US envoy to Poland sorry about FBI chief’s comments

The US ambassador to Warsaw apologizes after being summoned by the foreign ministry over comments by the head of the FBI that Poland shared responsibility for the Holocaust with Germany.

Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski said the comments in an opinion piece by FBI director James Comey were an “insult” to Poland.

“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil,” Comey wrote in the April 16 Washington Post article.

After meeting with Poland’s deputy foreign affairs minister, US ambassador Stephen Mull tells reporters the Nazis bore sole responsibility for the Holocaust, which left six million European Jews dead in World War II.

“I made clear that the opinion that Poland is in any way responsible for the Holocaust is not the position of the United States,” Mull says in Polish. “Nazi Germany alone bears responsibility.”

“I now have a lot of work before me to make things right in this situation,” he adds.

— AFP