The Ukrainian government has condemned the Polish parliament’s adoption of controversial legislation that makes it a crime to deny Ukrainian nationalists carried out mass killings of Poles.
Polish lawmakers approved the measure in an amendment to the National Remembrance Institute bill on Feb. 1. If signed by the president, the law threatens anyone, even foreigners, who deny that Ukrainian nationalists were responsible for killing Poles and other ethnic groups who lived on Polish territory from 1925 through the 1950s. Those convicted can be fined or face three years in jail in Poland.
“The introduction of the legal term ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ crimes’ reinforces national stereotypes and will provoke a reaction in response. Declaring any nation criminal leads nowhere,” Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter on Feb. 1.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also expressed his concerns about the law.
“Historical truth demands an open conversation and dialogue, not a ban. The wording of the new amendment is totally biased and unacceptable,” Poroshenko wrote on Facebook on Feb. 1.
Historical truth
The amendment forbids anyone denying “the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists and the collaboration of Ukrainian organizations with the Third Reich, involving the use of violence and terror and other forms of human rights violations, against the Jewish and Polish population, and genocide of citizens of the Second Polish Republic in the areas Volynya and Eastern Malopolska.”
Poroshenko said the new amendment was a political decision, and that the legislation wasn’t in line with the principles of the Polish-Ukrainian strategic partnership.
“We value our common victories and fight against totalitarian regimes,” Poroshenko wrote, referring to the fact that both the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known as the UPA, and the Polish Armia Krayowa or Polish Resistance both fought against the German and Soviet occupation regimes during World War II.
Poland used to be Ukraine’s main advocate in the European Union, despite having different views on the two countries’ shared history, in particular the acts of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the tragedy in Volyn Oblast, which used to be part of Poland until World War II.
But since 2015, when the conservative Polish political party the PiS (Law and Justice) came to power, the government adopted the position that Ukrainians started the massacre in Volyn and that Poles acted in self-defense.
Ukrainian historians stated that both sides were to blame for the deaths of more than 100,000 Poles and from 10,000 to 20,000 Ukrainians from 1943 to 1944.
The current narrative of the Polish ruling party PiS is that Ukraine has never apologized for, or properly commemorated, the Volyn tragedy.
However, in December 2014 Poroshenko referred to the Volyn tragedy while speaking before the Polish parliament, the Sejm, quoting a famous letter that Polish bishops wrote to their German colleagues after the World War II: “We forgive and ask for forgiveness.”
In July 2016, the same year that the Polish parliament declared the Volyn tragedy an act of genocide against Poles by Ukrainians, Poroshenko kneeled in front of the Volyn victims’ monument during the commemoration ceremony.
Victim or villain?
Not only Ukraine but also Israel and the United States have condemned the new amendment, as it also bans the use of the term “Polish death camps” to refer to Nazi extermination camps that were located on the territory of Poland.
Also banned is mention of Polish involvement in committing crimes against Jewish people during the Holocaust. Those who disobey may face penalty and three years in jail.
The decision infuriated Israel. Yair Lapid, Israeli politician tweeted that the new Polish legislation tried to deny that Poles had participated in the Holocaust.
“It was conceived in Germany, but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps, and no law can ever change that,” Lapid tweeted on Jan. 27, the day after the amendment passed the lower voting in Polish Sejm.
The U. S. Department of State also condemned the amendments on its website on Jan. 31.
“We understand that phrases such as ‘Polish death camps’ are inaccurate, misleading and hurtful. However, if enacted this draft legislation could undermine free speech and academic discourse,” the U. S. Department of State message reads. “We all must be careful not to inhibit discussion and commentary on the Holocaust. We believe an open debate, scholarship, and education are the best means of countering inaccurate and hurtful speech.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda, who must decide whether to sign the law, said on Jan. 29 that he was open for a diplomatic dialogue but wouldn’t stand “slandering Poles as a nation or Poland as a country, by distortion of historical truth and by false accusations.”
Duda’s press service told the Kyiv Post on Feb. 1 that it is unknown yet when the Polish president will decide whether to sign the new amendment, or veto it.
