Polish, Israeli Leaders Speak by Phone as Holocaust Feud Deepens
Israeli and Polish leaders spoke on the phone after the later said Poland was not responsible for Nazi-era genocide.
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(Bloomberg) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with his Polish counterpart on Sunday after comments by Premier Mateusz Morawiecki deepened a dispute that started when the Warsaw parliament approved a Holocaust speech law last month.
Morawiecki, responding to a question at the Munich Security Conference Saturday about legislation that bans any suggestion that Poland was responsible for atrocities during the Nazi-era genocide, included “Jewish perpetrators” in a list of non-Germans that committed World War II-era crimes. Netanyahu called the remarks “outrageous” the same day.
The comments “were by no means intended to deny the Holocaust, or charge the Jewish victims of the Holocaust with responsibility for what was a Nazi German perpetrated genocide,” the Polish government spokeswoman said in a statement on Sunday. However, the spokeswoman for Morawiecki’s ruling Law & Justice party said in a separate Twitter post that Morawiecki “said the truth that is hard to accept by the Israeli side” and there’s no need to apologize for the truth.
The legislation passed in Warsaw has already drawn criticism from the U.S. and the European Union. Critics say the standard arises from a nationalist agenda that seeks to whitewash crimes committed during Poland’s wartime occupation.
Netanyahu told Morawiecki during today’s phone call that Saturday remarks were “unacceptable” and there was no basis for comparing the actions of Poles and Jews during the Holocaust, Israeli PM’s office said on Twitter.
Morawiecki responded on Twitter saying that while during the Holocaust there were “brave” individuals of all nations, the time also “exposed dark parts of human nature, which for some meant collaboration with German Nazis.”
Both sides agreed that dialog should continue.
To contact the reporter on this story: Maciej Martewicz in Warsaw at mmartewicz@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wojciech Moskwa at wmoskwa@bloomberg.net, Ross Larsen, Nikos Chrysoloras
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