Israel slams bill outlawing phrase 'Polish death camp'
January 28, 2018
Poland's plan to criminalize the phrase "Polish death camp" has been slammed by Israel as a denial of history. Millions of Jews were murdered in camps run by Nazi Germany in Poland after it was invaded in 1939.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/F. Schumann
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Israel summoned Poland's top diplomat on Sunday to express their opposition to legislation advancing through the Polish parliament regarding the Holocaust and the definition of Nazi death camps.
The charge d'affaires for Poland's embassy in Israel, Piotr Kozlowski, was summoned to the Israeli foreign ministry where he was asked for a "clarification" on the pending legislation, according to a statement from the ministry.
"Israel's opposition to the wording of the bill was expressed to him," the ministry said. "The timing of the bill — the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day — was particularly surprising and unfortunate."
The meeting comes a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he strongly opposed the Polish draft law that stipulates fines and even three years in jail for anyone who refers to Nazi German death camps as being Polish.
"The law is baseless," said Netanyahu, adding that he had told his ambassador to convey Israel's objection to Mateusz Morawiecki, prime minister of Poland's right-wing government.
Israel's education and diaspora minister, Naftali Bennett, accused Poland's right-wing-dominated parliament of a "shameful disregard of the truth" that went beyond the "historic fact that Germans initiated, planned and built the work and death camps in Poland."
Israel coalition leaders: Netanyahu and Bennett (R)Image: Reuters/B. Ratner
"It is a historic fact that many Poles aided in the murder of Jews, handed them in, abused them, and even killed Jews during and after the Holocaust," Bennett said, adding that what happened "must be taught to the next generation."
Polish Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki, who authored the legislation, said claims that Poles were "co-responsible" for the Holocaust was "proof of how necessary this bill is."
Polish government spokeswoman Joanna Kopcinska tweeted that the bill sought "to show the truth about the terrible crimes committed on Poles, Jews, and other nations that in the 20th century were victims of brutal totalitarian regimes – German Nazi regime and Soviet communism."
Poland has often pressed global media and foreign politicians for corrections when they use the term "Polish death camps" to refer to sites such as Auschwitz, where 3 million people, mostly Jews from across Europe and also Poles, were killed in Nazi-run camps in what is today Poland.
The phrase was used by former US President Barack Obama in 2012, prompting outrage in Poland.
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Tel Aviv, said the phrase was a "historical misrepresentation," warning, however, that the bill would "blur the historical truths regarding assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust."
The bill, adopted Friday by the lower house of the Polish parliament, is expected to easily pass in Poland's Senate before being forwarded to President Andrzej Duda for signing.
Critics say that enforcing such a law would be impossible outside Poland and that within the country, it would have a chilling effect on debating history.
Although scholarly or academic works would be excluded from criminalization, critics such as the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights say Poland's nationalistic authorities could still stifle research, particularly into the role of individual Poles during the Nazi era.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, through his spokesman, said: "Every crime, every offense must be condemned, denounced, must be examined and exposed."
'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.
