NEW YORK—World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder has strongly condemned Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s “absurd and unconscionable” allegation at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that Jews could be counted among the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and demanded an immediate retraction and apology from the Polish government.
It’s the latest spat between Poland and Israel as well as Jewish groups over interpretations of history after Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party last month passed a law outlawing public statements that falsely and intentionally attribute Nazi crimes to Poland under the German occupation during World War II.
Morawiecki was responding to a question from an Israeli journalist, who asked whether Poland would consider him a criminal after he reported that Polish neighbors had betrayed his Jewish family to the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police.
“Of course it would not be punishable or criminal if you say there were Polish perpetrators, just like there were Jewish perpetrators, like there were Russian perpetrators, like there were Ukrainians, not just German perpetrators,” Morawiecki replied.
He reiterated that the law was passed to make clear “there were no Polish death camps… There were German Nazi death camps.
“The Polish prime minister has displayed appalling ignorance with his unconscionable claim that so-called ‘Jewish perpetrators’ were partly responsible for the Nazi German attempt to wipe out European Jewry,” Lauder said.
“While Poles are understandably sensitive about Nazi German extermination and concentration camps in occupied Poland being called Polish, this government is going to extreme and unfathomable lengths to exonerate some of their countrymen’s own complicity in the murders of their neighbors.”
“This is nothing short of an attempt to falsify history, that rings of the very worst forms of anti-Semitism and Holocaust obfuscation,” Lauder said.
The WJC president demanded an ‘’immediate retraction and apology’’ from the Polish government of these absurd and offensive remarks.
‘’It is time for all European governments, including that of Poland, to own up to the role of their societies in abetting the Nazis and contributing to the near destruction of the Jewish people,’’ he added. ‘’ Including Jews among the perpetrators of these horrors, and blaming the victims instead of the killers, is a travesty that will only draw us further back to some of the darkest moments in human history.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several other political leaders lashed out at Morawiecki’s remarks.
“The Polish Prime Minister’s remarks here in Munich are outrageous. There is a problem here of an inability to understand history and a lack of sensitivity to the tragedy of our people. I intend to speak with him forthwith,’’ he said in a statement.
Netanyahu, who like Morawiecki was at the Munich Security Conference, said he would speak urgently with the Polish premier.
“There is a problem here of lack of understanding of history and lack of sensitivity to the tragedy of our people,” Netanyahu said.
Yair Lapid, head of the centrist opposition Yesh Atid party, said Israel should recall its ambassador over such “anti-Semitism of the oldest kind.”
“The perpetrators are not the victims. The Jewish state will not allow the murdered to be blamed for their own murder,” said Lapid.
Labor Party leader Avi Gabbay accused Morawiecki of trying to rewrite history.
“The blood of millions of Jews cries from the earth of Poland over the distortion of history and the escape from blame. Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and Poles took an active part in their murder,” Gabbay said. “The government of Israel has to be a voice for the millions of murdered and strongly denounce the Polish prime minister’s words.”