Poland’s Duda says Netanyahu should be free to attend Auschwitz event

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has asked the government to ensure that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can attend the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp without fear of arrest under an international warrant.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in November for Netanyahu and his ex-defence minister, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 15-month war in Gaza.

Duda, from the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), wrote to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government requesting that Netanyahu not be arrested if he decides to attend the Auschwitz commemoration on 27 January, a presidential aide said on Thursday.

“In the opinion of the president, there is one issue – precisely because it is the Auschwitz camp, every person from Israel, every representative of the authorities of this country should have the opportunity to take part in this exceptional event,” Malgorzata Paprocka, the head of Duda’s office, told Polish state news agency PAP.

She said Duda was still waiting for a reply. Tusk has not commented on the letter.

Member countries of the ICC, such as Poland, are required to detain suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil, but the court has no way to enforce that. Israel is not a member of the ICC and disputes its jurisdiction.

The court has more than 120 member states, although some countries, including France and Hungary, have already said that they would not arrest him. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán even said he would defy the warrant by inviting Netanyahu to Budapest.

It is unclear whether Netanyahu plans to attend the commemoration later this month, although he has been present at previous anniversary events at Auschwitz.

Poland’s Foreign Ministry, in response to an email query, said on Thursday that “it has not received any information so far indicating that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to attend the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”

“Poland is a safe country and any leader visiting Poland is entitled to protection granted by the Ministry of the Interior,” it added.

The commemoration will be attended by international officials and elderly survivors. It is to take place in Oswiecim, a town that was under German occupation during World War II where the Nazi German forces operated the most notorious of its death camps.

More than 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz. Historians say that most of them, about a million, were Jewish, but the victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others.

At least 3 million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Additional sources • AP