WARSAW — On the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, German forces entered the Warsaw Ghetto with the aim of deporting the remaining Jews who stayed there to the extermination camps, thus giving their leader, Adolf Hitler, a "present" for his birthday: Warsaw, the city that before WWII had the second largest Jewish population In the world, "cleansed" of its Jews. Judenrein. However, the German forces encountered an unexpected organized resistance: The remainder of Warsaw's Jewry, mostly young people who were left alive as a slave force, began what became known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which lasted about a month and became the main symbol of the many Jewish acts of heroism during the Holocaust. Desperate, hopeless heroism, which allowed most of its perpetrators to die with dignity, shedding German blood, and not as sheep led to the slaughter.
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On the 80th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a tripartite summit meeting between the presidents of Poland, Andrzej Duda, Israel, Isaac Herzog, and Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will be held in the capital of Poland, as part of the many events to mark this anniversary. The holding of this summit was made possible thanks to the rapid warming of relations between Poland and Israel in recent months. The first to initiate the renewed rapprochement, back in the days of the Bennet-Lapid government that deteriorated the relationship with Poland to an unprecedented low, was President Herzog. Since the beginning of the current Israeli government's term and under the direction of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen, the last obstacles that prevented the full restoration of the ties between the two countries were removed and a comprehensive agreement was signed in Warsaw, which paves the way for the resumption of sending delegations of Israeli high school students to Poland.
Pawel Jabłoński, the Polish deputy foreign minister responsible, among other things, for relations with Israel, tells "Israel Hayom" that today there is a very positive dynamic in relations between the two countries, after a crisis that lasted for about five years, and that there is great optimism in Warsaw regarding the improvement of relations in the coming months. According to Jabłoński, the process of appointing a new Polish ambassador to Israel has already begun. "Soon we will be able to announce the appointment," says Jabłoński. The former foreign minister, Yair Lapid, essentially blocked former Polish ambassador, Marek Magierowski, from returning to Israel after the adoption of a law regarding the statute of limitations for the restitution of Jewish property. This severely damaged relations between the two countries and there were those in the Polish government who demanded an official apology from Israel.
"We recognize that this step was taken by the previous Israeli government. We are putting this incident behind us. Poland, for its part, quickly agreed to the appointment of a new Israeli ambassador after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. This was also due to the evacuation of the Israeli embassy from Kyiv and Israeli citizens from Ukraine as well as because of the security cooperation between the two countries. I hope that when the new Polish ambassador is appointed, we will return to the track of good relations in the political, economic – with its great potential, and social fields; good relations that will last not just a few months but decades. The agreement signed in Warsaw with Foreign Minister Cohen is a historic step. We finally managed to settle an issue that was problematic from our point of view and also provoked criticism in Israel: The trips of the Israeli youth to Poland meant that many in Israel see Poland only as a territory where the Germans committed crimes. This creates the impression that Poland is a dangerous and unfriendly country for Jews and Israel. If you want to build good relations between the two countries, you need to teach the younger generations both about the positive elements that existed in Jewish history in Poland and about the current times. It is very important to encourage young people from both countries to come into contact with each other. If high school students from Israel meet their peers in Poland, get to know each other, and discover that they watch the same series on Netflix and like the same things, this will increase understanding and connection".
According to Jabłoński, the tripartite summit of presidents to mark the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising will be an opportunity to raise the issue of expanding the youth trips to Germany as well as creating joint frameworks for the three countries, where it will be possible to teach the young people from Israel, Poland, and Germany about the history of World War II. "We are happy that we were able to forge an agreement with Israel and hope that together with Israel we can harness Germany to understand that it is necessary to improve and expand the educational program. The current Polish government is accused of focusing too much on history, but we need to remember and remind what happened on our soil so that things like this don't happen again. To a certain extent, we see the continuation of the crimes committed in World War II in Ukraine as well, in a different scope and dimension. The Russians want to eliminate the elites of Ukraine and the Ukrainian identity. Now they also want to remove the Polish flag from the site of the Katyn massacre where thousands of Polish officers were murdered by the secret Soviet police."
Regarding the change in Israeli policy towards the war in Ukraine since the beginning of the term of office of the new government in Israel, Jabłoński says: "Sometimes we hear voices calling on Israel to do more for Ukraine. But, many things happen away from the public eye. We encourage everyone to do more to help Ukraine, including Israel. But, we understand your constraints in view of the Russian presence in Syria.'
Jabłoński categorically denies comments attributed to him several days ago and widely quoted in the Israeli media, according to which the Polish government advised the Israeli government regarding legal reform. "We did not advise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his government, they did not ask for our opinion, the Polish government does not enact laws in the Knesset," Jabłoński clarifies, "all I said is that in the past we informed friendly governments about the legal reforms carried out in Poland, their goals and the public reaction - for and against them. Separately, we were also interested in what is happening in Israel, as we are interested in what is happening in any friendly country. We don't accept foreign interference in our internal affairs, so we do not intend to interfere in the internal affairs of other states. Israel has never consulted with us regarding the reform. This is an internal matter for you.'
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