Poles try to heal rift after leader sparks row over anti-Semitism

A SPOKESWOMAN for Poland’s prime minister has sought to downplay his words which equated Polish collaborators in the Holocaust to alleged “Jewish perpetrators”.

Mr Morawiecki as he was responding to a question from an Israeli journalist at the Munich Security Conference. 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, as there were Ukrainian, not only German perpetrators,” Mr Morawiecki said in response.

Israeli politicians have accused Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki 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.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he planned to speak with Mr 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 “nothing short of 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’s 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”.

Poland has tried to emphasise that the Polish people were themselves victims of a brutal Nazi occupation and not collaborators.