The Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance of 2018 is a partly repealed Polish law that criminalized public speech attributing responsibility for the Holocaust to Poland or the Polish nation; the criminal provisions were removed again later that year, after international protests. Article 2a, addressing crimes against "Polish citizens" by "Ukrainian nationalists", also caused controversy. The legislation is part of the historical policy of the Law and Justice party which seeks to present a narrative of ethnic Poles exclusively as victims and heroes. The law was widely seen as an infringement on freedom of expression and on academic freedom, and as a barrier to open discussion on Polish collaborationism, leading to what has been described as "the biggest diplomatic crisis in [Poland's] recent history".
While the act does not mention the "Polish death camp" controversy (involving concentration camps that had been built by Nazi Germany during World War II on German-occupied Polish soil), the act's chief intent was to address that controversy. In 2019, the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland ruled that Article 2a was void and non-binding.
History
A 2006 amendment with some of the same aims, Article 132a of the Polish Penal Code, was passed in 2006 with the efforts of Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro but was invalidated two years later on procedural grounds. The amendment was seen as targeting the writings of historian Jan T. Gross, whose work on the Jedwabne Pogrom triggered wide public debate in Poland; the amendment was frequently dubbed Lex Gross (Latin: Gross's Law).
After a period of lobbying, the first version of the 2018 Amendment was drafted on 17 February 2016 by Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro. On 30 August 2016, the Council of Ministers, presided over by Prime Minister Beata Szydło, forwarded the draft to the Sejm. In September 2016, Zbigniew Ziobro asserted that the "Polish death camp" term constituted an attack on the "good name of the Polish nation". The proposed legislation was criticized internationally as an attempt to suppress discussion of crimes that had been committed during the Holocaust by Polish citizens. The addition of the "ban on propaganda of Banderism" to the law (Article 2a) was spearheaded by the right-wing political movement, Kukiz'15. Kukiz'15 submitted this addition on July 16, 2016, however it was blocked by Civic Platform and Law and Justice parties citing "the good of Polish–Ukrainian relations". Eventually, Article 2a was added to the bill on 25 January 2018 during the second reading.
On 26 January 2018, after the bill's third reading, the Polish Parliament's lower chamber, the Sejm, approved the bill, which would apply to Poles as well as to foreigners. On 1 February 2018 the upper chamber, the Senate, passed the bill without amendment. On 6 February 2018 President Andrzej Duda signed the bill into law. According to an opinion poll conducted in February 2018, 51% of Poles opposed the 2018 amendment. Some parts of the law came into effect 14 days after its registration in Dziennik Ustaw (the Register of Statutes), with the full law coming into effect within 3 months. The law was referred to the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland for review of its compliance with the Polish Constitution.
The bill led to an outcry of condemnations against the Polish government in the United States, Europe, and Israel. Some critics went so far as to accuse the Polish government of Holocaust denial. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel advisory urging Jews to limit visits to Poland due to "Poland's government campaign to change the historical truth by denying Polish complicity in the Nazi atrocities".
As of May 2018, 70 different charges under the act were filed in Polish courts. Most, however, were by Polish citizens protesting the law by filing a self-incrimination. A non-protest charge was filed against the BBC for a production on the Auschwitz concentration camp that used the term "Polish Jewish ghettos".
Original bill
The proposed law modifies a previous law relating to the Institute of National Remembrance (namely, the Act of 18 December 1998 on the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Dz.U. 1998 nr 155 poz. 1016)).
Articles added in February 2018 included the following:
Article 53o: