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Poland’s Senate passes Holocaust complicity bill despite concerns from U.S., Israel


What will be the impact of the law?

Once it is signed by the president, anyone convicted under the law could face fines or up to three years in jail.

The law would essentially ban accusations that some Poles were complicit in the horrific Nazi crimes committed on Polish soil, including in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where more than 1.1 million people died. Germany operated six camps in Poland where Jews and others that the Nazis considered enemies were killed.

Why have the United States and Israel opposed the proposed law this week?

Critics of the bill, including the U.S. State Department and Israeli officials, fear that it will infringe upon free speech and could even be used to target Holocaust survivors or historians.

“We are also concerned about the repercussions this draft legislation, if enacted, could have on Poland’s strategic interests and relationships,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

In Israel, the reaction was even fiercer. “One cannot change history, and the Holocaust cannot be denied,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement last week.

Israel’s housing minister, Yoav Galant, condemned the bill Thursday after it was passed by Poland’s Senate, tweeting that it constituted “Holocaust denial.”

Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Center similarly cautioned that the bill could “blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust,” even though it agreed that the term “Polish death camps” was a historical misrepresentation.

Agnieszka Markiewicz, director of the American Jewish Committee's central Europe office, agreed that the term “Polish death camps” should not be used, but she emphasized that a ban was the wrong way forward. “Where the problem lies is that the bill is very broad, and [the term] is not even mentioned in it,” said Markiewicz, speaking to The Washington Post on Thursday.

“We’re facing the biggest crisis in Polish-Jewish relations since after 1989,” she said, referring to the year the Berlin Wall came down. “The way this conflict has escalated is horrible. There are things that have been said and done on both sides — including by Israeli politicians who said that there were Polish camps — which haven't been helpful. Polish people don’t bear responsibility for the Holocaust, as such. But like other nations, they do bear responsibility for the behavior or attitudes of some.”

Even though Markiewicz stressed that there was still time to stop or modify the legislation, others worried about the more immediate repercussions for Poland's Jewish community. Speaking to The Washington Post, Warsaw-based political scientist and advocate Rafal Pankowski said he had never experienced as much anti-Semitism in Polish public discourse as this week. “Anti-Semitism is not a new phenomenon here, but we're seeing an explosion of that sentiment in popular media mainstream. It's something that is very worrying,” Pankowski said.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid a wreath at the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument in Poland on Jan. 27, marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.(Reuters)

How has Poland responded?

Netanyahu and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki spoke by phone last Sunday. Despite appearing to agree to a diplomatic dialogue, the Polish government stood by its bill this week and pursued its Senate approval.

Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki later referred to Israeli reactions as “proof of how necessary this bill is.” On Thursday, Poland's Foreign Ministry responded to the U.S. State Department criticism, writing in a statement that “the legislation’s main aim is to fight all forms of denying and distorting the truth about the Holocaust as well as belittling the responsibility of its actual perpetrators.”

Poland’s deputy chief of mission in Israel, Piotr Kozlowski, said the goal of the proposed law “is not to whitewash history, but to safeguard it and safeguard the truth about the Holocaust and prevent its distortion.”

But historians worry that the law, if passed, would make it impossible to discuss the culpability of at least some Poles in Nazi crimes. It is still a matter of controversy, for instance, whether a 1941 atrocity by a group of Poles in the town of Jedwabne was carried out after pressure from the Nazis or whether the crimes occurred without German involvement.

The Polish government has argued in the past that a focus on such controversies could make younger Poles believe that their country was involved in the crimes. Historians have responded that silencing the discourse could infringe upon freedom of speech and run counter to the country's moral responsibility to remember World War II atrocities in all their horrible details.

What triggered the law?

Throughout years of Nazi occupation in which hundreds of thousands of civilians died between 1939 and 1945, a number of Polish underground movements resisted the Nazis. It is that chapter of history that the ruling Law and Justice party wants to emphasize. But historians have long argued that it’s not the full story: Some Poles, they say, were complicit in the Nazi crimes, too.

Poles were especially dismayed when, in 2012, President Barack Obama incorrectly referred to a “Polish death camp.” Three years later, then-FBI director James B. Comey also appeared to equate the country’s role in the Holocaust to that of Germany.

Both remarks outraged Poland and sparked a diplomatic crisis: Then-Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk accused Obama of “ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad intentions.” Despite the outrage, Poland failed to pass a law to ban the term in 2013. When the more right-wing Law and Justice party won the overall majority in 2015, it vowed to try again, to stop critics from “insulting and slandering the good name of Poland.”

The party's critics say that the new draft law is mainly supposed to fuel nationalistic sentiments in the country. “This is all about nationalism really, and about the imposition of a nationalist historic narrative,” said political scientist Pankowski. Poland is not a unique case, he said, and a similar Holocaust-related law is in place in Ukraine, for instance. But so far, Poland was considered to be central Europe's most progressive nation in dealing with its past.

How are Polish voters reacting?

The Law and Justice party’s focus on emphasizing Poland’s heroic past has proved to be an effective domestic electoral strategy, even as it has faced a particularly damaging international backlash after accusations of emboldening the far right itself.

In November, an estimated 60,000 people marched alongside ultranationalists and Nazis to mark the 99th anniversary of Polish independence. Some of the protesters carried banners and held up signs that had a clear far-right extremist message, including “Clean Blood,” as seen by Politico, and “White Europe,” described by the Associated Press.

The march was not organized or officially promoted by the governing party. Yet, despite the extremist slogans and posters, officials refrained from condemning the march for days, and even publicly voiced support.

While the incident drew international condemnation, it certainly did not damage the party’s standing at home. If anything, the party has only gained in popularity.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/01/polands-senate-passes-holocaust-complicity-bill-despite-concerns-from-u-s-israel/?utm_term=.8d344bbb38f4

(c) 2018 The Washington Post

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