Israel demands changes to 'Polish death camp' bill
THE COVER UPS NEVER STOP.....Eh, WELL RESPECTED LAWYER???
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said Sunday that his country could not tolerate a proposed law
in Poland that distances Warsaw from responsibility for the Holocaust.
Israel also summoned Poland's deputy ambassador to express its outrage.
At
a cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said Israel has "no tolerance for the
distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history and the denial of the
Holocaust."
The bill that passed the lower house of
Poland's parliament on Friday bans the use of the term "Polish death
camp" to refer to concentration camps built by the Nazis on Polish soil.
It also places fines on certain mentions of Polish complicity in the
Holocaust.
"We have had enough of Poland and Poles
being blamed for German crimes," said Beata Mazurek of the ruling Law
and Justice party, defending the bill, which still has to pass the
Senate and be signed by the president before it becomes law.
The
bill hits at Poland's fight for its own legacy. The narrative put
forward by Poland's nationalist conservative government posits that
Poland was only a victim of Nazi terrorism and acted heroically under
horrible circumstances. However, most historians agree that the truth is
more complicated, and many Poles collaborated with the occupying forces
and committed terrible crimes.
Israel
has criticized the bill for its potential to "harm freedom of research,
as well as prevent discussion of the historical message and legacy of
World War II," and taken issue with the timing, coming the day
before International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Deputy Ambassador to Israel Piotr Kozlowski rejected the idea that his government was trying to "whitewash" history.
"It
is to safeguard it, to safeguard the truth about the Holocaust and to
prevent its distortion," he told reporters after his meeting at the
Israeli Foreign Ministry.
In the wake of the
criticism, Polish President Andrzej Duda said he would send a top policy
adviser to meet with Israeli diplomats on Monday and discuss the bill's
wording.
This article was originally published on DW.com. Its content is separate from USA TODAY."
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