Polish Jews split on bill to outlaw ‘Polish death camp’ term

Leaders of Polish Jewry offer diverging reactions to the controversial bill passed Friday in the country’s parliament, which aims to criminalize the term “Polish death camps” and claims of complicity by Poland in Nazi crimes.

Artur Hoffman, the president of the TSKZ cultural organizations of Polish Jews says he strongly supports the bill, whereas Rabbi Eliezer Gur-Ari of the Chabad movement in Poland says he opposes it, the Israeli daily Makor Rishon reports.

“Israel and Jews all over the world need to help Poland fight this combination of words,” Hoffman says, referencing the term “Polish death camps” to describe facilities set up by Nazi Germans on Polish soil during their occupation of that country. “Everyone knows it’s just false, these were Nazi camps.”

But Gur-Ari said he opposes the bill because “it would be a great sin to erase the actions of the Poles during the Holocaust. Many of them collaborated. There were rescuers, but they were not the majority,” he tells Makor Rishon.

— JTA