Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has said he will sign into law a controversial bill that penalises acts blaming Poland or its citizens for complicity in Nazi war crimes.
Duda also said on Tuesday that he would send the bill, which has drawn strong rebuke from Poland’s allies and Jewish organisations, to the Constitutional Tribunal to review its possible restriction of freedom of speech, Radio Poland reported.
“Taking the need to protect Poland’s and the Polish people’s good name into account … I made the decision to sign this amendment to the bill into law,” he was quoted as saying by Russia’s Tass news agency.
A group of Holocaust survivors has written an open letter to Binyamin Netanyahu criticising the plan https://t.co/LrKnFIzQEV
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) February 6, 2018
The law, passed by Poland’s Senate earlier this month, imposes fines or a maximum three-year prison terms on anyone who publicly refers to Nazi German death camps located in Poland as Polish.
It has caused a diplomatic crisis with Israel, which fears it will enable Poland to whitewash the role of Poles during the Holocaust.
Israeli ambassador to Poland Anna Azari has said that, in Israel, the law “is seen as creating a possibility of punishment for Holocaust survivors’ testimony”.
A Holocaust denier is the only candidate on the ballot for a GOP primary in Illinois. pic.twitter.com/GtcAMLNlpO
— AJ+ (@ajplus) February 6, 2018
Poland’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that the country’s top diplomat Jacek Czaputowicz met Azari on Monday, assuring her that Poland was opposed to Holocaust denial as well as “the related attribution of complicity in organizing the Holocaust to Poland”.
According to historical evidence, there were over one million people, the majority of them Polish Jews, who died in the Nazi Germany-controlled Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, located south of modern-day Poland. Millions more Polish Jews, and other non-Jewish, Polish civilians were murdered across the country.
Poland's President announced that he would sign into law a bill that makes it illegal to accuse the Polish nation of complicity in the Holocaust and other Nazi war crimes during World War II https://t.co/u1wC3iJrqM
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 6, 2018
Polish politicians who supported the bill have insisted that Germany should be blamed solely for the Holocaust.
The Holocaust Memorial Museum in the US, however, said many Polish citizens “were complicit in the crimes against Jews”, even as it acknowledged that thousands of Poles also risked their lives to save their Jewish neighbors.
The Washington, DC-based museum said some Polish agencies, including the police force and railway personnel, played a role in the deportation and sending of Jews to the death camps.
(Al Jazeera, PC, Social Media)
