Polish lawmakers back Holocaust Bill
POLISH lawmakers approved a Bill on Thursday that would impose jail terms for suggesting Poland was complicit in the Holocaust, drawing concern from the United States and outrage from Israel, which denounced “any attempt to challenge historical truth”.
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) says the Bill is needed to protect Poland’s reputation and ensure historians recognise that Poles as well as Jews perished under the Nazis. Israeli officials said it criminalises basic historical facts.
The Senate voted on the Bill in the early hours on Thursday and it will now be sent to President Andrzej Duda, who has 21 days to decide whether to sign it into law.
“Death and suffering in German Nazi concentration camps were a shared experience of Jews, Poles and many other nations,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, adding that Poland would never limit debate about the Holocaust.
The Bill would impose three years prison sentences for mentioning the term “Polish death camps”, although it says scientific research into World War Two would not be constrained.
Israel “adamantly opposes” the Bill’s approval, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant, one of several Cabinet ministers to denounce the Bill, told Israel’s Army Radio that he considered it “de facto Holocaust denial”.
The socially conservative, nationalist PiS has reignited debate on the Holocaust as part of a campaign to fuel patriotism since sweeping into power in 2015.
The US State Department said the legislation “could undermine free speech and academic discourse” and Washington was concerned about the repercussions it could have “on Poland’s strategic interests and relationships”.
Poland had Europe’s largest Jewish population when it was invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union at the start of World War Two. More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for around half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from across Europe were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by the Germans on Polish soil, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.
According to figures from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Germans also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians.
Many thousands of Poles risked their lives to protect their Jewish neighbours; Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Centre recognises 6,706 Poles as “righteous among nations” for bravery in resisting the Holocaust, more than any other nationality.
But Poland has also gone through a painful public debate in recent years after the publication of research showing some Poles participated in the Nazi atrocities. Many Poles have refused to accept such findings, which have challenged a national narrative that the country was solely a victim.