Poland’s new Holocaust law is an act of collusion
September. It was the first official visit by an Israeli Prime Minister to Mexico for 65 years.
Mr Peña Nieto said during that visit that he hoped Israel could bolster US and Mexican development projects in Central America. Israel was also a speedy donor in response to Mexico’s devastating earthquake last year.
In return, Mexico might look to soften its stance on matters important to Israel. It has generally voted against Israel at the UN in the past but abstained in two key votes in recent months: the first was last December, when the General Assembly condemned the US for moving its embassy to Jerusalem, and the second came after the same body condemned Israel for the recent violence at the Gaza border.
The question now is whether Mr Peña Nieto will sustain this line.
LAST WEEK, Poland and Israel published a declaration announcing an end to the disagreement between them on the socalled “Holocaust law”.
In its previous form, the law could have imprisoned anyone presenting the Polish nation as responsible for Second World War crimes. A new agreement eliminated subsections that criminalise those who sully Polish honour — but leaves open, and in fact encourages, the prospect of prosecution in civil courts.
In Polish criminal law, the accuser has to prove criminality. In civil cases, the onus is on the accused: they have to prove that what was stated is in accordance with the facts. Historians and artists are no longer protected.
A historian could face a punishing fine for showing that Polish peasants either delivered Jews to the Germans or the collaborationist Polish police.
The same will apply to those who describe how, in a very large number of localities, peasants looted property abandoned by Jews who had been deported to their deaths. Of the few survivors who returned, a high proportion were met with murderous hostility after the war when they tried to reclaim even personal items.
Liberal academics now face the reduction or elimination of essential subsidies for research and publication, and may well be threatened with a loss of their positions.
Penury is an effective weapon in the hands of authoritarian regimes — of which Poland is becoming one. As with all anti-democratic governments, facts will be determined not through independent research but by the authorities, in this case by the Institute of National Memory.
The Israeli government agreed with all that. But why accept the mendacious Polish narrative, abandon the many decent and courageous Poles who speak the truth, and distort Holocaust history?
For pragmatic political reasons, obviously. Economic and security ties and Polish support for Israeli positions are more important than something as minor as Holocaust memory. We are great with the words, but we are acting in conformity with historical untruths. This is collusion.
Israel’s support of the law is for political reasons
Yehuda Bauer is a Holocaust scholar