W*****B
发帖数: 4796 | 1 波兰人现在是不是偷着乐？元首替他们干了自己想干又没敢干的事情。解决了一个老大
难问题？现在波兰跟犹太国为历史问题又开始撕逼了。 | W*****B
发帖数: 4796 | 2
Poland and Israel in Tense Talks Over Law Likened to Holocaust Denial
JERUSALEM — Polish and Israeli officials met on Thursday to address the
diplomatic rift that erupted over a new Polish law that makes it a crime to
blame Poland for the Holocaust, a measure that Israeli officials have
likened to Holocaust denial.
The law, adopted last month over the furious objections of Israel and
scholars from around the world, makes it a crime to blame “the Polish
nation” for the Holocaust and other World War II atrocities carried out by
the Nazis during their occupation from 1939 to 1945.
It was the Nazis who oversaw the exterminations — by means of mass
shootings, gas chambers, starvation and slave labor — that claimed the
lives of some six million Jews. But the role of Polish collaborators,
participants and enablers in the Nazi-run system of mechanized death remains
a subject of fraught historical inquiry.
Poland’s right-wing government says its goal is to defend the nation from
slander, but scholars say the result is to stifle inquiry and reconciliation.
Last week, a group of Poles who risked their lives to save Jews during World
War II added their voices to the debate.
“We ask you not to rewrite history,” the Poles — among 6,850 Poles
recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem, as “
righteous among the nations” for their heroism — wrote in an open letter
to both Polish and Israeli leaders.
One of those who signed the letter was Anna Stupnicka-Bando, 89, who was a
teenager when she and her mother smuggled books and food into the Warsaw
ghetto. It was during one of those illegal trips that they met an 11-year-
old Jewish girl, Liliana Adler, whom they hid in their two-bedroom apartment
at her father’s urging.
Posing as Anna’s cousin, Liliana lived with the family — under their
neighbors’ suspicious gazes — for four years until they were liberated by
the Soviet Army in 1945.
“Everyone knows that there were those who were good and those who were bad,
” Ms. Stupnicka-Bando said in a phone interview. “Those who were saving
Jews, and those who were robbing and murdering them. There were heroes just
as there were thieves and killers. Just like there were in every other
nation. To say different is harmful and nonsensical.”
She added: “What is it now with all this counting — this checking how many
of us were good and how many were bad? We are not some potatoes planted in
a field that can be counted. We are people. Let it go.”
Ms. Stupnicka-Bando said the new dispute was unnecessary. “In recent years,
we had finally managed to get some peace and quiet,” she said. “It seemed
like all those conflicts and tensions were gone. How can they be back? How
can one unfortunate phrase, one inaccurately written sentence destroy all of
it?”
On Thursday, Israeli and Polish diplomats met for more than three hours in
what the Israeli Foreign Ministry described as “candid and open dialogue,”
although the talks were inconclusive.
The Israeli side was represented by Yuval Rotem, the ministry’s director
general, and included diplomats, legal experts and historians from Yad
Vashem.
At the start of the talks, Mr. Rotem told the Polish team — led by the
deputy foreign minister, Bartosz Cichocki — that it was “no secret” that
the legislation was “a matter of concern to Israel and to the Jewish people
worldwide.”
He added: “We must make sure that historical truths are preserved, that
there be no restrictions on the freedom of research and speech, and that the
wide threat of criminalization in this regard is addressed and resolved.”
After the closed-door talks, the ministry said it was especially concerned
about “the criminalization clause, which constitutes an obstacle to the
study of the truth and to open historical debate.”
The statement also expressed “concern about the public atmosphere that had
recently been created in Poland and manifestations of anti-Semitism, and
stressed the need for the Polish government to act with zero tolerance in
the face of anti-Semitism.”
The dispute has strained relations between Israel and Poland. At a security
conference last month in Munich, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, confronted his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki.
During a discussion, Ronen Bergman, a journalist who covers intelligence
affairs for Yediot Ahronot and writes for The New York Times Magazine,
remarked that his parents, who were born in Poland, “lost much of their
families because their Polish neighbors snitched to the Gestapo.”
He added, “After the war my mother swore she would never speak Polish for
the rest of her life, not even a single word.”
In a rambling response, Mr. Morawiecki said it would remain legal “to say
that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as
there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian, not only German
perpetrators.”
The reference to “Jewish perpetrators” infuriated Israelis and others. Mr.
Netanyahu called the comments “outrageous” and added, “There is a
problem here of an inability to understand history and a lack of sensitivity
to the tragedy of our people.”
Even so, Mr. Netanyahu has resisted pressure from legislators — including
some from within his governing coalition — to recall Israel’s ambassador
to Poland.
In an opinion article in Haaretz on Thursday, the deputy prime minister of
Poland, Jaroslaw Gowin, said that Israeli-Polish cooperation had improved in
recent years and urged further dialogue.
How the law will be enforced remains to be seen. Historians, journalists and
artists are to be exempted from prosecution under the law, and Joanna
Kopcinska, a government spokeswoman, said that “witnesses of history”
would also be exempt.
The Polish government, which has also curbed judicial independence and the
press, is feuding with the European Union over the state of the rule of law
in Poland.
On Thursday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution supporting the
European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, which has threatened to
strip Poland of voting rights because of threats to democratic norms.
The commission warned Poland this week that it had until March 20 to
backtrack on its judicial changes before Brussels takes action. “The clock
is ticking,” Michael Roth, Germany’s minister for European Union affairs,
told journalists.
The tensions on both fronts might have given the governing Law and Justice
party pause. This week, the speaker of Parliament delayed debate on a
proposal to establish a day of memorial honoring Poles who saved Jews.
Ms. Stupnicka-Bando said she hoped the current tensions were a result of a
“misunderstanding and not ill will.” She added, “We, the righteous ones,
are optimists.”
Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka, the president of the Jan Karski Educational Foundation
, which organized the open letter, noted that many of the letter’s signers
were in their 90s, and she worried that memories of righteous acts were
fading.
“They are worried that their legacy — the mutual understanding between
Poles and Jews they achieved — might now be lost,” Ms. Junczyk-Ziomecka
said.
She added that it would be important to study the experiences of both groups
— Jews inside the ghetto walls, non-Jewish Poles in their occupied country.
“Jews and Poles spent years learning about what is a source of pain for the
Jews, and what it is in the Polish soul that hurts,” Ms. Junczyk-Ziomecka
said. “Their memories complete each other. They can’t imagine that someone
might break them apart.”
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Joanna Berendt from Warsaw.
RELATED COVERAGE
Poland’s President Supports Making Some Holocaust Statements a Crime Feb. 6
, 2018
Poland Tries to Curb Holocaust Speech, and Israel Puts Up a Fight Feb. 1,
2018
Opinion | How the Holocaust Haunts Eastern Europe Jan. 26, 2018
Get the full New York Times experience
. |
|
