Truth decayOutcry over Poland’s law which rewrites WWII history, and bans challenges to the government’s version
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined other Israeli leaders in harshly condemning a law initiated by Poland’s nationalist government and passed by the lower house of the Polish parliament. The law aims to distance Poland from any responsibility for or complicity in the Holocaust. At a Sunday cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that Israel has “no tolerance for the distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history and the denial of the Holocaust.” Historians of twentieth-century Poland, as well as historians of the Second World War and the Holocaust, argue that the Polish government’s version of history is a willful distortion of a complicated and painful reality.
Entrance gate to the Auschwitz death camp // Source: wikipedia.org
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined other Israeli leaders in harshly condemning a law initiated by Poland’s nationalist government and passed by the lower house of the Polish parliament. The law aims to distance Poland from any responsibility for or complicity in the Holocaust. At a Sunday cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that Israel has “no tolerance for the distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history and the denial of the Holocaust.”
The bill, which passed the lower house of parliament on Friday, bans the use of the term “Polish death camp” to refer to concentration and extermination camps built by the Nazis on Polish soil. The bill also imposes steep fines on references to or mentions of Polish complicity, involvement, or participation 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 (PiS) party, defending the bill, which still has to pass the Senate and be signed by the president before it becomes law.
The New York Times notes that the bill is part of broader effort by the current nationalist populist government to rewrite Polish history and shape the way Poland’ legacy is perceived. The narrative advanced by the government – and which the proposed law bolsters by punishing those who question or criticize the government’s version of Polish history — posits that Poland was only a victim of the Nazi brutal occupation and that the Polish people acted heroically under extremely difficult circumstances.
“Jews, Poles, and all victims should be guardians of the memory of all who were murdered by German Nazis,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland said on Twitter Saturday night, after the backlash began. “Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a Polish name, and Arbeit Macht Frei is not a Polish phrase.”
Historians of twentieth-century Poland, as well as historians of the Second World War and the Holocaust, argue that the Polish government’s version of history is a willful distortion of a complicated and painful reality.
There is no doubt that the Poles suffered under the Nazi occupation. The population of Poland in 1939 was 35 million, of which 3 million were Jews. Between 1939 and 1945, 2.77 million ethnic Poles and 2.8 million Polish Jews were killed.
