Wiesenthal Center Urges Polish Government To Reconsider Controversial Legislation Regarding Holocaust History Recently Passed By Polish Parliament

Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center today urged the Polish authorities to reconsider the highly-controversial law regarding Holocaust history which was passed in the Sejm (Polish parliament)this past Friday. In a statement issued here today by its Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper and its Director of Eastern European Affairs, Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Centerharshly criticized the provision of the bill which makes any mention of Polish complicity in Holocaust crimes a criminal offense, while accepting the historically-accurate demand to refrain fromuse of the term "Polish death camps."

According to Cooper and Zuroff:

"While we agree that the use of the term 'Polish death camps' is a dangerous and harmful distortion of the history of the Holocaust, we cannot accept any attempt to whitewash the crimes committedin Poland, or in any other country, against Jews during the Holocaust. While the Polish state no longer existed, many thousands of individual Poles either murdered Jews or informed on them to theNazis, a phenomenon which has been extensively documented by reputable Polish historians. In addition, there were cases in which Jews seeking to escape the Nazis were murdered by members of theArmia Krajowa, the nationalist underground which was the military arm of the Polish government-in-exile in London. Any attempt to whitewash such crimes is totally unacceptable and an unbearableinsult to the victims of the Nazis."

For additional information please contact the Israel Office of the Wiesenthal Center: Tel: 972-2-563-1274 or Tel: 972-50-721-4156, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal @EZuroff for news 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 member families in the UnitedStates. 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).