Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L) met Mr Netanyahu in Warsaw this month
JERUSALEM, Feb 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A summit of central European leaders in Israel has been cancelled because of an Israel-Poland row over the Holocaust.
Poland withdrew after being angered by comments from Israeli leaders about Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
In particular, Israel’s acting Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz used the phrase, “Poles imbibe anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk”.
Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews, mostly in Poland. Some Poles did collaborate with the Nazis.
Katz’s remarks were “racist and unacceptable”, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said.
There was also Polish fury at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for saying “Poles co-operated with the Germans” during the Holocaust.
About six million Polish citizens died in World War Two, of whom about three million were Jews.
The meeting hosted by Israel was meant to bring together the four-nation Visegrad Group: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.
But on Monday Israel said the three prime ministers attending – without Poland – would have bilateral meetings with Netanyahu.
“It will not be called Visegrad, because this entails the presence of all four,” an Israeli spokesperson said. “It’s going to be a summit with Visegrad members.”
The Polish government says its withdrawal is “an unequivocal signal to other governments and international opinion that historical truth is fundamental”.
There is long-running tension between Poland’s conservative government and Israel over the Holocaust.
Last year a Polish law made it an offence to allege that the Polish nation was complicit in Nazi crimes.
Prime Minister Morawiecki then suggested that some Jews were willing collaborators in the Holocaust, provoking a furious response in Israel.
Research shows that thousands of Poles collaborated with the Nazis; but many other Poles risked their lives to help Jews – a fact recognised by Israel’s Yad Vashem remembrance centre.
The Nazis built many of their most notorious death camps in Poland after occupying the country at the beginning of the war in 1939. — NNN-AGENCIES
