Israeli leader says he expects Polish WWII bill to be fixed

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on yesterday said he expects Poland will amend proposed legislation that would outlaw the blaming of the Polish nation for crimes committed during the Holocaust, as Israel's Foreign Ministry summoned a Polish envoy to express its displeasure.

Netanyahu said at his weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday that Israel has "no tolerance for the distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history and the denial of the Holocaust."

The lower house of the Polish parliament's bill prescribes prison time for referring to "Polish death camps" and criminalizes the mention of Polish complicity.

The bill still needs approval from Poland's Senate and president. Still, it marks a dramatic step by the nationalist government to enforce its official stance that all Poles were heroes during the war. Historians say many Poles collaborated with the Nazis and committed heinous crimes.

The bill has sparked outrage in Israel, which declared independence in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust and is home to the world's largest community of Holocaust survivors.

On yesterday, the Foreign Ministry summoned Poland's deputy ambassador, Piotr Kozlowski, to express Israel's opposition to the bill.

It called the timing of the bill, passed on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, "particularly surprising and unfortunate" and said it expects the draft to be amended before final approval.

"The legislation will not help further the exposure of historical truth and may harm freedom of research, as well as prevent discussion of the historical message and legacy of World War II," a ministry statement said.

Speaking to reporters after his meeting, Kozlowski said the intent of the legislation is not to "whitewash" history. "It is to safeguard it, to safeguard the truth about the Holocaust and to prevent its distortion," he said.

Mark Weitzman, the director of government affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a US-based group that battles anti-Semitism, called the law "an obscene whitewashing" of history.

He said its wording could be used against Holocaust survivors talking about their personal experiences as well as researchers, teachers or anyone else documenting the Holocaust.

He urged Poland to "immediately terminate this law and put an end to all attempts to distort the history of the Holocaust for political purposes."