Polish official criticizes US in Polanski case
Authorities are unwilling to surrender filmmaker to American extradition demands on sex offense charges
WARSAW, Poland — An adviser to the Polish president accused US authorities on Monday of “absolute ignorance” in seeking the arrest of film director Roman Polanski, a Holocaust survivor, while he was in Poland last week for the opening of a Jewish history museum.
The comments underline the dilemma of Poland in the face of continued attempts by the US to seek Polanski’s arrest on 1977 charges of having sex with a minor.
Poland is a close US ally. But the Polish political class has shown a strong aversion to arresting and extraditing the Oscar-winning Polish-French filmmaker, who made his first films in Poland and is admired as a representative of Polish culture.
“I think that Polish citizens, especially in cases of crimes whose statute of limitations have run out, should not be subject to extradition,” Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said when asked about the Polanski case.
Polanski, 81, who lives in France, attended the opening of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw on Oct. 28 before traveling to Krakow, his childhood city. Polish authorities questioned him there because of the US request, but refused to arrest him.
Tomasz Nalecz, adviser to President Bronislaw Komorowski, said he felt it was inappropriate to seek the arrest of a “child of the Holocaust” in Poland during the opening of the museum, which highlights Poland’s role as a safe haven for Jews for centuries before the Holocaust.
“From the point of view of Polish history,” the US official who requested the arrest “showed absolute ignorance,” Nalecz said.
The US Embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Polanski, who has Jewish origins, lost his mother at Auschwitz. He survived the war assuming a non-Jewish identity.
Polish media say Polanski has been seeking guarantees that Poland won’t extradite him as he plans to direct a new film in Poland next year on the Dreyfus affair, the early 20th century French spy scandal.
Aleksander Kwasniewski, president from 1995 to 2005, said the US was not as interested then as it is now in arresting Polanski, whose work in Poland in those years included filming scenes for “The Pianist.”
“I think someone on the American side really wants to bring Roman Polanski to the United States,” Kwasniewski said. But “hunting” the director is not appropriate, he argued, and Poland should “consider the matter closed.”
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.
