ADL regrets mistake regarding Poland
Poland's Ambassador to the US Piotr Wilczek has told PAP that he is satisfied with an apology by Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director who earlier alleged that Poland refuses to acknowledge Adolf Hitler's attempt to exterminate Jews.
The Jewish director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, has recently made the statement to media outlets including CNN and The Washington Post, according to the ambassador.
According to a report on the CNN website, Greenblatt has suggested that many countries, among them Poland as well as Iran, Russia, and Hungary, refuse to acknowledge Hitler's attempt to exterminate Jews, "opting instead to talk about generic suffering rather than recognising this catastrophic incident for what it was: the intended genocide of the Jewish people."
"Such statements are not only false, but also painful for the Polish people," Wilczek said in a statement he issued in reaction to Greenblatt's words.
"The Holocaust was about a systematic extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany," he added. "Poland acknowledged this long before other nations, and even before the term 'Holocaust' came into general use", Wilczek went on.
In a letter to the Polish Ambassador, Greenblatt admitted his mistake of including Poland among countries who not always believe that Jews were the deliberate target of Nazi genocide.
The director said he regretted his mistake and stressed he did not intend to offend the Polish government or society.
Reminding the ambassador of the fact that ADL had supported the Polish government in its efforts to correct offensive expressions such as "Polish death camps", Greenblatt expressed hope for continuing dialogue with Warsaw.
Ambassador Wilczek expressed a similar hope for reinstating dialogue with the Jewish rights organisation.
"I am pleased and satisfied. However, I believe that we should react in this way as this brings results," Piotr Wilczek told PAP.
"ADL has supported us in the campaign against the so-called 'Polish death camps'. Now there has been this incident, but let me reiterate that cooperation with ADL has been and - I hope - will be very good," the ambassador noted.
The Anti-Defamation League is an international Jewish NGO based in New York. It aims to fight anti-Semitism and all forms of fanaticism, in addition to defending the ideals of democracy and civil rights. (PAP)
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