The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday urgently summoned US Ambassador Stephen Mull to “protest and demand an apology,” saying the head of the FBI suggested that Poles were accomplices in the Holocaust.
FBI Director James Comey made the remarks in an article published on Thursday by the Washington Post describing what he called the need to educate people about the Holocaust. It was adapted from a speech he gave on Wednesday last week at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany and Poland and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do,” Comey wrote.
The words raised a storm among politicians in Poland, where elderly people remember the brutality of the German occupation during World War II, when more than 6 million Polish citizens were killed.
Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said Comey’s words were “unacceptable” in Poland.
“To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator, but a victim of World War II,” Kopacz said. “I would expect full historical knowledge from officials who speak on the matter.”
Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski aide Tomasz Nalecz called Comey a “blockhead” in a debate on TVN24, but added that the “stupidity of one official does not erase the friendship between Poland and the US”
However, Auschwitz survivor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 93, said that he was concerned that he could hear “stupid words” coming from a politician close to the US president.
After meeting with Polish Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Leszek Soczewica on Sunday, Mull said he would urgently contact the FBI and Washington about the matter.
Earlier on Sunday, Mull said in Polish that Comey’s words were “wrong, harmful and offensive,” and did not reflect the US administration’s views.
The meeting was held shortly after Mull attended ceremonies marking the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazi Germans, who transported tens of thousands of the residents who remained in the ghetto to their deaths at the Majdanek camp operated by the Germans near the Polish city of Lublin.
Nazi Germany brutally occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945, and ran death camps in Poland.
As the sun sets on another scorching Yangon day, the hot and bothered descend on the Myanmar city’s parks, the coolest place to spend an evening during yet another power blackout. A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted Southeast Asia this week, sending the mercury to 45°C and prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes. Even before the chaos and conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup, Myanmar’s creaky and outdated electricity grid struggled to keep fans whirling and air conditioners humming during the hot season. Now, infrastructure attacks and dwindling offshore gas reserves mean those who cannot afford expensive diesel
Does Argentine President Javier Milei communicate with a ghost dog whose death he refuses to accept? Forced to respond to questions about his mental health, the president’s office has lashed out at “disrespectful” speculation. Twice this week, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was asked about Milei’s English Mastiff, Conan, said to have died seven years ago. Milei, 53, had Conan cloned, and today is believed to own four copies he refers to as “four-legged children.” Or is it five? In an interview with CNN this month, Milei referred to his five dogs, whose faces and names he had engraved on the presidential baton. Conan,
French singer Kendji Girac, who was seriously injured by a gunshot this week, wanted to “fake” his suicide to scare his partner who was threatening to leave him, prosecutors said on Thursday. The 27-year-old former winner of France’s version of The Voice was found wounded after police were called to a traveler camp in Biscarrosse on France’s southwestern coast. Girac told first responders he had accidentally shot himself while tinkering with a Colt .45 automatic pistol he had bought at a junk shop, a source said. On Thursday, regional prosecutor Olivier Janson said, citing the singer, that he wanted to “fake” his suicide
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other