Poland\u2019s Senate has backed legislation regulating Holocaust speech, a move that has already strained relations with both Israel and the United States. The bill proposed by Poland\u2019s ruling conservative party and voted for early Thursday calls for up to three years in prison for any intentional attempt to falsely attribute the crimes of Nazi Germany to the Polish state or people.<\/p>\n
Though the bill exempts artistic and research work, it has raised concerns that the Polish state will decide itself what it considers to be facts. The vote has already sparked a diplomatic dispute with Israel and drawn calls from the United States for a reconsideration. Senators voted 57 to 23 in favor of the bill with two abstentions. To become law, the bill requires approval from President Andrzej Duda, who supports it.<\/p>\n
Though Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki suggested Israel had been consulted on the bill and voiced no objections, many in Israel have argued that the move is an attempt to whitewash the role some Poles played in the killing of Jews during World War II. Halina Birenbaum, a Holocaust survivor and acclaimed Israeli author, called the new law \u201cmadness,\u201d telling Israel\u2019s Army Radio it was \u201cludicrous and disproportionate to what actually happened to Jews there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Birenbaum, a member of the International Auschwitz Committee, said she was concerned the Polish government \u201cmight arrest me there for what I\u2019m saying now.\u201d And Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said the law constituted \u201ca denial of Poland\u2019s part in the Holocaust of the Jews.\u201d He called on Netanyahu to immediately recall Israel\u2019s ambassador to Poland for consultation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the balance between diplomatic considerations and moral considerations, there must be a clear decision: perpetuating the memory of the victims of the Holocaust above any other consideration.\u201d Working groups in Poland and Israel are to start discussing the issue this week, although it was not clear what effect it could have on the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poland\u2019s Senate has backed legislation regulating Holocaust speech, a move that has already strained relations with both Israel and the United States. The bill proposed by Poland\u2019s ruling conservative party and voted for early Thursday calls for up to three years in prison for any intentional attempt to falsely attribute the crimes of Nazi Germany […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20681,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20679\/revisions\/20681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}