Polish PM nixes visit to Israel
WARSAW — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki canceled plans to attend a meeting of central European leaders in Israel starting Monday amid tensions over how Polish behavior during the Holocaust is remembered and characterized.
Morawiecki informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his decision by phone Sunday, said Michal Dworczyk, who heads the prime minister’s chancellery. Poland’s foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, plans to attend instead, he said.
It “is a signal that the historical truth is a fundamental issue for Poland and the defense of the good name of Poland is and always will be decisive,” Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek explained.
Netanyahu said Thursday during a Middle East conference hosted by the U.S. and Poland that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis,” wording suggesting some Poles participated in killing Jews during the German occupation of Poland.
He was initially quoted by some Israeli media outlets as saying not “Poles” but “the Poles” cooperated, phrasing that could be taken as blaming the entire Polish nation.
Netanyahu’s office said he was misquoted. The Polish government summoned the Israeli ambassador Friday and later said it was not satisfied with that explanation.
Netanyahu was supposed to meet with leaders of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the two-day meeting.
This incident follows a spat Warsaw and Jerusalem had last year over a new Polish law that makes it illegal to blame the Polish nation for collaboration in the Holocaust.
At the height of the crisis, Morawiecki at one point equated Polish perpetrators of the Holocaust to supposed “Jewish perpetrators.”
Now, with general and European elections later this year, Morawiecki bowed out of the Jerusalem trip because he “has to think about the far-right and anti-Semitic electorate,” said Tomasz Lis, the editor of the Polish edition of Newsweek and a critic of the government.