Poland to amend controversial ‘Holocaust law’

The Polish Government said on Wednesday it planned to remove a requirement for jail sentences from a controversial law that criminalises suggestions of Polish responsibility for the Holocaust.

The Polish government would amend the law after it upended relations with Israel and drew global criticism.

Michal Dworczyk, the Head of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s office, told Polish radio the amendment would mean that people could no longer be penalised with a three-year prison sentence.

He said that this aspect of the law acted as a distraction to its real intention, which was “to defend the good name of Poland and the historical truth’’.

The law, which criminalises speech referring to Nazi-era concentration camps on Polish soil as “Polish’’ rather than “German concentration camps,’’ sparked fierce rebuke in Israel and elsewhere.

Critics argued the law was loosely formulated and could be abused to deny or negate Polish responsibility for crimes against the Jewish people.

More than 1 million people, majority of them Jews, were murdered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, which was located in Nazi-occupied Polish territory.

The legislative amendment may be considered by parliament as soon as Wednesday, Dworczyk said.

That action would come ahead of a review by the country’s constitutional court, which had been requested by President Andrzej Duda, after he signed the legislation.