An adviser to Poland's president says he thinks Israel's negative reaction to a law criminalizing some statements about Poland's actions during World War II stemmed from a "feeling of shame at the passivity of the Jews during the Holocaust."
Andrzej Zybertowicz, a Nicolaus Copernicus University sociology professor who also serves as a presidential adviser, called Israel's opposition to the new law "anti-Polish" and said it shows the Mideast nation is "clearly fighting to keep the monopoly on the Holocaust."
"Many Jews engaged in denunciation, collaboration during the war. I think Israel has still not worked it through," Zybertowicz said in the interview in the Polska-The Times newspaper Friday.
He said, "The 'religion' of the Holocaust has become a sort of symbolic shield for the Jewish state, in which the genocide of Jews was used to create a special status for Israel in the world, a symbol meant to protect it from any criticism."
Zybertowicz further suggested that Israel had manufactured a crisis with Warsaw in order to distract from the investigations into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Why did the Israeli government immediately attack the Polish law? The violence of the Israeli reaction could indicate this being a political game. The Israeli political arena has a reputation as one of the most corrupt in the world. It may be that also played a role here. People with a corrupt background are willing to break the law if they need a cover for their actions."
Zybertowicz could not immediately be reached for comment but tweeted a link to the article.
His remarks follow open expressions of anti-Semitism that surfaced online and in some government-controlled media when Israeli officials objected to the law, which outlaws public statements that falsely and intentionally attribute Nazi crimes to Poland under the German occupation.
The legislation has caused a diplomatic dispute with Israel, which fears it will enable Poland to whitewash the role of Poles who killed or denounced Jews during the occupation.
Polish President Andrzej Duda signed the law on Tuesday but also asked the country's constitutional court to review it.
The ruling party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, appeared to acknowledge the recent outburst of anti-Jewish rhetoric in the country, denouncing anti-Semitism in a speech Saturday night as a "serious illness of the soul" and an "illness of the mind" that must be rejected. At the same time, he said Poland does not have to agree with "either Jews or Poles," who want to "offend" Poland.
Jews have sometimes been described, often derisively, as having remained passive during the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Key acts of resistance contradict that, most notably the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Smaller revolts took place in the death camps, including Sobibor and Treblinka, where starving prisoners without weapons faced heavily armed German guards.
Duda and other government officials said it was needed because Poles sometimes are depicted as collaborators or complicit in the Nazi genocide.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that she won't get involved or interfere with Poland's law because "as Germans, we are responsible for the things that happened during the Holocaust." Merkel said in her weekly podcast that the onus on Germany from the Holocaust is something every German government will have to address.
Merkel is scheduled to meet Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Berlin on Friday.
