Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Israel says ‘crisis’ with Poland is over as the countries agree to resume student trips to Holocaust sites

In 2018, Poland’s right-wing government caused a rift between the two countries by passing a law that made it illegal to accuse the Polish nation of having committed crimes during the Holocaust

(JTA) — After a warm meeting with his Polish counterpart on Wednesday, Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen declared that the years-long “crisis” in relations between the two countries was over.

Meeting in Warsaw, Cohen and Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed an agreement stating that Israeli youth trips to Holocaust sites in Poland would resume — rebooting a longstanding program that was called off last year as part of a series of ongoing diplomatic spats. The Times of Israel reported that Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, will have to approve the agreement for it to go into effect.

Poland also agreed to return its ambassador to Israel in the near future. The Polish envoy was recalled in 2021.

“This is an important moment in the relations between our countries,” Cohen said at a press conference, the Associated Press reported.

In 2018, Poland’s right-wing government caused a rift between the two countries by passing a law that made it illegal to accuse the Polish nation of having committed crimes during the Holocaust, a move that critics called a whitewashing of history. Then, in 2021, Poland passed another law that effectively closed off restitution claims by descendants of families that had lost property during the war.

Israeli politicians, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, harshly condemned both moves and for a time Israel recalled its ambassador to Warsaw. Poland’s prime minister canceled a trip to Israel in 2019.

Before last year, Israeli students had for years visited the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp and historic Jewish sites throughout Poland, in cities such as Warsaw and Krakow.

Netanyahu expressed hope that Wednesday’s meeting “will lead to even closer cooperation between the two countries.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

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.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

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

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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.