Poland’s Senate passed a highly controversial bill on Thursday that would ban accusations that Poland was complicit in Nazi war crimes during the Holocaust. If passed, mentioning the term "Polish death camps” could warrant a fine or a prison sentence of up to three years. The bill has drawn criticism from Poland’s allies, including Israel and the US, that have accused Poland of trying to rewrite history. 

“I think this piece of legislation is, in the first place, unnecessary. No one has ever blamed Polish people and the Polish nation for inflicting the Holocaust upon the Jewish people, or creating the devastation that Europe experienced from 1939 to 1945,” Ambassador Ido Aharoni, former consul general of Israel to New York and Professor of International Relations at New York University said during an interview with CGTN’s The Point (@thepointwithlx).

He thought that the legislation is counter-productive as well. “It will challenge many historians to actually further investigate the overwhelming amount of evidence that exists about the volunteer participation of Polish people in the killing of Jews during the war,” he said.

As recorded by the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, 6900 Polish people risked their lives and demonstrated a great deal of bravery and courage saving lives of Jews. “No one is denying the fact,” Ambassador Ido Aharoni said. "But there is also an overwhelming amount of evidence to support the claim that there were many people not only in Poland, and every country that was under Nazi rule, people locals and natives that voluntarily took part in the elimination of Jews,” he explained. 

“These people are a disgrace to our country,” Wojciech Jakobiec, head of the Political Section at the Embassy of Poland in Beijing responded and further illustrated that “these people have actually been prosecuted during Nazi occupation by under-government Polish authorities... Polish under-government court would sentence them to death for aiding Nazi authorities in the Holocaust, and these people would be executed by the Polish resistance fighters.”

Jakobiec said the legislation does not seem controversial to the Polish at all. He said while drafting the bill; the Polish government did consult with the Israeli side. And they include some of the suggestions of the Israeli Embassy to the bill, including excluding scientific research and artistic endeavors from the scope of the bill.

Jakobiec said although it seems obvious who was responsible for the Holocaust and other genocide crimes, still, until to this day, there are many instances worldwide where “Polish death camps” are mentioned. “It’s like a slap in the face of a nation that has resisted the Third Reich, that has resisted Hitler, and that has rescued so many Jewish people from the Holocaust,” he said.

In order to prevent the unspeakable crimes from happening again, “we have to speak of those crimes, but speak in a truthful manner,” Jakobiec stressed.