German Foreign Minister: We Were Responsible For The Holocaust, Not Poland

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Germany was responsible for the Holocaust, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on the heels of Polish legislation that seeks to distance the country from Nazi atrocities.
“Poland can be sure that any form of falsification of history, like the term ‘Polish concentration camps,’ will be unequivocally rejected and strongly condemned by us,” Gabriel said in a statement on Saturday.
“This organized mass murder was carried out by our country and no one else. Individual collaborators change nothing about that,” Gabriel also said.
Gabriel’s statement comes on the heels of the approval by both houses of the Polish Parliament of legislation that makes it illegal to accuse Poland of crimes committed by Germany during World War II. Poland’s president has 21 days in which to sign the legislation, which carries a three-year prison sentence, into law. President Andrzej Duda has said that he will carefully review the legislation, though it is expected that he will sign.
“Full settlement with our own history and with our own responsibility is for us Germans a permanent moral obligation in the face of crimes committed by the Germans and also by Germans in Poland,” said a statement published by the German Embassy in Warsaw over the weekend.
According to the statement Germany “will not allow any relativization.” Gabriel also added that “it is necessary for people who have experienced unbearable suffering as a result of the Shoah to be able to talk about these sufferings without restrictions.”
Israeli lawmakers, Yad Vashem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and scholars have criticized the law.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.