Polish president says he’ll refuse to meet Israel’s FM over anti-Semitism remark

Polish President Andrzej Duda says he will refuse to meet Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, due to his remark earlier this year that Poles “suckle anti-Semitism with their mother’s milk,” for which Katz has not apologized, despite repeated demands from Warsaw.

“There are Jews who were born in Poland before World War II and survived the Holocaust who think the Poles and Poland deserve an apology for the words said by Minister Katz,” Duda says in an interview with Israel’s public broadcaster Kan.

“I have no doubt that these words were very offensive toward us as Poles and toward our country,” he says.

Duda, who pulled out of this week’s event in Jerusalem marking 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz since organizers invited other world leaders to speak but not him, contended that the main commemoration event this year will be held not at Yad Vashem, but at the site of the former Nazi camp, located in Poland.

“I think, and I have always thought, that these events marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day have to be at Auschwitz, and that is the place where it is most important to honor and commemorate Holocaust victims,” he says.

“That’s why this year, on the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, those international events — which will be attended by the way by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin — will be held inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.”