Poland defends PM over Holocaust remark denounced by Israel
WARSAW: Poland on Sunday sought to defend remarks by its prime minister which Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu called ‘unacceptable’ and tantamount to denying the Holocaust.
“The comments of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki during a discussion in Munich were by no means intended to deny the Holocaust, or charge the Jewish victims of the Holocaust with responsibility for what was a Nazi German perpetrated genocide,” Morawiecki’s spokeswoman Joanna Kopcinska said in a statement.
The Israeli premier, who like Morawiecki was in Munich for a global security conference, laid into his opposite number in a terse telephone call on Sunday over his remark the previous day that the Holocaust had involved “Jewish perpetrators” as well as Polish ones.
“He told him that the remarks that were made were unacceptable and that there was no basis for comparing the actions of Poles during the Holocaust to those of Jews,” Netanyahu’s office said in an English language statement.
Israeli police on Sunday published pictures of graffiti discovered on the gates of Poland’s embassy in Tel Aviv, which included Nazi swastikas and the word ‘murderer’ in English.
The building was closed to the public as is usual on Saturday and Sunday.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu pointed out that the goal of the Holocaust was to destroy the Jewish people and that all Jews were under sentence of death,” the Israeli statement said.
“He told his Polish counterpart that the distortion regarding Poland could not be corrected by means of another distortion.
“The two agreed that the countries would continue their dialogue on the matter and that to this end the teams would hopefully meet soon.”