Rivlin in Krakow: Poland and Poles helped in the Nazi extermination

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin tells Poland’s President Andrzej Duda that Poles both rescued and helped exterminate the country’s Jews.

“This land was a forge of the Jewish nation’s soul, and to our deep sorrow, also its largest Jewish graveyard. You can’t erase such a rich history, full, painful history,” Rivlin says after meeting Duda in Krakow ahead of his participation in the March of the Living taking place now at Auschwitz.

Addressing a controversial Polish law outlawing blaming the Polish nation for crimes linked to the Holocaust, Rivlin notes that Israel honors those Poles who gave their own lives to save Jews, but says there was also widespread anti-Semitism in Holocaust-era Poland and many Poles also participated in the extermination.

“People murdered and then inherited [the property of the dead]. Here there was a foundation” of anti-Semitic feeling, Rivlin says, “that allowed the Nazis to do as they wished, not only in Poland but throughout Europe.”

“The country of Poland allowed the implementation of the horrific genocidal ideology of Hitler, and witnessed the wave of anti-Semitism sparked by the law you passed now,” Rivlin continues.

“There is no doubt that many Poles fought the Nazi regime, but we can’t deny the fact that Poland and Poles helped in the extermination.”