Yad Vashem’s Top Historian Accepts Joint Israel-Poland Holocaust Declaration
Image by getty images
(JTA) — Yad Vashem’s chief historian Dina Porat said Tuesday that “we can live with” much of the joint Holocaust declaration by Israel and Poland that has come in for criticism, including from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Porat in an interview with Israel’s Kan national broadcaster said the declaration should be changed but not canceled.
The declaration made earlier this month by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, acknowledges collaboration by some Poles during the Holocaust and the rescue of Jews by others. It also states that during the Holocaust, “unfortunately, the sad fact is that some people – regardless of their origin, religion or worldview – revealed their darkest side.”
Porat told Kan that she consulted privately with both sides working on the declaration, though on a “voluntary, personal and confidential basis,” and not as a representative of Yad Vashem. She said she thinks she was able to “minimize the damage.”
Porat said she offered to resign from her position at Yad Vashem after her involvement in the declaration came to light, but that Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev rejected her offer.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in its criticism on Tuesday said the declaration “does not secure a future for Holocaust education, scholarship, and remembrance.”
The declaration was designed to end the diplomatic spat between Poland and Israel over a law passed in Poland’s parliament in February that criminalized blaming the Polish nation for Nazi crimes. Israel protested the law and Poland’s government subsequently softened it.
The museum acknowledged in a statement that it has held public and private discussions with the Polish government.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
