Dear Foreign Minister Yair Lapid,
It was with a mixture of joy and deep relief that I read the media reports of your strong response to the imminent passage of a Polish bill that would deny compensation to survivors whose claims had hitherto not been settled during the past 30 years. The extremely harsh statement by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki that “Poland will surely not pay for the German crimes. Not a [Polish] zloty, not a euro or a dollar,” carried a very dangerous message that went way beyond the financial aspects of the restitution bill currently under consideration in the Sejm, Poland’s parliament.
In practical terms, it meant that Poland would not offer any financial compensation for stolen property if, for any reason, the property in question could not be returned to its Jewish owners or their heirs. In the eyes of the leaders of the country’s ruling Law and Justice party, neither Poland nor Poles bear any blame for Holocaust crimes, and therefore there is no justification for Jewish demands for restitution by Poland. This highly distorted narrative of the Shoah, which virtually absolves Poland of any guilt despite the widespread complicity of individual Poles in Holocaust crimes, is typical of the false narratives of the history of the Holocaust that have spread throughout post-Communist Eastern Europe since 1990 following the fall of the Soviet Union.
The bill deserved a very firm rebuke from Israel, which until now has declined to speak out, and your assertion that “preserving the memory of the Holocaust, caring for the rights of survivors and among them, the return of Jewish property stolen during the Shoah, are central elements of the identity of the State of Israel,” was a breath of fresh air coming from Jerusalem. Israel has virtually ignored Eastern Europe’s Holocaust distortion for the past three decades, so your rooting of Israel’s obligation to defend Holocaust memory in its “moral and historical values” was a fitting and welcome response.
Toliau skaityti „Thank you Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, you finally said the words”
