Poland is set to appoint a new envoy for Jewish relations in the coming days after firing its envoy last week for criticizing the country’s law on Holocaust speech, the UK Jewish News reported.
Jaroslaw Nowak, the plenipotentiary for contacts with the Jewish diaspora, was quoted in an interview with the Jewish News saying of the 2018 law that regulates what can be said about Poland’s role in the Holocaust that it “is one of the stupidest amendments that was ever done by any law.” He also criticized Poland’s position on property restitution for Holocaust survivors and their heirs.
Days later, Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lukasz Jasina said on Twitter that Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau had fired Nowak.
According to American Jewish Committee Central European operations director Sebastian Rejak, Nowak’s replacement may be announced in the next few days.
“I hope – I think it’s more than just a hope – to my knowledge the position will be kept and we should learn in the coming days who the successor will be,” Rejak said to the Jewish News Podcast.
Nowak’s firing was criticized by Jewish leaders from many countries who saw the creation of his position as Poland making a positive step in the right direction.
British peer Baroness Deech, also speaking on the podcast, was pessimistic that Nowak’s replacement would be as strong an advocate for issues important to the Jewish community. She added that she feared it would be someone would was “timid and not going against the Polish government.”
“All in all, Poland is in big trouble at the moment with the European Union, with its crackdown on judicial independence, on freedom of the press, on women’s rights, and not a happy place to be at the moment,” said Deech, whose family members had property in Poland confiscated, and has sought to improve Poland’s relationship with the Jewish community.
“Having a fearless [envoy] in that position would have been a little candle of light in the darkness,” Deech said.