Poland slams Brussels museum over Holocaust exhibition

World
Europe

Poland on Friday slammed the House of European History recently opened in Brussels, accusing it of presenting a biased view of the Holocaust, denouncing its permanent exhibition for "flagrant misinformation and omissions."

In a letter to European Parliament head Antonio Tajani, Poland's Culture Minister Piotr Glinski accused the museum of describing Poland, France and Ukraine as "states and nations complicit in the Holocaust."

The museum was opened in May as a European Parliament project, and Tajani attended the ceremonial opening.

Without elaborating, Glinski also criticized the museum for presenting Germany as "the greatest victim of World War II" and Communism "in a positive context" without mentioning the millions of victims of this "criminal system."

A screenshot of the official website of House of European History./CGTN Photo

He also complained the museum neglected European giants including William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Frederic Chopin, as well as philosophers Immanuel Kant, Charles Montesquieu and Erasmus.

Glinski, from the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, also slammed the museum for presenting the role of Christianity in a "very selective and negative way."

"It also seems that presenting the religion and the idea of the nation as a source of all evil in the history of our continent is an ideological, leftist passions of the creators of this exhibition," said Glinski.

He did not say whether he had seen the exhibition himself but added many people who had visited the museum had called for intervention.

Glinski sacked the head of the World War II museum in the northern Polish city of Gdansk in April, slamming him for insufficiently portraying the Polish people's fight against Nazism during World War II.

Source(s): AFP