Poland spurns summit in Jerusalem

Event scrapped after Israeli’s Nazi-collaboration comments escalate dispute

JERUSALEM — Poland on Monday withdrew from a European summit in Jerusalem, derailing the meeting to protest claims by Israel’s acting foreign minister that Poles collaborated with the Nazis and “suckled anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”

The abrupt cancellation marked a new low in a bitter and long-running conflict between Poland and Israel over how to characterize Polish actions toward its Jewish community during World War II.

It also was a diplomatic setback for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had touted the gathering as a milestone in his outreach to the emerging democracies of central and eastern Europe. Netanyahu has courted these countries to counter the criticism Israel typically faces in international forums.

Today’s meeting of the leaders of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — known as the Visegrad Group — was to have been the first time the summit has been held outside Europe.

The summit began to unravel last week when Netanyahu, during a visit to Warsaw, Poland, told reporters that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis.”

The comments infuriated his Polish hosts, who reject suggestions that their country collaborated with Adolf Hitler.

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, announced Sunday that he was pulling out of the summit and that his foreign minister would go instead.

But Morawiecki canceled Polish participation altogether after the comments made by Israel’s acting foreign minister, Israel Katz. Morawiecki denounced the remarks as “racist” and “absolutely unacceptable.”

Katz, who was appointed to the foreign minister’s post Sunday, made his remarks in a pair of TV interviews.

Noting that he is a child of Holocaust survivors, Katz said that “Poles collaborated with the Nazis, definitely.”

He then quoted the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who said that Poles “suckled anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed Monday that the summit had been called off, saying all four European countries had to be present.

A government official said Netanyahu and the three remaining European leaders instead were expected to hold a series of meetings today, along with a group news conference and joint lunch. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the schedule had still not been finalized.

Netanyahu, in a speech Monday to visiting Jewish American leaders, made no mention of the dispute.

Poland was the first country invaded and occupied by Hitler’s regime and never had a collaborationist government.

Members of Poland’s resistance and government-in-exile struggled to warn the world about the mass killing of Jews, and thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews.

However, Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis, or Polish blackmailers who preyed on helpless Jews for financial gain.

Many of Israel’s founding generation, including Shamir, fled anti-Semitism in Poland or elsewhere in Eastern Europe in their youths, and Shamir said his father was murdered by Poles.

Last year, Poland and Israel were embroiled in a dispute over a Polish law that made it a crime to blame the Polish nation for complicity in the Holocaust.

Israeli officials saw it as an attempt by Poland to suppress discussion of the killing of Jews by Poles during and after the Germans’ wartime occupation.

Netanyahu faced criticism from historians in Israel for not opposing the law, which critics said distorted history.

Critics also have accused Netanyahu of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism and of cozying up too closely to other nationalistic leaders in eastern and central Europe who have promoted a distorted image of the Holocaust.

These include Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, another participant at the Israeli-hosted gathering.

Lost in the diplomatic uproar was that Netanyahu was defending his close alliance with Poland and other Eastern European leaders when he made the comments that offended the Poles.

In response to a question from The Associated Press during his two-day visit to Warsaw, Netanyahu said he has raised the issue of historical revisionism with the various leaders.

He rejected the notion that he was a partner in diminishing anyone’s complicity in the genocide of Jews during World War II.

“I know the history. I don’t starch it, and I don’t whitewash it,” he said.

Jewish leaders in Poland issued a statement saying that Shamir’s words about Polish anti-Semitism were “unjust” when he said them in 1989.

“They are even more unjust today, 30 years later, when so much has been done on both sides for a mutual understanding of our very difficult, but shared history,” the statement added.

Jonathan Ornstein, head of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, called on Katz to apologize or resign.

“As a proud Israeli and Polish citizen, I feel that Israeli Foreign Minister [Israel] Katz should apologize or resign after his offensive, xenophobic remarks about Poland.

On his first day in office, no less. Truly Shameful,” Ornstein said on Facebook.

Information for this article was contributed by Aron Heller, Isabel DeBre, Vanessa Gera and Karel Janicek of The Associated Press.