Poland criticises Israeli Holocaust institute’s post suggesting Polish responsibility for German crimes

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

The Polish government has criticised Israel’s Holocaust remembrance centre, Yad Vashem, for a social media post suggesting that Poland was responsible for introducing anti-Jewish measures during the Holocaust.

In fact, during the war, Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the latter of which was responsible for implementing anti-Jewish measures and carrying out the Holocaust.

Among the wide range of Polish officials and institutions to criticise Yad Vashem’s post was the Auschwitz Museum. Yad Vashem later issued a further post clarifying that it was the German authorities who introduced the anti-Jewish measures.

On Sunday, in a post on the X platform, Yad Vashem wrote that “Poland was the first country where Jews were forced to wear a distinctive badge in order to isolate them from the surrounding population”.

It shared an image of such a badge: a yellow Star of David with “Jude” (the German word for “Jew”) written inside it. Yad Vashem noted the order for Jews to wear such badges was issued by Hans Frank, governor of the so-called General Government.

However, nowhere did its post mention that this was an occupation regime established by Nazi Germany after invading and occupying Poland, nor that Frank was a German-Nazi politician appointed by Berlin to lead it.

The article on its website that Yad Vashem linked in the post does, however, make clear that the badges were introduced “by order of the German authorities” following “the invasion of Poland”.

Yad Vashem’s post immediately drew criticism from users of X in Poland, where there is great sensitivity to suggestions that Poles, rather than Germans, were responsible for atrocities against Jews committed in German-occupied Poland.

Among them was foreign minister Radosław Sikorski, who asked Yad Vashem to “please specify that it was ‘German-occupied’ Poland” in which the persecution had taken place.

The foreign ministry’s spokesman, Maciej Wewiór, meanwhile, pointed to reports that Yad Vashem is planning to open a branch in Germany.

“We sincerely hope that this false and history-distorting message has nothing to do with it,” he added, in an apparent suggestion that Yad Vashem might have been deliberately seeking to downplay German responsibility for the Holocaust.

“We cannot allow history to be falsified! It was not Poland that introduced regulations requiring Jews to wear identification marks,” wrote government spokesman Adam Szłapka.

Sikorski and Szłapka hail from the centrist Civic Coalition (KO), Poland’s main ruling party, but Yad Vashem’s post was criticised by figures from across the political spectrum.

“Reporting that this happened in ‘Poland’ instead of ‘in territories incorporated into or occupied by the Third Reich’ is misleading and diminishes Germany’s responsibility for the Holocaust,” wrote Krzysztof Bosak, a deputy speaker of parliament and one of the leaders of the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja).

“The legal authorities of the Polish state and its underground army bravely fought the Germans and their genocidal policies from the first to the last days of World War II. You should correct this statement to avoid blurring the historical truth,” he added.

“Poland didn’t exist at that time, after it was raided [invaded] by Germany and Russia,” wrote Anna-Maria Żukowska, head of The Left’s (Lewica) parliamentary caucus. “Its territory was partitioned and incorporated [in]to the Third Reich and the USSR. The terminology you used is outrageous.”

“Poles, invaded by the Third Reich and Soviet Russia, helped Jews, for which they were punished with death or forced labour,” wrote defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, leader of the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL). “The post must be corrected!”

Meanwhile, Agnieszka Jędrzak, a senior aide to President Karol Nawrocki, who is aligned with the national-conservative oppoisition Law and Justice (PiS) party, accused Yad Vashem of “distorting history” and “shift responsibility onto a victim”.

Yad Vashem’s post was also corrected by the Auschwitz Museum, a Polish state institution that manages the former Nazi-German death camp.

“It seems that if anyone should know historical facts, it is Yad Vashem,” wrote the memorial on X. “They should be fully aware that Poland at that time was occupied by Germany, and that it was Germany that introduced and enforced this antisemitic law.”

Poland’s state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which is charged with investigating and documenting Nazi crimes, called Yad Vashem’s post “unacceptable”.

Following the widespread criticism, Yad Vashem issued a further post saying that, “as noted by many users and specified explicitly in the linked article, it [the introduction of badges for Jews] was done by order of the German authorities”. However, its original remains up.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Adrian Grycuk/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0 PL)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.