JERUSALEM —‘’A thorough review by Yad Vashem historians shows that the historical assertions, presented as unchallenged facts, in the joint statement contain grave errors and deceptions,’’ said Thursday Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remmebrance Center in Jerusalem, in response to a joint statement published recently by Poland and Israel on the amendment to the so-called Polish ‘’Holocaust bill’’.
‘’The essence of the statute remains unchanged even after the repeal of the aforementioned sections, including the possibility of real harm to researchers, unimpeded research, and the historical memory of the Holocaust,’’ a Yad Vashem statement said.
Last week, Poland announced it was watering down the proposed law, which ired Israel and the Jewish world, by removing the threat of jail terms for anyone suggesting the country was complicit in Nazi crimes against the Jews.
Yad Vashem challenged in particular the validity of the leaders’ assertion that the Polish underground and government-in-exile in World War Two came to the aid of Jews facing death at the hands of the Nazis.
It said : ‘’The statement contains highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field. The joint statement’s wording effectively supports a narrative that research has long since disproved, namely, that the Polish Government-in-Exile and its underground arms strove indefatigably—in occupied Poland and elsewhere—to thwart the extermination of Polish Jewry. As such, they created a “mechanism of systematic help and support to Jewish people” and even took vigorous action against Poles who betrayed Jews. Although the joint statement acknowledges that there were cases in which Poles committed cruelties against Jews, it is also says that “numerous Poles” risked their lives to rescue Jews.’’
According to Yad Vashem, ‘’the existing documentation and decades of historical research yield a totally different picture.’’ ‘’The Polish Government-in-Exile, based in London, as well as the Delegatura (the representative organ of this Government in occupied Poland) did not act resolutely on behalf of Poland’s Jewish citizens at any point during the war. Much of the Polish resistance in its various movements not only failed to help Jews, but was also not infrequently actively involved in persecuting them,’’ it said.
‘’Furthermore, those who accuse Poland of complicity are still liable for civil prosecution,’’ the statement pointed out.
In response, the two confidants of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who negotiated the agreement with the Polish government said that Dina Porat, Yad Vashem’s chief historian, had been involved in the process of negotiations with Warsaw since its inception and that she approved the joint declaration’s historical assertions.
“The joint declaration signed by the Polish government includes an explicit reference to the fact that the ability to carry out research freely was preserved and that no law prevents it or will prevent it in the future,” they said in a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office.
After the controversial law was amended by the Polish parliament, Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki said in a statement that their countries were “friends and partners” and rejected blaming Poland or its citizens for atrocities committed by the Nazis or collaborators in other countries.
Their statement went on to praise the wartime Polish government-in-exile, saying it tried to “raise awareness among Western allies of the systematic murder” of Polish Jews.
Netanyahu and Morawiecki also acknowledged “the fact that structures of the Polish underground state supervised by the Polish government-in-exile created a mechanism of systematic help and support to Jewish people.”