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Knesset Speaker Edelstein: We Have a Right to Say What Really Happened in Poland
(Jerusalem Post) Lahav Harkov - Poland cannot deny that some Poles collaborated with the Nazis, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein told the Jerusalem Post on Monday. "We don't have to collectively blame all the Poles or forget those who acted differently, but we have the right to remember the facts of history and remind everyone what really happened. I definitely regret" that the Visegrad summit was canceled, Edelstein said, "but having said that, we are not trading in history, definitely not that of the Holocaust." Edelstein said the latest incident reminded him of his personal experience visiting Poland as Knesset Speaker. He recounted, "I was trying to be very diplomatic and say something in the vein of 'we will never forget courageous Poles saving Jewish lives, and we will never forgive Poles collaborating with the Nazis,' and everyone was taken aback. As far as my hosts were concerned, we only had to talk about Righteous Among the Nations," meaning those who saved Jews. "It doesn't work that way. Reality was harsh," Edelstein added. Edelstein recalled that in the Knesset's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, when MKs read names of their relatives who perished in the Holocaust, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir would say at the end of his list, which included his parents, that they were "all murdered by their Polish neighbors."