Despite strong opposition from Israel, the United States and Holocaust scholars, the Parliament in Poland has adopted a bill that criminalizes blaming Poland or its citizens for complicity in Nazi war crimes.  

The bill seeks to punish individuals who publicly describe Nazi German concentration camps as “Polish death camps.” It passed both houses of the Polish Parliament with the support of President Andrzej Duda.

Though the effort to shield Poland from its history may be understandable, the legislation is ill-advised. Whitewashing the truth helps no one.

From today’s vantage point, it may be easy to object to referring to Nazi camps set up in Poland after Germany’s invasion and occupation as Polish death camps. Auschwitz-Birkenau is the most infamous of the camps, where 1.1 million people died, most of them Jews. It was entirely a German operation and should be identified as such.

Another fact that bears noting is that non-Jewish Polish citizens were among those Righteous of the Nations who courageously hid and aided Jews during the Holocaust.  Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel described those courageous Poles as “deserving of the deepest admiration.”  

He quickly added that “according to eyewitnesses and historians, many thousands of Jews who fled liquidated ghettos in 1942-1943 were handed over by other Polish citizens to the Germans or to those beholden to them.”

A shining example of the brave non-Jewish Poles who helped Jews during the Holocaust is the late Natalia Abramowicz, a Polish Christian who hid eight Jews in her attic during the Nazi occupation at great risk to herself.  She was later discovered to be living alone and in poverty by Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.  

The Jewish Federation of St. Louis in 1971 honored Abramowicz at a banquet attended by Michael Steinlauf, one of the eight Jews she sheltered. Steinlauf traveled to St. Louis from Australia to thank Abramowicz in person during an emotional evening.

Denmark, where the majority of its non-Jews refused to collaborate with the Nazis in trying to round up Jews, managed to save 90 percent of them. In Poland, where many Christians did cooperate in the rounding up of Jews, 90 percent of the Jewish population was murdered, a total of 3 million Jews in all.

All nations occupied by the Nazis have had to come to terms with painful historic truths about the role of its citizens during that dark period. But one crucial lesson needs to be taught once more in this case: Those who ignore history are in danger of repeating it. 

And this particular history is the most egregious of the 20^th century. The Polish law is more than a form of blatant censorship. It exploits the gravest tragedy to befall the Jewish people to score points among the growing ultranationalist movements in Poland – a movement that is truly cause for grave concern. 

Poland should not enforce the law to suppress a history that needs to be taught and never forgotten, so that it can happen never again.