Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said he will not take part in a summit this week of four Central European countries in Jerusalem, according to officials.
Poland will be represented by Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz at the meeting of the regional Visegrad Group, scheduled for February 18-19. The regional cooperation platform brings together Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Morawiecki’s decision not to attend comes after a rumpus over comments reportedly made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a conference on the Middle East in Warsaw last week.
Netanyahu’s reported comments were seen as suggesting Polish complicity in the Holocaust, carried out by Nazi Germany in World War II.
But Netanyahu’s office said that the Israeli PM “spoke of Poles and not the Polish people or the country of Poland. This was misquoted and misrepresented in press reports and was subsequently corrected by the journalist who issued the initial misstatement.”
Morawiecki said: “In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke only of individual cases of collaborators.”
The efforts of thousands of Poles who risked their lives by helping Jews during World War II have been recognised by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.
(18. 2. 2019 via thenews.pl)
