Polish-Israeli declaration published in newspapers in Europe, US, Israel

The six-point declaration signed last week by the Polish and Israeli prime ministers was on Wednesday published by German newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt, France’s Le Figaro and Le Monde, Britain’s The Daily Telegraph, and Spain’s ABC in the form of advertisements, according to Poland's PAP news agency.

On Thursday, the joint Polish-Israeli statement will be published by Israeli newspapers Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth, and a day later it will appear in France’s Le Croix, Britain’s The Times and The Sun, and in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in the United States, PAP reported.

Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu last Wednesday signed a joint statement in an effort to end a months-long dispute over an anti-defamation law that had soured bilateral ties.

Poland’s parliament earlier in the day voted to soften the disputed law, which, in its original wording, criminalised blaming Poland as a nation for Nazi German atrocities during World War II.

The two prime ministers in their joint statement rejected “actions aimed at blaming Poland or the Polish nation as a whole for the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators of different nations.”

They also said that “the term ‘Polish concentration/death camps’ is blatantly erroneous and diminishes the responsibility of Germans for establishing those camps."

The statement condemns all forms of anti-Semitism as well as "anti-Polonism and other negative national stereotypes."

The two leaders supported “free and open historical expression and research on all aspects of the Holocaust.”

The leader of Poland’s ruling conservatives, Jarosław Kaczyński, has said that his country’s deal with Israel over disputed anti-defamation regulations will help Poland "fight for historical truth" internationally.

The United States has welcomed Poland’s decision to remove criminal provisions from its anti-defamation law.

(mk_gs)

Source: PAP