As Poland marks the 50th anniversary of a notorious anti-Semitic campaign, some of its leaders call for a clampdown on historical debate and speak darkly about enemies within. The echoes of '68 are hard to ignore.
From Deutsche Welle, Feb 17, 2018 Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) recently passed a law outlawing public statements that falsely and intentionally attribute Nazi crimes to Poland under the German occupation, to the alarm of historians and advocates of freedom of speech. At the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki [pictured] rejected criticism of the law, commenting that it wouldn’t be punishable to say that there were Polish perpetrators of atrocities in WWII. But prominent Polish historian Jan Gross believes the law is a means to reframe historians’, journalists' and teachers' scope and terms of reference. "The law actually doesn't refer to Polish extermination camps at all and its wording is vague," Gross told DW. "It is thus legally ambiguous and probably designed to be so, to scare but with very little legal power of enforcement," he said. […] http://p.dw.com/p/2ru9T
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