Poland's prime minister on Thursday sought to ease concerns over the Polish law criminalizing comments that blame Poland for Nazi crimes during the Holocaust, invoking the horrors Poles and Jews alike experienced at the hands of Nazi Germany and saying this binds Poland and Israel in a joint pursuit of the truth.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki gave a televised address hours after the Polish Senate passed the legislation, which has strained Poland's relations with Israel and the United States.
The bill proposed by Poland's ruling conservative Law and Justice party stipulates fines and prison sentences of up to three years for purposely trying to attribute the crimes Nazi Germany carried out during the nearly six-year occupation to the Polish nation as a whole.
The lower house of Poland's parliament approved the legislation last week. To become law, it still requires approval from President Andrzej Duda, who has said he supports it.
While the bill exempts artistic and scholarly works, it has raised concerns that the Polish state will decide what the facts of its wartime history are and which statements it finds objectionable enough to prosecute. Israeli officials have expressed outrage, while the United States asked Polish lawmakers to reconsider.
Striking a conciliatory note, Morawiecki said that telling the truth about what happened in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust is a task Poland and Israel share.
Poland will "never curb the freedom of the Holocaust debate," he said.
"We owe that to all those who experienced it. We understand the emotions of Israel. We need a lot of work to make our common, often complicated, history possible to tell together."
Polish Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki suggested that Israel had been consulted on the bill and voiced no objections. Many in Israel have characterized the proposed law as an attempt to whitewash the role some Poles played in denouncing and killing Jews during World War II.
The Foreign Ministry has canceled a planned visit to Israel by the head of Poland's National Security Council, Pawel Soloch, whohad been due to arrive next week.
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that Israel "opposes categorically" the vote by Poland's senators.
"Israel views with utmost gravity any attempt to challenge historical truth," the ministry said. "No law will change the facts."
A senior Israeli government official expressed "deep disappointment" in the Polish vote, saying Foreign Ministry Director General Yuval Rotem had been appointed to negotiate a solution to the crisis on behalf of Israel, but "the Poles rushed through the legislation."
On Thursday, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recall Israel's ambassador from Poland for a consultation.
"When weighing diplomatic considerations against moral considerations, the decision must be clear: Honoring the memory of the victims of the Holocaust takes precedence over any other factor," Katz said.
Also Thursday, a group of Knesset members introduced a bill that would toughen Israel's Holocaust denial regulations to make "denying or minimizing the involvement of the Nazi helpers and collaborators" a crime.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles has accused Poland's conservative government of trying to suppress the "widespread participation of individual Poles in the persecution and murder of Jews during the Holocaust."
Before the Senate's vote, the U.S. asked Poland to rethink the proposed legislation, saying it could "undermine free speech and academic discourse" and affect Poland's ties with the U.S. and Israel.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem issued a statement saying it was "most unfortunate" that Poland was proceeding with a law "liable to blur historical truths."
Meanwhile, the European Commission's deputy head said on Thursday that all Nazi-occupied countries had collaborators with the Nazi regime.
However, the responsibility for the death camps resides only with the Nazi regime, which invaded Poland in 1939, EC First Vice President Frans Timmermans, told a news conference.
More than 3 million of Poland's 3.3 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, making up half the Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from across Europe were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by the Germans on Polish soil, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.
According to figures from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Germans also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians.
