Only a few years ago it seemed that the fraught narrative of Poland and its Jews was evolving from uneasy suspicion to tentative embrace. The 2014 opening of the core exhibition of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in Warsaw, was the joyful epitome of this developing story; lauded by politicians and celebrated by the public, it represented the resurgence of Jewish investment and optimism in a land too often associated with only the shedding of Jewish blood.
Now, Poland and Israel are engaged in a bitter diplomatic rift over a new defamation law making it a crime to blame the Polish nation for Nazi crimes against the Jews during World War II. Jewish leaders in Warsaw and Krakow say they are fearful that this will increase anti-Semitism. Poles who contend that they, too, were brutally occupied by the Germans are angry and defensive.
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