Poland may sue over remarks that Poles killed more Jews than the Germans

On Thursday, Polish prosecutors opened a libel case against Polish-born US historian Jan Tomasz Gross after he claimed that Poles killed more Jews than Germans during the second world war. Last month, he wrote in an article for the German newspaper Die Welt that Poles are reluctant to accept Syrian refugees, because they still haven't openly faced up to their history of anti-Semitism during the war.  “The Poles, for example, were indeed rightfully proud of their society’s resistance against the Nazis, but in fact did kill more Jews than Germans during the war,” wrote the 68-year-old Jewish historian. The Warsaw prosecutor’s office, after receiving more than 100 complaints, has launched a probe under the penal code paragraph, which states that "any person who publicly insults the Polish nation is punishable by up to three years in prison," said office spokesman Przemyslaw Nowak. Warsaw historian Andrzej Paczkowski told AFP “there are no reliable figures regarding the number of Jews killed by Poles and the number of Germans killed by Poles.” But Paczkowski, who is also a council member of the National Remembrance Institute (IPN) that is charged with investigating Nazi and Communist-era crimes, said he “would not be completely surprised if Gross were right”.