Poland pulls out of Israeli hosted V4 summit over Holocaust remarks

PM Mateusz Morawiecki said that Poland will not take part in the Visegard Summit planned to take place this week in Israel. The decision comes after Israel’s Acting Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that “many Poles” had collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. He was commenting on Israeli’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement given during his visit to Warsaw last week in which he suggested Polish complicity in the Holocaust. He also cited former PM Yitzhak Shamir who once stated that Poles were "breastfed antisemitism." 

Morawiecki called these remarks “racist and unacceptable” and said first that we will not be attending the summit, sending deputy foreign minister instead. Later on, he said that no Polish official would attend.

“Not only can we not accept such racist comments, but with all our strength we want to stress that we will fight for historical truth, for the honor of Poles,” he said.

Instead, PMs from the other Visegrad group nations, Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia will travel to Israel to hold bilateral talks. The summit will be rescheduled for a later date this year.

Tensions between Israel and Poland started to grow last year after Poland introduced new legislation that would have made the use of phrases such as “Polish death camps” punishable by up to three years in prison.

After pressure from the United States, Poland amended the law, removing the potential prison sentence.