Poland's president visited a Jewish community center Tuesday amid an upsurge of domestic anti-Semitism and international criticism of a new law that makes it a crime to blame Poland for the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany.
In a conciliatory gesture, President Andrzej Duda visited the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, the southern Polish city that was once home to a vibrant Jewish community before it was decimated during World War II.
Elderly Holocaust survivors gather at the center, but it also houses a nursery and preschool – a reflection of the re-emergence of a Jewish population in Poland.
During his visit, Duda stressed his appreciation for Jewish culture and its role in Poland.
"Many people in Poland's culture, wonderful poets with Jewish roots, had a great contribution to what we today call Poland," Duda said.
The new law, which allows prison sentences of up to three years for falsely attributing the Holocaust crimes of occupying German Nazis to Poles, has angered Israeli and American officials. Their vocal opposition sparked anti-Jewish remarks in Poland's public media by some right-wing commentators and elected officials.
"Anti-Semitism must be fought on the social and on the state level," Duda said at the center.
Polish officials have said the law was needed to fight untrue statements about Poland's part as a state in the Holocaust. Critics in Israel and the United States say it could stifle research and have alleged it is an attempt to whitewash the wartime deeds of many Poles who turned against their Jewish neighbors.
Duda expressed hope that the "dissonance, not a crisis" with Israel will be resolved. He said he thinks the bilateral relations laboriously built in the decades since Poland became a democracy won't suffer.
"It is a heartache to think that anything of that could be lost," Duda said.
Meanwhile, a team of Polish historians was expected to visit Israel Wednesday to discuss the law. The Israeli and Polish prime ministers agreed in January that such a meeting could help reduce tensions over the law.
"The purpose of the dialogue is preserving historical truth and preventing damage to freedom of research and speech," the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.
In a tweet marking the anniversary of the rekindling of official bilateral ties in 1990, the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw said it was "looking to the future with hope for the return of a constructive cooperation and a friendly dialogue."
The Polish parliament delayed a debate on Tuesday on whether to designate a day to remember Poles who saved Jews during World War II, with the opposition saying it was bad timing because of the international pressure the country is facing over the controversial law.
Marek Kuchcinski, speaker of Poland's lower house of parliament, said he would discuss the possibility of delaying the debate with Duda.
"The timing is unfortunate, it would be better to wait until the situation with Israel calms down," said Rafal Grupinski, a lawmaker from the centrist main opposition Civic Platform.
The World Jewish Congress published a full-page letter on Monday in The New York Times urging Polish readers to reconciliation amid the "firestorm of ill-will" caused by the Polish law.
More than 90% of the 3.2 million Jews who lived in pre-war Poland were murdered by the Nazis during their occupation of the country, accounting for about half of all Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from other parts of Europe were sent to be murdered at death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka, built and operated by the Germans in Poland.
The Nazis also killed 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish citizens, although there was never a plan to exterminate all of them, as there was with Jews.
Tadeusz Jakubowicz, president of the Jewish Community of Krakow who was born in 1939 and who survived the war partly thanks to being hidden by a Polish family, said he was not against the idea of a Remembrance Day.
"Why not? After all, those people during the occupation saved me, I went through it myself, I don't know if only I had the luck to come across such wonderful people," Jakubowicz said after a meeting with Duda on Tuesday.
"My heart breaks when I hear some say that in Poland we want to rewrite history," Duda said in Krakow. "We do not want to write a new history, we just want the historical truth to be defended."
