New Polish holiday to honor Poles who saved Jews in WWII

WARSAW, Poland  — Polish lawmakers have approved a new national holiday honoring the Poles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

The Senate voted Wednesday on the bill, initiated by President Andrzej Duda, to make March 24 a national day of remembrance. It was approved 58-14 in the Senate with three abstentions, and now only requires Duda’s signature to become law.

The bill pays tribute to Poles who showed courage and compassion and were “faithful to the highest ethical values.”

The new holiday follows passage of new legislation that criminalizes falsely attributing the Holocaust crimes of Nazi Germany to Poland.

As currently written, the law calls for prison terms of up to three years for attributing the crimes of Nazi Germany to the Polish state or nation. The bill would also set fines or a maximum three-year jail term for anyone who refers to Nazi German death camps as Polish.

The legislation, proposed by Poland’s conservative ruling party, has sparked a bitter dispute with Israel, which says it will inhibit free speech about the Holocaust. The United States also strongly opposes the legislation, warning it could hurt Poland’s strategic relations with Israel and the US.

The new law, and the holiday, are seen as a larger effort by nationalist authorities to stress Polish heroism during World War II.

Earlier this month Poland’s government said that a planned museum devoted to the infamous wartime Warsaw Ghetto, where Nazi Germany imprisoned nearly 500,000 Jews during the Holocaust, would convey the centuries of close ties between Poles and Jews.

“I would like this institution to speak of the mutual love between the two nations that spent 800 years here, on Polish land. Of the solidarity, fraternity, historical truth too, in all its aspects,” Culture Minister Piotr Glinski told reporters.