Polish rights official under fire for saying Poland took part in Holocaust

WARSAW, Poland — A leading Polish human rights official has come under fire for saying the “Polish nation” took part in the implementation of the Holocaust — a controversial statement in a country sensitive to its history during World War II.

Adam Bodnar, the country’s human rights commissioner, or ombudsman, apologized for the comment but members of Poland’s conservative government say he should resign.

The flap threatens to weaken Bodnar, who heads one of the last state institutions still independent from the ruling conservative Law and Justice party.

After gaining power in 2015, the party moved quickly to consolidate its hold over the Constitutional Tribunal, public media other state bodies in a way that has eroded the separation of checks and balances, sparking criticism by the European Union.

Bodnar’s office has criticized the government for its steps against the constitutional court and over other human rights issues.

Bodnar, speaking Wednesday on the state-run TVP Info broadcaster, said: “There is no doubt that the Germans were responsible for the Holocaust, but many nations took part in its implementation. Among them — and I say this with regret — the Polish nation.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Dziedziczak called Bodnar’s comment “scandalous,” untrue and added it “disqualifies him from public life.”

Bodnar quickly apologized for his choice of words and clarified that he did not mean to say that the entire nation took part in the Holocaust, only that some Poles had committed crimes against Jews.

The behavior of Poles toward Jews during Germany’s wartime occupation of Poland remains an extremely sensitive subject in Poland.

Poland, invaded by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in 1939, was annexed by the Nazis in 1941. It is the country where most of the Nazi regime’s mass extermination camps were located, including its most infamous one, Auschwitz.

Poles today are hugely offended at suggestions that they somehow took part in the Holocaust. There is a state campaign to fight the term “Polish death camps” which non-Poles, including former President Barack Obama, have sometimes used unwittingly.

There also have been greater efforts in recent years to face the difficult issue of the Poles who did collaborate in violence against Jews for profit or for other motives. However, the subject is anathema to the government, which prefers to speak only of the Poles who risked their lives to save Jews, sparking some criticisms of historical whitewashing.