Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, who served as prime minister of Poland from 1996 to 1997 and as foreign minister between 2001 and 2005, launched an open and harsh attack against his country after President Andrzej Duda approved the law imposing a prison sentence on those who use the term "Polish extermination camps" or recall Poland's role in the Holocaust of European Jewry.
He claimed that the current Polish government was deliberately exaggerating the amount of damage caused to its good name by the use of the phrase "Polish extermination camps". According to him, "The new law caused serious damage to Poland's relations with Israel and I am afraid even irreversible damage." Noting that anti-Semitism still exists in Poland, Cimoszewicz said the righteous gentiles who saved Jews and risked their lives for them during the Holocaust cannot be allowed to cover up the acts of a much greater group of Poles who betrayed Jews or looted their property.