The Israeli newspaper cited Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński as saying at the weekend that the government in Warsaw would be happy to give the singer a tour of the country “to understand why she thinks about our homeland in this way and to explain why (her comments) are painful to us.”
Kirel, who came third in the latest Eurovision song contest, sparked controversy in Poland when she described being awarded the maximum 12 points by the eastern European nation as a victory for her family and for the people of Israel.
“When Poland gives Israel 12 points, after almost the entire Kirel family was murdered in the Holocaust, it is a victory,” Kirel told Israeli news outlets immediately after the competition, according to the timesofisrael.com website.
Her comment was met with outrage in Poland, one of the worst victims of Nazi Germany.
“The fact that many people in Israel consider Poland to be a co-perpetrator of German crimes – not their victim – is often the result not so much of bad will as lack of knowledge and incomplete education,” Jabłoński wrote on Twitter.
He said that Kirel should come and “see with her own eyes the places where Nazi Germany committed cruel crimes against Poles and Jews in our country.”
The Times of Israel noted that Poland, which was the first country to be invaded and occupied by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s regime during World War II, never had a collaborationist government.
"Members of Poland’s resistance and government-in-exile struggled to warn the world about the mass killing of Jews, and thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews," The Times of Israel wrote.
“However, Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish people who murdered Jews who were fleeing the Nazis, or Polish blackmailers who preyed on helpless Jews for financial gain,” the newspaper added.
Poland and Israel have engaged in heated debates about the Holocaust over the years, with senior Polish officials blaming the country for taking part in spreading a distorted narrative about Poland's wartime history and Israeli officials accusing Warsaw of anti-Semitism.
Six million Jews, including nearly all of Poland’s roughly 3 million Jews, were killed by the German Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, and major Nazi death camps were in Poland.
Young Israelis visit the former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in southern Poland, Aug. 1, 2019. Photo: Debbie Hill/UPI Photo via Newscom/PAP
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Source: timesofisrael.com
