Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński told public broadcaster Polish Radio on Tuesday that it was “unacceptable” for Duda not to be allowed to deliver a speech at the World Holocaust Forum, which is scheduled to take place on January 22-23 at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.
“It is unacceptable, at a conference dedicated to the Holocaust, for Vladimir Putin to be one of key speakers and for Poland's president not to be able to speak,” Jabłoński said.
On Sunday, Duda said that it was a “necessary condition for me, as the president of Poland, to be able to speak alongside other presidents” in order to present the “historical truth, which, unfortunately, has been falsified recently.”
Putin recently reportedly suggested that Poland was partly responsible for the outbreak of World War II and claimed that the Soviet Union helped “save lives” after it invaded Poland in 1939 following a pact with Nazi Germany.
Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk last month called the statements a "dangerous narrative campaign" against Poland.
The World Holocaust Forum is scheduled to be attended by leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and the presidents of Austria, Germany and Italy.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp operated in German-occupied southern Poland between May 1940 and January 1945.
It was the largest of the German Nazi concentration and death camps.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, perished at the camp.
(jh/pk)
Source: PAP