WARSAW: An adviser to Poland’s president has said he thinks Israel’s negative reaction to a law criminalising some statements about Poland’s actions during World War II stemmed from a “feeling of shame at the passivity of the Jews during the Holocaust”.

Andrzej Zybertowicz, a Nicolaus Copernicus University sociology professor who also serves as a presidential adviser, called Israel’s opposition to the new law “anti-Polish” and said it shows the Mideast country “clearly fighting to keep the monopoly on the Holocaust”.

“Many Jews engaged in denunciation, collaboration during the war. I think Israel has still not worked it through,” Zybertowicz said in the interview published in the Polska-The Times newspaper Friday.

Jews have sometimes been described, often derisively, as having remained passive during the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Key acts of resistance contradict the trope, most notably the Warsaw Uprising of 1943. Smaller revolts took place in some death camps where starving prisoners without weapons faced heavily armed German guards.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2018