Poland backtracked Wednesday on its controversial Holocaust speech law, scrapping the penalty of imprisonment for people who attribute Nazi crimes to the Polish nation, but leaving the possibility of fines in place.
The law, passed five months ago, was presented as an attempt to defend the country's "good name," but mostly had the opposite effect.
There was widespread suspicion that the true intention was to suppress free inquiry into a complex past, and the law was compared by some to history laws in Turkey and Russia.
The amendments to soften the law were unexpectedly presented to lawmakers by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Wednesday morning, and were passed with lightning speed by both parliamentary houses by the afternoon, and then signed by the president before nightfall.
"This small corrective strengthens our position, as we defend Poland's good name, because during those few months we were able to awaken the awareness of many our partners, also in Israel," Morawiecki said.
The original law had called for prison terms of up to three years for falsely and intentionally accusing the Polish nation of crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The ruling Law and Justice party said it needed a tool to fight back against foreign media and politicians who have sometimes used expressions such as "Polish death camps" to refer to German-run camps in occupied Poland. Even former U.S. President Barack Obama once used such terminology, causing deep offense.
Polish authorities insisted that no one would be punished for statements backed up by facts or for discussing cases of Poles who denounced or killed Jews during the war.
But the law sparked a major diplomatic crisis with Israel, where Holocaust survivors and politicians feared that it was an attempt to whitewash incidents of Polish anti-Semitism. The United States warned that the law threatened academic freedom and could harm Poland's "strategic" relationships.
Ukraine also strongly opposed the law because it criminalized denying atrocities committed by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles.
Those strained ties with its allies deepened Poland's international isolation at a sensitive time of a bitter dispute with the European Union over rule of law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the decision to amend the law.
"I am pleased that the Polish government, the parliament, the Senate and the president of Poland decided to completely rescind parts of the recently legislated law that caused uproar and distress in Israel and in the international community," he said Wednesday.
"I met with Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki about this. We discussed it over the phone and we established task forces that worked together.
"Our ties with Poland are very important and are based on trust. Israel and Poland share the responsibility of upholding the memory of the Holocaust. It is clear to all that the Holocaust was an unprecedented crime which was perpetrated by Nazi Germany against the Jewish nation, including the Jews of Poland. The Polish government has expressed understanding of the significance of the Holocaust as the most tragic chapter in the history of the Jewish people."
On Wednesday afternoon, Netanyahu and Morawiecki issued a joint statement announcing the changes in the law. It condemned both anti-Semitism and "anti-Polonism," or prejudice against Poles, and Morawiecki welcomed the formal acknowledgment of its existence.
While the Polish prime minister said he hopes the measure will help improve relations between the two countries, Poland's government will now have to face the anger of nationalist lawmakers and voters.
One nationalist lawmaker, Robert Winnicki, described the changes as caving into Jewish interests. He even tried to block the podium in the lower house in protest, but the vote went ahead anyway.
Meanwhile, liberal opponents bitterly criticized the ruling party for introducing the law in the first place, calling it a disaster that had deeply harmed the country's international position.
Morawiecki defended the move and described the joint declaration with Netanyahu as one positive result.
"We have defended the honor of our forefathers. This is a very good day for Poland, for Poland's history," he said.
He pushed back against the idea that Poland was doing the bidding of foreign interests.
"Nobody is writing our laws for us. This is a sovereign decision," he said.
The dispute with Israel had sparked a wave of anti-Semitic comments in Poland – even by officials and state-run media commentators – as well as anti-Polish hate speech in Israel and elsewhere.
