Misleading statement on Poland

In “EU-Israel Ties in 2018 – managing expectations” (Comment & Features, December 18), it was disquieting to read Raanan Eliaz’s egregiously misleading statement: “Poland... evades responsibility for the Holocaust – not a good starting point for helping the Jewish state.” Whatever Polish society’s acts of commission or omission toward the Jews in its midst (or its problematic present-day confrontation with that chapter of its history), it must be recognized that the Germans and the Austrians were both the masterminds of the Final Solution and its prime executioners. To suggest otherwise is to distort history. Careless yet all too common references to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a “Polish death camp” based on its geographic location are counterfactual and calumnious.

For the record, Polish-Israeli relations are excellent and mutually beneficial. The innumerable professional and people-to-people contacts between the two countries and the growing tourist traffic is facilitated by an ever-increasing number of low-cost flights between Tel Aviv and Warsaw as well as other Polish cities. Trade has flourished in recent years, and the hi-tech realm is seen as an especially promising nexus. Polish firms are working closely with Israeli start-ups, as they seek to replicate the experience of the vaunted “StartUp Nation.” Cooperation in the military and intelligence spheres has also been particularly intense and fruitful, and Poland is especially interested in Israel’s advanced cybersecurity technology.

Significantly, Poland was one of only a handful of EU member states (all of them post-Communist countries) to abstain in the UN General Assembly vote (Resolution A/ES-10/L.22) condemning the US for announcing its intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem. France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom all voted in favor of the resolution.

LAURENCE WEINBAUM Director, Israel Council on Foreign Relations Jerusalem