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Poland risks rift with Israel and US over Holocaust speech law Poland provokes Israeli anger with Holocaust speech law
(about 3 hours later)
Senate backs bill proposing jail terms for those who attribute crimes of Nazi Germany to PolesSenate backs bill proposing jail terms for those who attribute crimes of Nazi Germany to Poles
Associated Press Jon Henley European affairs correspondent
Thu 1 Feb 2018 08.56 GMT Thu 1 Feb 2018 16.22 GMT
Last modified on Thu 1 Feb 2018 13.20 GMT First published on Thu 1 Feb 2018 08.56 GMT
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Poland’s senate has backed legislation regulating Holocaust speech, a move that has the potential to strain relations with Israel and the US. Poland has sparked a diplomatic row with Israel and drawn warnings of repercussions from the US after its senate approved a controversial bill penalising any suggestion of Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust on its soil.
The bill, proposed by the ruling Law and Justice party and voted for early on Thursday, calls for up to three years in prison for any intentional attempt to attribute the crimes of Nazi Germany to the Polish state or people. Backed by the lower house last week, the draft legislation calls for fines or prison sentences of up to three years for anyone intentionally attempting to attribute the crimes of Nazi Germany to the Polish nation – for example, by referring to “Polish death camps”.
The Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement the country “opposes categorically” the vote and views “with utmost gravity any attempt to challenge historical truth.” It has met with criticism in the US as a threat to free speech and triggered vocal protests in Israel, which believes it could allow history to be distorted, historical facts to be criminalised and the role some Poles played in Nazi Germany’s extermination of the Jews to be whitewashed.
The proposal, which exempts artistic work and research, has raised concerns that the Polish state will decide what it considers to be facts. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) has said the bill – which the president, Andrzej Duda, who backs it, now has 21 days to sign into law – is needed to protect Poland’s international reputation and ensure historians recognise that Poles as well as Jews perished under the Nazis.
The US has asked Poland to rethink the bill, saying it could “undermine free speech and academic discourse”. “Israel views with utmost gravity any attempt to challenge historical truth,” an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, tweeted on Thursday after the senate vote. “No law will change the facts.” Israel “adamantly opposes” the bill’s approval, he said.
The state department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, voiced concern ahead of the vote about the “repercussions this draft legislation, if enacted, could have on Poland’s strategic interests and relationships, including with the United States and Israel”. The Israeli housing minister, Yoav Galant, one of several ministers to denounce the legislation, said he considered it “de facto Holocaust denial”, adding: “The memory of six million [Jews murdered in the Holocaust] is stronger than any law.”
Senators voted 57 to 23 in favour of the bill, with two abstentions. To become law, the proposal requires the approval of the president, Andrzej Duda, who supports it. The transport minister, Yisrael Katz, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party, said the law “constitutes the renunciation of responsibility and denial of Poland’s part in the Holocaust” and called for the Israeli ambassador to Poland to be recalled for consultations.
Many in Israel have argued that the bill is an attempt to whitewash the role some Poles played in the killing of Jews during the second world war. An opposition MP, Itzik Shmuli, said the bill made Poland “the first nation to legislate Holocaust denial”. History will judge Poland twice, he said, “for its role [in the Holocaust] and its despicable attempt at denial”.
Halina Birenbaum, a Holocaust survivor and acclaimed Israeli author, called the legislation “madness”, telling Israel’s Army Radio it was “ludicrous and disproportionate to what actually happened to Jews there”. Schmuli and other MPs drew up draft legislation of their own earlier this week aimed at amending Israel’s law on Holocaust denial to make it a crime punishable by jail to diminish or deny the role played by those who aided the Nazis in their persecution of Jews.
Birenbaum, a member of the International Auschwitz Council, said she was concerned the Polish government “might arrest me there for what I’m saying now”. Poland defended the bill as necessary. “We, the Poles, were victims, as were the Jews,” Beata Szydło, a senior PiS figure, said before the vote, which passed by 57 votes to 23 with two abstentions. “It is a duty of every Pole to defend the good name of Poland,” Szydło, a former prime minister, insisted.
The Israeli transport minister, Yisrael Katz, said it constituted “a denial of Poland’s part in the Holocaust of the Jews” and called on Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to immediately recall the ambassador to Poland for consultation. But although the bill exempts artistic works and scientific research into the second world war, the US state department said it could “undermine free speech and academic discourse”, adding that it was also “concerned about the repercussions” for Poland’s “strategic interests and relationships”.
“In the balance between diplomatic considerations and moral considerations, there must be a clear decision: perpetuating the memory of the victims of the Holocaust above any other consideration,” Katz said. Poland’s foreign ministry said it hoped that “despite differences in the assessment of the introduced changes”, the draft legislation “will not affect the strategic partnership between Poland and the United States”.
This article was amended on 1 February 2018 to state that Halina Birenbaum is a member of the International Auschwitz Council, not the International Auschwitz Committee Donald Tusk, the European council president and a former Polish prime minister, said the bill had tarnished Poland’s reputation.
“Anyone who spreads a false statement about ‘Polish camps’ harms the good name and interests of Poland,” Tusk said on Twitter. “The authors of the bill have promoted this vile slander all over the world … as nobody has before.”
The rightwing, socially conservative and strongly nationalist PiS is embroiled in a bitter dispute with the EU over a series of laws it has pushed through parliament that Brussels argues undermine the bloc’s fundamental values by threatening the independence of Poland’s judiciary and media.
Many observers believe it has reignited the debate on the Holocaust as a deliberate ploy to further fuel nationalist sentiment among its voters. Israel set up a working group to open up a dialogue with the Polish administration over the bill, but the attempt to modify it appeared to have failed.
In a statement Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, called the bill “unfortunate”, saying it was “liable to blur historical truths” about the complicity of “segments of the Polish population in crimes against Jews”.
It stressed that while it was indeed incorrect to refer to “Polish death camps”, the right way to combat historical misrepresentations “is not by criminalising such statements but by reinforcing educational activities”.
Poland’s 3.2 million-strong Jewish population was Europe’s largest when the country was invaded by Germany in 1939. More than three million – around half of all the Jews killed in the Holocaust – were murdered in German-built and operated death camps in Poland, including Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibór.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates the Germans also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Poles, and thousands of Polish civilians risked their lives to protect Jewish neighbours: 6,706 Poles are recognised as “righteous among nations” by Yad Vashem.
But recent research has shown that some Poles also participated in the Nazi atrocities – a revelation that has challenged the country’s accepted narrative and which surveys show many Poles still reject.
PolandPoland
HolocaustHolocaust
EuropeEurope
NazismNazism
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