“The passage yesterday of the Polish bill criminalizing any reference to complicity by the Polish state in Holocaust crimes andoutlawing use of the term ‘Polish death camps’, is an ill-conceived attempt to whitewash the widespread participation of individual Poles in the persecution and murder of Jews during theHolocaust. While the term ‘Polish death camps’ is historically inaccurate and should not be used under any circumstances, the other elements of this bill are a crass attempt to silence anydiscussion of the widespread phenomenon of complicity by individual Poles in Holocaust crimes, as well as the murder of numerous Jews by members of the Armia Krajowa, the nationalist military armof the Polish government-in-exile in London.
“We fully acknowledge the suffering of the Polish under a brutal Nazi occupation and the incredibly courageous efforts of Polish ‘Righteous Amongthe Nations’, but we will not and the Polish nation must not ignore the widespread complicity of other Poles in the annihilation of Polish Jewry.
“We urge the Polish authorities to take whatever steps are necessary to bury this ill-conceived bill and ensure the accuracy of the historicalnarrative of World War II and the Holocaust.
“The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s senior staff on both sides of the Atlantic are contacting the US State Department, US Congress, the EU, and alldemocracies who just commemorated International Holocaust Day to urge their immediate and direct condemnation of this outrage.”
For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036. Join the Center onFacebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal fornews updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 memberfamilies in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament(Parlatino).
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