Image by Getty Images

(JTA) – Polish President Andrzej Duda signed and finalized a law limiting rhetoric about the Holocaust, leading to a rebuke from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The United States is “disappointed,” Tillerson said Tuesday, following Duda’s final approval of a law introduced on Jan. 26 in the Polish parliament. It prescribes up to six years in prison to anyone who blames the Polish state or nation for crimes the law says were perpetrated exclusively by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The “enactment of this law adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry,” Reuters reported  Tillerson as saying.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

In announcing that he would sign the legislation, Duda added that he would send it to Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal for review. Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia have passed similar laws since 2010.

The State Department, in an unusual statement last week, said the law could have “repercussions” for U.S.-Polish relations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he opposed the law, which he called “baseless.” Yad Vashem, Israel’s state authority on the Holocaust, said it understands the frustration in Poland with “misleading” terms like “Polish death camps” but added it opposed the law because it would stifle historical research and debate about the Holocaust.

Unlike most European nations under Nazi occupation, Poles were not allowed any degree of self rule and none of the Polish state’s organs were integrated into the Nazi-led genocide. In addition to 3 million Polish Jews, the Nazis killed 1.9 million Polish non-Jews, whom they classified as racially inferior to Aryans.

Nonetheless, Polish individuals, including fighters in resistance militias, killed thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, according to Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Many other Jews were betrayed to the Nazis by non-Jewish Poles.

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.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount