Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Tuesday that he will sign a contested Holocaust bill into law, despite protests from Israel and the United States.
The measure imposes prison sentences of up to three years for mentioning the term "Polish death camps" and for suggesting "publicly and against the facts" that the Polish nation or state was complicit in Nazi Germany's crimes.
Poland's right-wing government says the law is necessary to protect the reputation of Poles as victims of Nazi aggression.
The legislation has sparked a bitter dispute with the U.S. and Israel, as both expressed concern it will curb free speech and may be an attempt to rewrite history. Israel has further warned that the bill would ban true statements about the role that some Poles played in Nazi crimes.
Last week, Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski urged Duda to sign the bill into law despite the harsh international criticism, saying, "The bill only pertains to accusations made against Poles as a nation, and we don't have any intention to prosecute someone who says that somewhere a single Jew or a family were murdered. I say this with pain and shame, but such events took place and we never denied this."
Duda said he will ask the Constitutional Tribunal for clarifications about the bill. Those are likely to be issued after it goes into effect.
