Let’s put it all on the table.
Before the Holocaust, Poland was home to more than three million Jews and was one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. However, the majority of Jewish Poles were murdered in ghettos, death camps and concentration camps run by Germany in occupied Poland – including Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers.
Over the weekend, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki pledged that his country would not pay restitution to Holocaust survivors for German crimes committed against them on its territory during World War II.
He spoke after Poland’s Lower House of Parliament – the Sejm – passed a draft bill on Thursday introducing a 30-year statute of limitations on claims for the restitution of property, thus making all Holocaust-era claims ineligible.
“I can only say that as long as I am the PM, Poland will surely not pay for the German crimes. Not a zloty, not a euro, not a dollar,” Morawiecki said on Friday.
While most post-Communist countries have sought to right historical wrongs and address the issue of stolen Holocaust-era Jewish property, Poland has lagged behind, claiming it was the Germans, not them, who are responsible for the atrocities against Jews in the Holocaust.
In fact, in 2017, Warsaw enacted a law making it illegal to accuse Poland or the Polish people of being responsible for World War II or the Holocaust. Many Israeli officials condemned the law, including President Reuven Rivlin, who said that Poland and the Poles “had a hand in the extermination” of the Jews in the Shoah.
The Sejm’s new legislation will make it impossible for Jewish claimants or their descendants to recover or be compensated for what was taken from them in Poland.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid quickly and correctly criticized the law and its affront to the Jewish state and the families of the victims who perished on Polish soil.
“No law will change history,” Lapid said. “The Polish law is immoral and will severely harm relations between the countries. Israel will stand as a bastion protecting the memory of the Holocaust and the dignity of Holocaust survivors and their property.
“Poland, on whose ground millions of Jews were murdered, knows the right thing to do,” the foreign minister added.
On Sunday, the rift between Israel and Poland, which has been growing since the 2017 legislation, intensified when the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem summoned Poland’s Ambassador to Israel, Mark Magierowski, to express Israel’s displeasure over the bill.
“This is not a historic dialogue about responsibility for the Holocaust; rather, it is a moral duty of Poland towards its former citizens, whose property was confiscated during the Holocaust and under communist rule,” said Alon Bar, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Strategic-Political Department.
In turn, Warsaw summoned Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon, Israel’s charge d’affaires for a tongue lashing over what they called Israel “intervening in the internal affairs of a foreign state.”
“Poles, like Jews, were victims of terrible German crimes,” tweeted the bill’s presenter, Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski. “The act passed in the Sejm protects the victims of these crimes and their heirs against fraud and abuse.”
Is this just an internal affair, or a blatant denial of being part of one of history’s darkest events?
Poland can justify the bill however it wants, but its bald attempt to heap another injustice on the millions killed on its soil during the Holocaust is nothing short of outrageous.
Israel’s response is not only justified, but as the representative of world Jewry, it is imperative. And none other than the United States is backing up Israel’s position.
“The decision of Poland’s parliament yesterday was a step in the wrong direction. We urge Poland not to move this legislation forward,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a tweet on Friday.
As World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder wrote, Poland’s actions by passing the bill are a “slap in the face to what remains of Polish Jewry and survivors of Nazi brutality.”
The Polish legislation must be stopped in its tracks, whether through international pressure or by the Polish leadership realizing its passage will add another dimension to the immeasurable suffering endured by the Jews during the Holocaust.