Polish minister says backs idea to create 'Polocaust' museum
WARSAW - Polish Deputy Culture Minister Jaroslaw Sellin on Tuesday backed a call for building a "Polokaust" museum to commemorate Poles killed by the Nazis during World War Two, in comments that may further exacerbate tensions with Israel.
This month Poland sparked international criticism, including from Israel and the United States, when it approved a law that imposes jail terms for suggesting the country was complicit in the Holocaust.
Some three million Jews who lived in pre-war Poland were murdered by the Nazis during their occupation of the country. They accounted for about half of all Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Poland's nationalist ruling party says the new law is needed to ensure that Poles are also recognised as victims, not perpetrators, of Nazi aggression. It notes that the Nazis also viewed Slavs as racially inferior and that many Poles were killed or forced into slave labour during the German occupation.
"I think the story of how the fate of Poles during World War Two looked like ... deserves to be told and shown in this way (in a museum)...," Sellin was quoted as saying by state media.
