Netanyahu slams ‘outrageous’ Holocaust remark by Polish PM in Munich
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday lashed out at “outrageous” remarks by his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki, who said the Holocaust had involved “Jewish perpetrators” as well as Polish.
Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki gives a speech during the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. Photo: Thomas Kienzle / AFP
The Israeli leader, who like Morawiecki was in Munich for a global security conference, in a statement condemned “an inability to understand history and a lack of sensitivity to the tragedy of our people”.
“The Polish Prime Minister’s remarks here in Munich are outrageous,” he said, adding that he intended to speak to Morawiecki “forthwith” about the matter.
Morawiecki’s claim about the Holocaust’s perpetrators came amid an unprecedented diplomatic row with Israel sparked by a controversial law passed by Poland’s senate this month. The law sets fines or a maximum three-year jail term for anyone ascribing “responsibility or co-responsibility to the Polish nation or state for crimes committed by the German Third Reich”.
‘Unbelievable’
Appearing at the Munich Security Conference, Morawiecki was questioned by a journalist who told of his mother’s narrow escape from the Gestapo in Poland after learning that neighbours were planning to denounce them. The journalist, Ronen Bergman, asked if by recounting this, “I am a criminal in your country?” — garnering a round of applause from the audience.
Morawiecki responded: “It’s not going to punishable, not going to be seen as criminal, to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukraine and German perpetrators.”