FBI Director James B. Comey
FBI Director James B. ComeyReuters

The US ambassador to Warsaw apologized Sunday after being summoned by the foreign ministry over comments by the head of the FBI that Poland shared responsibility for the Holocaust with Germany.

Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski said the comments in an opinion piece by FBI director James Comey were an "insult" to Poland.

"In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil," Comey wrote in the April 16 Washington Post article.

After meeting with Poland's deputy foreign affairs minister, US ambassador Stephen Mull told reporters the Nazis bore sole responsibility for the Holocaust, which left six million European Jews dead in World War II.

"I made clear that the opinion that Poland is in any way responsible for the Holocaust is not the position of the United States," Mull said in Polish. "Nazi Germany alone bears responsibility."

"I now have a lot of work before me to make things right in this situation," he added.

Foreign ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski wrote on Twitter Sunday that Mull would "receive a note of protest and a summons for an apology" over Comey's comments.

Komorowski told public television that the FBI head's comments showed a "lack of historical knowledge" and "this requires a reaction from the Polish state."

They were an "insult to thousands of Poles who helped Jews." 

AFP contributed to this report