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Netanyahu Slams Warsaw's Claims on Jewish Holocaust 'Perpetrators'

TEL AVIV (Sputnik) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly condemned the statement of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who said that the Jewish people were “perpetrators” in World War II amid the bilateral row over the so-called Holocaust bill.
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"The Polish Prime Minister's remarks here in Munich are outrageous. There is a problem here of an inability to understand history and a lack of sensitivity to the tragedy of our people. I intend to speak with him forthwith,” Netanyahu said late on Saturday, as quoted in the statement by the presidential press service.

On Saturday, renowned Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, the son of two survivors of the Holocaust, asked Morawiecki whether it would punishable under the new law to tell the story about his family, who witnessed the Poles cooperating with the Nazi regime and providing the information on location of the Jewish people during the World War II.

Polish President Signs Controversial 'Holocaust Bill' Into Law
The Polish prime minister said in response that it is not going to be illegal to tell such stories as “there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators as well as Ukrainian perpetrators — not only German perpetrators,” according to media reports.

Last week, Polish President Andrzej Duda said that he would sign the controversial law, which criminalizes statements accusing Poles of complicity in the Holocaust and propaganda of Ukrainian nationalist ideology, and refer the legislation to the country’s Supreme Court for the review.

The bill was criticized even at the stage of discussion by a number of states, in particular, Israel, Ukraine and the United States. Israel believes that the law distorts the historical truth, and demanded that it be reviewed. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Poland's bill "adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry."

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