Holocaust Comments Spur Polish PM to Cancel Trip, Polsat TV Says
- by Jerome Frank
- in World News
- — Feb 18, 2019
Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz was due to replace Morawiecki, but the prime minister said on Monday that Warsaw's participation was now in question following the Katz comments.
Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has cancelled a trip to Israel in the wake of reported remarks made by his Israeli counterpart suggesting Polish complicity during the Holocaust, an aide in his office told Polish media on Sunday.
The move came amid Polish outcry over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comments last week that "Poles cooperated with the Nazis" to kill Jews during Germany's occupation of Poland in World War II.
Poland's Foreign Ministry also summoned the Israeli ambassador, Anna Azari, to demand a second set of clarifications in recent days.
Morawiecki called the remarks by Katz "unacceptable" and "racist".
Tensions between Israel and Poland ran high last year after Poland introduced new legislation that would have made the use of phrases such as "Polish death camps" punishable by up to three years in prison.
Warsaw has always been at pains to state that Poland, which was occupied by Nazi Germany, could not have and did not collaborate in the Holocaust although individual Poles gave up Jews to the Nazis.
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Netanyahu, who has served as foreign minister since May 2015 and as defense minister since November 2018, also holds the health portfolio, with Yaakov Litzman acting as his deputy, in addition to his post as the head of Israeli government. "Anti-Semitism was innate among the Poles before the Holocaust, during it and after it, too", he said. "The memory of the Holocaust is not something to compromise about".
With the Hungarian and Slovak prime ministers already in Israel, bilateral meetings will take place instead, according to announcements by Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babis and Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon. "It is obvious. We will not forget, and we will not forgive".
"Historical truth cannot be changed", he said.
Before the second world war Poland was home to one of the world's largest Jewish communities, which was nearly wiped out by the Nazis.
"Poles collaborated with the Nazis, definitely. As (former Israeli Prime Minister) Yitzhak Shamir said - his father was murdered by Poles - he said that from his point of view they sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers" milk.
Poland was the first occupation of Adolf Hitler's regime and never had a collaborationist government.
