(AFP) - Polish President Andrzej Duda honoured on Thursday the young Jews who launched the Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis 75 years ago, but also used the occasion to reject claims that Poles had a hand in the Holocaust.
Referring to a recently-passed law against blaming Poland and Poles for Nazi crimes during a speech at a remembrance ceremony at the Ghetto Heroes Monument in Warsaw, Duda said, "I am strongly convinced that both Poles and also Polish Jews deeply care about having a single historical truth." Regarding Polish assistance to the uprising he said, "There were Poles who helped Jews, treating them like brothers, like fellow citizens, and that is why I am sure that whenever anyone talks about the
responsibility or co-responsibility of the Polish state for the Holocaust, that person hurts the feelings of Poles but also the feelings of Polish Jews. Not only is it slander but it also blurs the responsibility of the true executioners, the German Nazis."