Poland is seeing a resurgence of anti-Semitism over pending legislation that would impose jail terms for suggestions that the nation was complicit in the Holocaust, local minority groups warned, as pressure mounts on the president to veto the bill.
Parliament passed the measure on Thursday, the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, drawing outrage from Israel, U.S. criticism and condemnation from a number of international organizations.
President Andrzej Duda has 21 days to decide whether to sign it into law.
Duda has not said whether he will sign the bill, but his spokesman said that "the president believes that Poland, as any other country, has the right to defend its good name … has the right to defend the truth."
In a rare show of unity, Polish minority and ethnic groups, including Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian, urged Duda and other authorities to counteract all forms of xenophobia, intolerance and anti-Semitism, although they did not directly call on the president to veto the bill.
"Our particular concern and objection is caused by the numerous and loud manifestations of anti-Semitism that we have been witnessing this week," after the parliament passed the Holocaust bill, the groups said in a statement.
Poland, which has gone through a painful public debate in recent years after the publication of research showing some Poles participated in the Nazi atrocities, has long sought to discourage use of the term "Polish camps" to refer to Nazi camps on its territory, arguing the phrase implies complicity.
Israeli officials said the legislation criminalizes basic historical facts.
The Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that Israel "adamantly opposes" the bill's approval as a whole.
The Israeli Embassy in Warsaw said late on Friday that Israel does not oppose Poland's fight for assuring that the phrase "Polish death camps" is never used.
"We would like to use this opportunity to repeat that Israel stands with Poland in using the proper term for the death camps – German Nazi camps," the embassy said in its statement.
The embassy also said that it has received "a wave of anti-Semitic statements" in the past week.
"Up until now, we have maintained restraint, but we cannot be silent any longer," she said.
Local authorities have increased security around the Israeli Embassy building in Warsaw as a result of growing tensions over the legislation.
Polish media outlets reported that Israel was contemplating recalling its ambassador should the president sign the bill into law. Israel has not confirmed the reports.
Poland's ruling party, the socially conservative PiS, has reignited the debate on the Holocaust as part of a campaign to fuel patriotism since sweeping into power in 2015. The party says the bill is needed to protect Poland's reputation and ensure historians recognize that Poles, as well as Jews, were victims of the Nazis.
Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Poland's state radio that the bill is being misunderstood. Poland rejects "anti-Semitism very radically," he said.
Kaczynski said the bill penalizes accusing Poles as a nation but not "someone who says that somewhere, in some village, a Jewish family or one Jewish person was murdered." He said that Duda should sign the law.
"I'm saying this with pain and regret and with a sense of shame but such things did happen and we never denied that," Kaczynski said.
The International Auschwitz Council, an advisory body to the office of the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Friday the bill's imprecision raised "legitimate concerns about restricting freedom in discovering the truth about the Holocaust."
"We must talk to our allies in a way that would allow them to understand that we have no intention of renouncing our dignity," he said.
Speaking to foreign media outlets at a museum that memorializes Christian Poles who risked their lives to help Jews during World War II, Poland's prime minister acknowledged the legislation could have been better timed and presented but insisted the law was necessary to protect the truth about Poland's wartime history. Asked if he felt the bill had damaged Poland's image, he said he was worried it had.
Morawiecki, who took office as prime minister in December, has tried in recent days to address the concerns while defending the law. He said Friday that the aim is to prevent the Polish people as a whole from being blamed for what the Germans did in occupied Poland, the location of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps.
"All the atrocities and all the victims, everything that happened during World War II on Polish soil, has to be attributed to Germany," Morawiecki said. "We will never be accused of complicity in the Holocaust. This is our 'to be or not to be.'"
He insisted the law would not impinge on freedom of speech, as feared by some, but said Poland should have better explained its intentions to the world and acknowledged the timing was "unfortunate."
