Share :

Download PDF :

Deutsche Welle (15 February 2018)

Senate leader Stanislaw Karczewski has ordered Poles living abroad to inform authorities of "anti-Polish comments" made by other Poles. A report claims an official letter has been sent to embassies and consulates.

Poles living abroad have been urged by Polish Senate speaker Stanislaw Karczewski to notify authorities of any "harmful" comments by compatriots outside of Poland, according to report by German public broadcaster NDR.

According to NDR, a letter has been sent to embassies and consulates worldwide asking Poles to "document all anti-Polish comments and opinions that could hurt us."

Polish Holocaust law: an attempt to rewrite history?

The letter orders Poles to "inform embassies, consulates of any defamation that could harm the good reputation of Poland." NDR says the letter has already been distributed by the general consulate in Munich and that Hamburg's consulate would follow suit.

The Polish ambassador to Germany, Andrzej Przylebski, told NDR that the move was part of "the usual tasks of a diplomatic or consular representation."

Holocaust law behind letter

The move comes after Poland passed a controversial Holocaust law that makes it an offense to state that Poles or Poland had any part in Nazi-era atrocities.​

The law was immediately condemned by the US and Israel. German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel avoided wading into the diplomatic spat, stressing that Germany alone was responsible for the Holocaust."

According to senate leader Karczewski, who penned the letter, Poles have been exposed to the painful, unjust and, most of all, factually wrong expression 'Polish death camps' as well as claims that Poles were involved in the Holocaust," stressing that both were an "insult to our national dignity and pride."

DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here.

The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in planning the Holocaust. 15 members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to plan what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.