Polish PM skipping Jerusalem summit over Netanyahu Holocaust remarks -- report

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has reportedly pulled out of a high-level European summit hosted by Israel this week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to point at Polish cooperation with the Nazi regime during WWII.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, Poland’s Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz will attend the meeting of the so-called Visegrad group in Jerusalem on February 18-19.

Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a conference on Peace and Security in the Middle East in Warsaw, Poland, February 14, 2019. (AP/Michael Sohn)

During a visit to Warsaw last week, Netanyahu told journalists that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis” — wording suggesting that some Poles during the German occupation of Poland took part in killing Jews.

However, some reports quoted him as saying “the Poles,” which could be taken as blaming the entire Polish nation; the Jerusalem Post initially mischaracterized his quote as referring to the Polish nation.

The matter threatened to spark another major spat between the two countries, which clashed last year over a new Polish law that made it illegal to blame the Polish nation for collaboration in the Holocaust.

— with AP