Israel demands changes to 'Polish death camp' bill
January 28, 2018
Israel has accused Poland of "distorting the truth" in a bill about references to Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Warsaw has argued that it is sick of being blamed for German crimes.
Israel and Poland have agreed to "open a dialogue" to resolve a diplomatic row over the proposed Polish law, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
The legislation, which passed Poland's lower house on Friday, bans the use of the term "Polish death camp" to refer to concentration camps built by the Nazis on Polish soil. It also places fines or a maximum three-year jail term on certain mentions of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
Israel summoned Poland's deputy ambassador to express its outrage. Netanyahu said that his country could not tolerate a bill that distances Warsaw from responsibility for the Holocaust, while Polish officials argued the measure had been misinterpreted.
The Israeli leader spoke by phone late Sunday with his Polish counterpart, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
"The two agreed that teams from the two countries would open an immediate dialogue in order to try to reach understandings regarding the legislation," Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
Earlier, Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting that Israel has "no tolerance for the distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history and the denial of the Holocaust."
'Poles being blamed for German crimes'
"We have had enough of Poland and Poles being blamed for German crimes," said Beata Mazurek of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, defending the bill, which still has to pass the Senate and be signed by the president before it becomes law.
The bill hits at Poland's fight for its own legacy. The narrative put forward by Poland's nationalist conservative government posits that Poland was only a victim of Nazi terrorism and acted heroically under horrible circumstances. However, most historians agree that the truth is more complicated, and many Poles collaborated with the occupying forces and committed terrible crimes.
Israel has criticized the bill for its potential to "harm freedom of research, as well as prevent discussion of the historical message and legacy of World War II," and taken issue with the timing, coming the day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The World Jewish Congress on Sunday added its voice to opposition to the plan, saying the draft law's implementation would be a "serious mistake." [It is] "objectionable as it stifles any real confrontation with the most chilling aspect of the country's wartime history — the extent to which local Poles were complicit in the destruction of their Jewish neighbors," chief executive Robert Singer said.
Israel's ambassador to Poland, Anna Azari, told the Polish PAP news agency that the draft law could lead to Holocaust survivors being prosecuted for their testimony should it mention the involvement of Poles in war crimes.
Warsaw reacts
Poland's Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz on Sunday defended the legislation. "I think that crimes in the world are being attributed to Poles that weren't committed by Poles," Czaputowicz told state-run broadcaster TVP Info. "Some formulations could be misunderstood," he said.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Morawiecki wrote on Twitter: "Auschwitz is the most bitter lesson on how evil ideologies can lead to hell on earth. Jews, Poles, and all victims should be guardians of the memory of all who were murdered by German Nazis. Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a Polish name, and Arbeit Macht Frei is not a Polish phrase."
In another tweet, Morawiecki used the following analogy: "A gang of professional thugs enters a two-family house. They kill the first family almost entirely. They kill the parents of the second, torturing the kids. They loot and raze the house. Could one, in good conscience, say that the second family is guilty for the murder of the first?"
Poland's Deputy Ambassador to Israel Piotr Kozlowski rejected the idea that his government was trying to "whitewash" history. "It is to safeguard it, to safeguard the truth about the Holocaust and to prevent its distortion," he said after his meeting at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said he would send a top policy advisor to meet with Israeli diplomats on Monday and discuss the bill's wording.
'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
