WARSAW

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Monday that he summoned Israel’s ambassador to Poland, requesting clarification and an official correction following a social media post published by Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial institution to the victims of the Holocaust,

The original post, published Sunday on the US social media company X’s platform, said that “Poland was the first country where Jews were forced to wear a distinctive badge in order to isolate them from the surrounding population.”

The lack of a reference to the Nazi occupation of Poland or that the policy was imposed by German authorities triggered immediate criticism in Warsaw.

According to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the post risked creating the false impression that the Polish state or Polish society had initiated the badge requirement rather than the occupying German administration that controlled all political and civic life between 1939 and 1945.

Within hours, Yad Vashem appended an additional message below the post, saying: “As many users have noticed and as clearly stated in the article linked above, this was done at the behest of the German authorities.”

Later, Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, issued a further clarification in response to Sikorski’s request that the post be republished in a way that explicitly notes the historical context of occupation.

“Yad Vashem presents the historical realities of Nazism and WWII, including countries under German occupation, control, or influence. Poland was indeed under German occupation. This is clearly reflected in our materials. Any other interpretation is a misreading of our commitment to accuracy,” he wrote on X.

The dispute touches a nerve in Polish-Israeli relations, which have been increasingly fraught since 2015 over how the Holocaust is narrated publicly. Tensions peaked in 2018 when the Polish parliament passed an amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), criminalizing statements that implied Polish complicity in Nazi crimes. Israel and Jewish organizations worldwide accused Poland of attempting to legislate historical debate.

Although the most controversial parts of the law were later softened, mutual suspicion lingers. Warsaw insists on defending Poland’s wartime record, emphasizing that the country was completely occupied by Germany, never collaborated as a state, and suffered enormous civilian losses—including the murder of three million Polish Jews.

Israel, meanwhile, remains wary of what it sees as political attempts in Poland to shift responsibility exclusively onto Germans while downplaying instances of antisemitism, local collaboration, or violence against Jews—topics extensively documented by historians but politically sensitive in Poland.

Before the war, Poland was home to over three million Jews, one of the world’s most vibrant Jewish communities, with rich religious, cultural, linguistic and intellectual life.

The Holocaust destroyed this world almost entirely. After the war, a small Jewish community remained, facing intermittent antisemitism and pressure under communist rule—most dramatically during the state-orchestrated antisemitic campaign of 1967-1968, which drove thousands of Jewish Poles into exile.

In the post-communist era, Jewish cultural revival and Polish-Jewish dialogue expanded significantly. But since 2015, debates over memory, responsibility and national identity have become increasingly political, with every historical nuance scrutinized for potential diplomatic risk.