Israel still protests against Polish Holocaust law. Warsaw persists and signs
(B2) Between Tel Aviv and Warsaw, the atmosphere does not seem to be peaceful, after the publication of the law punishing with a fine and up to three years in prison, any declaration attributing responsibility to the Polish nation" (cf. The remarks of Prime Minister T. Morawiecki in Munich, which verge on the desire to rewrite history, such as the appeal by the President of the Polish Senate to the Polish community, urging him to denounce any act calling into question a possible collaboration of the Poles during the Second World War with Nazism, did not really help matters.
Many Poles Helped Nazis, Israel Says
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs continues to react very strongly, as it has just done today on Twitter, adding a comment to an article published shortly before in Haaretz (1).
« The evidence that many Poles aided the Nazis and perpetrated their own heinous crimes against Jews during WWII is overwhelming. he says. " Any attempt to erase this part of the Holocaust must be resisted by all who value the truth and seek to ensure that the crimes of this era are never repeated. »
Evidence that many #Poles assisted the Nazis & perpetrated their own heinous crimes against Jews during WWII is overwhelming. Any attempt to erase this part of the #Holocaust must be fought by all who value #truth & seek to ensure that the #crimes of that era are never repeated. https://t.co/LlCxwM1CLn
- Israel Foreign Min. (@IsraelMFA) 18th February 2018
The oil on the fire of the president of the Senate
The Polish authorities, instead of trying to appease the controversy, have added fuel to the fire. The long letter of the President of the Polish Senate, Stanisław Karczewski, addressed to the “ 20 million Poles and people of Polish descent “, “for the promotion of the good name of Poland” is enjoining them to denounce the acts of “anti-Polonism”! is rather inappropriate (2).
“Please document and denounce any manifestation of anti-Polonism, as well as writings or opinions that outrage us. Please inform our embassies, consulates or honorary consuls of any statement questioning the good name of Poland. »
Comment: A story that cannot be traced in black and white
The painful history of the Second World War is difficult to trace in an atmosphere of "black and white", as the Polish government of the PiS tries to do. It is certain that the Polish government in exile in London at the time spared no effort to alert the Allies of the time to the fate of the Jews. Several requests for action addressed to the British Allies in particular, were met with a veto. It is also wrong to say that, officially, Poland "collaborated" with the Nazis, contrary to the more than ambiguous attitude of certain Western governments (France in particular) who not only tacitly approved this policy but even lent the assistance of their police forces... The extermination camps, set up by the Nazis, and all located on Polish territory, were set up by the Nazis, not the Polish government, nor guarded by Polish agents (3); they cannot be called "Polish death camps", not being set up by the Polish government.
For all that, enshrining in a law, the repression of any accusation of collaboration of the Polish Nation is totally clumsy, but moreover a temptation to silence the tragic parts of European history. The time for forgiveness has come, not the time for forgetting. With such an act, the PiS government has committed an unforgivable fault, which does not make it bigger in the eyes of Europeans. A stain that will continue for years. It's a pity for Poland and the Poles who were undoubtedly one of the most heroic nations during the Second World War.
(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)
The text of Polish law
The text proposed by the Polish government was ratified by the President of the Republic, A. Duda on February 6, 2018, and must enter into force within three months. Formally, it consists of an amendment to the law establishing the Institute of National Remembrance (Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej) (amendment of article 55 and 55a).
It punishes persons (§1) who: “in public and against the facts, attributes to the Polish nation or to the Polish State, the responsibility or the co-responsibility for the Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich [...], or for other offenses which constitute crimes against peace [or] humanity or [which are] war crimes, or which otherwise grossly reduce the liability of the actual perpetrators of these crimes” “with a fine or a prison term of up to three years. The judgment must be made public. »
It provides (§2) for an attenuation of the sentence “if the author of the act […] acted involuntarily”. The person is only liable to a [community] fine or penalty (restriction of freedom without prison sentence).
However, it provides for an exemption clause (§3) “if the act was performed in the context of an artistic or intellectual activity”.
But the text provides for extraterritorial application regardless of nationality. This law applies indeed “irrespective of the locally binding regulations in the place where the prohibited act took place, [...] to Polish citizens as well as to foreigners”.
(1) The daily Haaretz published a week ago (February 11) an article titled “ Orgy of Murder': The Poles Who 'Hunted' Jews and Turned Them Over to the Nazis ". " More than 200 Jews were killed, directly or indirectly, by Poles during World War II. There were no bystanders in the Holocaust "he underlines, relying on the work of the historian Jan Grabowski, a professor at the University of Ottawa, who has particularly studied the feeling of anti-Semitism in Poland.
(2) This letter was released quite officially by the Polish diplomatic networks and thus available on the website of the Polish Embassy in France.
(3) An invaluable census of Auschwitz guards was carried out by the (Polish) Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), with the publication online of a database early 2017, containing the names of various SS guards and collaborators. During the launch, Mateusz Szpytma, the number two of the IPN, affirmed that no name of Polish collaborator was there for a simple reason: When the Germans launched a recruitment operation [for camp], the underground state forbade the Poles to answer it and it ended in failure ". A totally false assertion: it is enough to walk around the base for two minutes to quickly come across a man of Polish nationality, member of an SS group or worker in the camp. But it is far from being a majority.
(photo credit: Auschwitz-Birkenau museum / map: IPN)
