Polish PM’S Holocaust comments provoke a sharp Israeli rebuke

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sharply rebuked his Polish counterpart for saying that Jews were among the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s equated Polish collaborators in the Holocaust to alleged “Jewish perpetrators” on Saturday.

Yesterday a spokeswoman for Mr Morawiecki sought to downplay the remark, saying it was an invitation to a frank debate about the World War II crimes against Jews.

Israeli politicians have accused Mrmorawiecki of anti-semitism following his remarks at the Munich Security Conference, which set off a new chapter in an angry dispute over Poland’s new law banning some Holocaust speech.

Mr Netanyahu said he planned to speak to Morawiecki soon about his remarks.

In a statement yesterday, Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, condemned Mr Morawiecki’s words as an “absurd and unconscionable” allegation that is “an attempt to falsify history, that rings of the very worst forms of anti-semitism and Holocaust obfuscation.”

Mr Lauder demanded an “immediate retraction and apology” from Poland’s government.

Mr Morawiecki spokeswoman Joanna Kopcinska said that his words “should be interpreted as a sincere call for open discussion of crimes committed against Jews during the Holocaust, regardless of the nationality of those involved in each crime.”

The statement in Polish and English said Morawiecki’s comments were “by no means intended to deny the Holocaust.”

“On the contrary, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has repeatedly and categorically opposed denial of the Holocaust as well as anti-semitism in all its forms,” the statement said.

It noted that the brutal occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany during the war “allowed the Nazi German murder of Jews to take place in the way that it did.”

Mr Morawiecki made the controversial comment as he was responding to a question from an Israeli journalist. While asking about a new Polish law that criminalises some statements about the Holocaust, the journalist said his parents were reported to the Nazis by Polish neighbours. He asked if he would now be considered a criminal in Poland for relating the story.

“Of course it’s not going to be punishable, not going to be seen as criminal, to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators,” Morawiecki said in response.