Poland could amend bill, says minister

A diplomatic row with Israel over a Holocaust bill adopted by the Polish parliament was rooted in a misunderstanding, Poland’s foreign minister said on Monday, but he did not rule out amending it, even after it is signed into law.

The legislation, which still needs the president’s signature to take effect, was introduced by Poland’s governing right-wing Law and Justice party to stop people from erroneously describing Nazi German death camps as being Polish, simply due to their geographical location. It would make it a crime to accuse the Polish state of complicity in the Holocaust.

Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Anna Azari, told the Polish PAP news agency that Israel believed the bill could open the door to prosecuting Holocaust survivors for their testimony should it concern the involvement of individual Poles allegedly killing or giving up Jews to the Germans.

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz ruled out that possibility, saying under “Polish law and the legal system, this is impossible and we want to share this knowledge with our partners in Israel”.

THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE AND WE WANT TO SHARE THIS KNOWLEDGE WITH OUR PARTNERS IN ISRAEL

Critical comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the Polish bill were “due to a misunderstanding”, Czaputowicz said.

“I think it’s a problem of interpretation, of overinterpretation on the Israeli side,” he said, adding that “we can also imagine some kind of amendment [of the legislation] if our explanations will not be convincing.”

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the party, said on Saturday he was “convinced” President Andrzej Duda would sign the bill into law. Czaputowicz said that even if Duda did so, Poland would still be willing to back a joint declaration with Israel clarifying its scope or to amend it.

The US state department warned last week that the bill could have “repercussions” on “Poland’s strategic interests and relationships — including with the US and Israel”.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said at the weekend that “there is not the slightest doubt about who is responsible for the extermination camps, who made them work to kill millions of European Jews: the Germans.

“It was our country that organised these mass murders and no one else.

“The existence of certain collaborators does not change anything.”