…the Polish government is correct, as du Fresne points out, that the extermination camps were built and administered by Nazi Germany and, thus, using the term “Polish camps” is misleading. Yad Vashem – the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem – also agrees with this point. As does Alex Ryvchin, the Israeli government, and the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand.
Every rational person also agrees that thousands of Poles risked their lives to save Jews in the Holocaust. This is evidenced by the fact that more Poles are recognised as Righteous Among the Nations than citizens of any other country in Europe (there are 6,706 Polish names recorded, compared with 601 Germans). So, too, reasonable people agree that the recent claim of the Polish Prime Minister that there were “Jewish perpetrators” of the Holocaust is objectionable, yet would also agree that that making such claims should not be outlawed.
All these points lead to the conclusion that this is not a black and white matter. Poles, like every other nationality, were and are a heterogeneous people. Some lost their lives saving Jews; others locked Jews in a barn and set them alight. It is that very complexity, the inability to divide a people neatly into a category of evil or saintly, that necessitates research and debate, and that renders the proposed law such a bad idea.
While Holocaust expert, Deborah Lipstadt, has labelled the law a form of Holocaust denial, the core reason for condemnation is that it legislates against making a claim that is objectionable to a certain government, regardless of historical accuracy.
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