A Polish nationalist group asked prosecutors Tuesday to investigate whether Israel's president broke a law that criminalizes falsely blaming Poland for the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany.
The National Movement said it thinks Israeli President Reuven Rivlin might have violated the new Holocaust speech law during a visit to Auschwitz last week.
A record 15,000 people took part in the 30th annual March of the Living at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp last Thursday. Among the marchers were Rivlin, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Israel's former Chief Rabbi Meir Lau and a special delegation of senior Israel Police and IDF officials, including Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and Shin Bet Security Director Nadav Argaman.
National Movement Vice President Krzysztof Bosak said Rivlin's address at the march suggesting that Poland allowed the Germans to carry out their genocide of the Jews was problematic.
In his address, Rivlin said, "We are standing here and know, we cannot expect justice from this place. In this place, saturated with the ashes of our brothers and sisters, there will no longer be justice. We do not expect justice in a Europe that tries too quickly to forget, to make others forget, to deny, to destroy evidence. Our memory is patient. Those who aided Amalek [the biblical enemy of Israel] are etched in our minds. Those who stood aside, those who saw the smoking chimneys, those who heard the cries and did not lift a finger.
"Our people were betrayed by the people they lived among, in France, in Holland, in Belgium. They were murdered by the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and yes, also by the Poles. Too many citizens of Eastern and Western Europe stole Jewish property, took over Jewish homes, handed over Jewish neighbors, killed them and turned their backs on those who were a part of them up until a moment ago. And when the Holocaust survivors came back after the war, they were often met with hostility, violence, pogroms and murder. … No nation can legislate [a law to forget] because no law could cover the blood."
Speaking at a joint news conference with Duda ahead of the march, Rivlin said Israel respects Poland's soul-searching efforts.
"But we also disagree. We demand that Poland be responsible for the completeness of research into the Holocaust," he said.
Bosak said Tuesday it would be unacceptable if Rivlin asserted that Poland bore any responsibility for the Holocaust. While the National Movement understands that diplomatic immunity protects the Israeli president from prosecution, it wants the nature of the president's remarks to be clarified, he said.
"We are interested in the truth of what he said," Bosak said. "It is important for us."
He also said his group was seeking to test the law, which is not being enforced in practice after sparking a dispute with Israel.
The law, which formally took effect in March, criminalizes blaming Poland for crimes committed by Nazi German forces during their wartime occupation. The Polish government says its aim is to prevent Poland from unfairly being blamed for crimes that Germany committed on occupied Polish soil.
Israel, however, fears the true intent is to whitewash Polish crimes by repressing discussion about those Poles who helped the Germans kill Jews during the war.
