Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has criticized the recently-passed Polish law that bans accusing Poland and its citizens of crimes during the Nazi occupation. Meeting with Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda, ahead of this afternoon's March of the Living from the Auschwitz concentration camp to the Birkenau death camp, he said, "A great shadow has been cast on our relations, even if at the bilateral level we understand each other."
Rivlin told his host, "We highly appreciate anyone who gave his life to save Jews, but there were also other phenomena: people who murdered and inherited [from those they killed or turned into the Nazis -ed.]... Here was [ripe] soil that allowed the Nazis to do whatever they liked, not only in Poland but throughout Europe."