On January 26, 2018, on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Sejm, Poland's lower house of parliament, passed a bill on “the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation.” The key passage of this bill stated that:
Whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich . . . or other crimes against peace and humanity, or war crimes, or otherwise grossly diminishes the actual perpetrators thereof, shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years.
The bill was then rushed through the senate (57–23, with two abstentions) and quickly signed into law by President Andrzej Duda, of the Law and Justice Party (PiS), whose leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has made the bill a key part of its nationalist program.
Read Full Article »