war."

The idea that Poles were complicit in the nazi persecution of Jews goes against the common belief that Poland behaved honorably during the war.  The problem for the government's case is that Professor Gross might be correct.

"The claim that Poles killed more Jews than Germans could be really right - and this is shocking news for the traditional thinking about Polish heroism during the war," said Jacek Leociak, a historian with the Polish Center for Holocaust Research.  He says Gross's comparison "reveals this dimension of the Polish war experience which was always covered, hidden and suppressed."

Poland's ultra-right wing and ironically named "Law and Justice" party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, or PiS.  No, really, PiS) came into power after capturing the presidency and legislature in last year's elections.  Like most nationalist movement, it is paranoid and thin-skinned when it comes to any opposition or dissent, and frequently blames the nation's problems on supposed "Communist" holdovers from the pre-1989 days.  PiS has sparked widespread protests for:  Trying to change the constitution to reduce the power of the Constitutional Court;  Attempting to muzzle the media;  And, most recently, threatening to tighten Europe's already most-restrictive abortion laws to force women to bear their rapists' babies - which is opposed by three post-Communist First Ladies.  PiS even accused former president and national hero Lech Walesa of being a Communist spy.

European officials have repeatedly warned the PiS government over its excesses, but the fact that a scholar was hauled in for questioning suggests it is not listening.