Poland still awaits apology for Holocaust remarks

Government spokesperson Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska told private broadcaster TVN 24 that Poland is still waiting for the word 'apology' from the US over remarks by FBI's head James Comey, who suggested that Poland was an accomplice in the Holocaust. When asked by Wate 6, an American broadcaster, whether he apologizes for his words, Comey said: "I don’t. Except I didn’t say Poland was responsible for the Holocaust. In a way I wish very much that I hadn’t mentioned any countries because it’s distracted some folks from my point.” “I worry a little bit in some countries that point has gotten lost. There is no doubt that people in Poland heroically resisted the Nazis, and some people heroically protected the Jews, but there’s also no doubt that in every country occupied by the Nazis, there were people collaborating with the Nazis.”, he added. Meanwhile, Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported that its correspondent to the USA has obtained a statement, which was supposedly written by one of US federal departments to be announced publicly by Comey. It reads: "Commemorating the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, I expressed myself poorly in describing the context of those events. I fully realize that the culprit is not Poland, which was destroyed, occupied, enslaved and terrorized." The statement, however, was blocked by the White House, which decided that "it should not be published." Paul Bresson, spokesperson for FBI, when asked about the document, said "I do not know the origin of this document , but certainly it was not written in the FBI and it doesn't expresses precisely our position."However, on Thursday morning, FBI's head sent a letter to the U.S Ambassador to Poland, in which he regretted naming Poland in his article: "I regret linking Germany and Poland in my speech, because Poland was invaded and occupied by Germany. The Polish State bears no responsibility for the horrors imposed by Nazis. I wish I had not used any country names, because my point was universal one about human nature."Comey's article was published in the Washington Post last week and caused an uproar in Polish media and among politicians. It implied that Poland was responsible for the Holocaust: "In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do."