Israeli leaders’ Nazi comments derail European summit

JERUSALEM — Poland on Monday withdrew from a European summit in Jerusalem, derailing the meeting and embarrassing its Israeli hosts, to protest claims by Israel’s acting foreign minister that Poles collaborated with the Nazis and “suckled anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”

The abrupt cancellation marked a new low in a bitter and long-running conflict between Poland and Israel over how to characterize Polish actions toward its Jewish community during the Second World War.

It also was a diplomatic setback for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had touted the gathering as a milestone in his outreach to the emerging democracies of central and eastern Europe. Netanyahu has courted these countries to counter the criticism Israel typically faces in international forums.

Tuesday’s meeting of the leaders of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — known as the Visegrad group — was to be the first time the summit has been held outside of Europe.

The gathering began to unravel last week when Netanyahu, during a visit to Warsaw, told reporters that “Poles co-operated with the Nazis.” The comments infuriated his Polish hosts, who reject suggestions that their country collaborated with Hitler.

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, announced Sunday that he was pulling out of the summit, but that his foreign minister would go instead.

But Morawiecki cancelled Polish participation altogether after the comments made by Israel’s acting foreign minister, Israel Katz, that he denounced as “racist” and “absolutely unacceptable.”

Katz, who was only appointed to the foreign minister’s post on Sunday, made his remarks in a pair of TV interviews. Noting that he himself is a child of Holocaust survivors, Katz said that “Poles collaborated with the Nazis, definitely.” He then quoted the late former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who said that Poles “suckled anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed Monday that the summit had been called off, saying all four European countries had to be present.

Instead, a government official said that Netanyahu and the three remaining European leaders were expected to hold a series of bilateral meetings on Tuesday, along with a group news conference and joint lunch. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the schedule had still not been finalized.

Netanyahu, in a speech Monday to visiting Jewish American leaders, made no mention of the crisis.

Poland was the first country invaded and occupied by Adolf Hitler’s regime and never had a collaborationist government. Members of Poland’s resistance and government-in-exile struggled to warn the world about the mass killing of Jews, and thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews.

However, Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis, or Polish blackmailers who preyed on helpless Jews for financial gain. Many of Israel’s founding generation, including Shamir, fled anti-Semitism in Poland or elsewhere in eastern Europe in their youths, and Shamir has said his father was murdered by Poles.

These duelling narratives have been a source of great tension between Israel and Poland, which otherwise have strong relations. Last year, Poland and Israel were embroiled in a bitter dispute over a Polish law that made it a crime to blame the Polish nation for complicity in the Holocaust.