Image copyright AFP Image caption The Nazis ran death camps in Poland during the brutal 1939-45 occupation 
 
 Poland has summoned the US ambassador and demanded an apology over comments on the Holocaust by FBI director James Comey. 
 
 The foreign ministry said Mr Comey had suggested in a Washington Post article that some Poles were accomplices. 
 
 After the summons US envoy Stephen Mull said he made it clear the US believed "Nazi Germany alone" was responsible. 
 
 Six million Polish citizens were killed by the Nazis during World War Two, half of them Jewish. 
 
 'Falsification of history' 
 
 In the Washington Post article on Thursday, aimed at raising education about the Holocaust, Mr Comey wrote: "In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil. 
 
 "They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do." 
 
 The words sparked a storm of protest in Poland. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption James Comey made the comments in a Washington Post article on Thursday 
 
 President Bronislaw Komorowski told Polish television the comments were an "insult to thousands of Poles who helped Jews". 
 
 Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said: "To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War Two. I would expect full historical knowledge from officials who speak on the matter." 
 
 Ambassador Mull, who on Sunday attended ceremonies marking the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis, said that any suggestion that "Poland, or any other countries other than Nazi Germany, bear responsibility for the Holocaust, is a mistake, harmful and insulting". 
 
 After Sunday's summons he added: "I made clear that the opinion that Poland is in any way responsible for the Holocaust is not the position of the United States. 
 
 "Nazi Germany alone bears responsibility. I now have a lot of work before me to make things right in this situation." 
 
 But Mr Mull also said he believed the wider message of the article was that many people had either aided the Nazis or not done enough in response to the atrocities, including in the US. 
 
 The Washington Post on Sunday published a column criticising Mr Comey's comments. 
 
 The Nazis ran death camps in Poland during the brutal 1939-45 occupation. 
 
 Correction 20 April 2015: In an earlier version of this report, comments made by the Polish ambassador to Washington were incorrectly attributed to Stephen Mull. ||||| FBI Director James Comey (Cliff Owen/Associated Press) 
 
 The Polish ambassador to Washington has protested, the Polish president has protested, the speaker of the Polish parliament (to whom I am married) has protested — and the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw has apologized profusely. Why? Because James Comey, the director of the FBI, in a speech that was reprinted in The Post arguing for more Holocaust education, demonstrated just how badly he needs it himself. 
 
 In two poorly worded sentences, he sounded to Polish readers as if he were repeating the World War II myth that most drives them crazy: Namely, that somehow, those who lived in occupied Eastern Europe shared full responsibility for a German policy. Comey put it like this: 
 
 “In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do.” 
 
 There are a number of problems with that pair of weak sentences, starting with the vast difference between Germany and the rest. During the war, Germany had a state policy of exterminating the Jews. This policy involved not “accomplices” but hundreds of bureaucrats, tens of thousands of soldiers, train schedules and plans. Germany also encouraged the creation of collaborationist governments in other countries – Vichy France, for example – some of which used their own police officers to send their Jewish citizens into the German death camps. 
 
 Germany also occupied Poland, but there was no Polish “Vichy.” During the war, there was no Polish state at all. Indeed, it was the absence of the Polish state that enabled the Germans to create a lawless, violent world, one in which anyone could be arbitrarily murdered, any Jew could be deported — and any Pole who helped a Jew could be shot instantly, along with his entire family. Many were. Millions of others died too – Polish intellectuals, priests and politicians were all Nazi targets. 
 
 In the course of the war, most of Poland’s infrastructure, industry and architecture were destroyed. In that atmosphere, many people were frightened by or indifferent to the fate of the Jews, and some murdered in order to avoid being murdered. But that doesn’t mean that “in their minds” they “didn’t do something evil.” 
 
 Although the circumstances were different, Germany’s leading role is equally clear in Hungary. The wartime government of Adm. Miklós Horthy did pass anti-Semitic legislation and did align itself with the Nazis. But the mass murder and deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began only in March 1944, when that government dissolved and was replaced with a straightforward German occupation. Once the Hungarian state had been dissolved, in other words, Hungary also became a lawless, violent zone where anything was possible. 
 
 So no, it is not true, as Comey made it sound, that “murderers and accomplices” in Germany, Poland and Hungary and lots of other places were somehow responsible for the Holocaust. And no, it isn’t true that the Holocaust is a story of so many otherwise “good” people who “convinced themselves it was the right thing to do.” 
 
 On the contrary, it’s a story about the power of fear, the danger of lawlessness and the horror that was made possible by a specific form of German state terror in the years between 1939 and 1945 – a terror that convinced many people to do things that they knew were terribly, terribly wrong. If the FBI director wants to take some lessons from Washington’s excellent Holocaust museum, that’s very admirable. But first he should make sure he’s understood what he’s seen. ||||| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned as “outrageous” his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki’s remark Saturday that Jewish perpetrators were also responsible for the Holocaust. 
 
 “The Polish prime minister’s remarks here in Munich are outrageous,” said Netanyahu, who is also in Germany for a security conference. 
 
 “There is a problem here of an inability to understand history and a lack of sensitivity to the tragedy of our people. I intend to speak with him forthwith,” Netanyahu said in a statement from Munich. 
 
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 Addressing the Munich Security Conference earlier, Morawiecki was rejecting criticism of a new law that criminalizes mentions of Polish state complicity in the Holocaust, when he was asked by an Israeli journalist if sharing his family’s history of persecution in Poland would be outlawed under the new legislation. 
 
 “Of course it’s not going to be punishable, [it’s] not going to be seen as criminal to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian; not only German perpetrators,” Morawiecki told Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ronen Bergman. 
 
 צפו | ראש ממשלת פולין בתשובה לשאלתו של @ronenbergman: "בשואה היו פושעים פולנים, כמו שהיו פושעים יהודים" • @DorGlick עם הפרטים המלאים והתיעוד >> https://t.co/eFLSq9LWO8 pic.twitter.com/ZCV6j8faw7 — חדשות עשר (@news10) February 17, 2018 
 
 Morawiecki’s was harshly criticized by opposition lawmakers. 
 
 “Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki talks like the last of the Holocaust deniers. The blood of millions of Jews cries out from the ground in Poland over the distortion of history and escape from blame,” tweeted party leader Avi Gabbay. 
 
 “Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and Poles took an active part in their murder. The Israeli government must be here for the millions murdered and strongly condemn the Polish prime minister’s words,” he said. 
 
 Tzipi Livni, a Zionist Union MK and former foreign minister who was in the audience, said it was “moving to hear Ronen Bergman asking/attacking the Polish prime minister over the law that forbids mentioning the participation of the Polish nation in the Holocaust, as [Bergman] told his family story and received applause from the audience.” 
 
 Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, one of the most vocal Israeli critics of the Polish law, said Morawiecki’s statement is “anti-Semitism of the oldest kind.” 
 
 “The perpetrators are not the victims. The Jewish state will not allow the murdered to be blamed for their own murder,” he said, while calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recall Israel’s ambassador to Warsaw. 
 
 The Polish Prime Minister’s statement is antisemitism of the oldest kind. The perpetrators are not the victims. The Jewish state will not allow the murdered to be blamed for their own murder. I again call upon the Prime Minister to immediately recall our Ambassador to Israel. — יאיר לפיד (@yairlapid) February 17, 2018 
 
 Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova said Morawiecki’s remark “shows his true face.” 
 
 “It should be remembered that according to the most conservative estimate 200,000 Jews in Poland were murdered by Poles,” she tweeted, adding that “the crisis with Poland is only getting worse and there is no room here for compromises.” 
 
 “If we don’t stand up for the truth, no will do it for us.” 
 
 Fellow Zionist Union MK Itzik Shmuli also criticized the Polish prime minister, saying the next phase in his “pathetic project” would be “blaming the Jews for their own Holocaust.” 
 
 probably the next step of Morawiecki’s pathetic project to erasing the crimes of the Polish is going to be blaming the Jews for their own Holocaust and presenting the Nazis as victims of the circumstances.He would have to sue the 6M victims Jews+my state????????before it will happen! https://t.co/wKmDv470Tq — איציק שמולי (@ishmuli) February 17, 2018 
 
 In response to Bergman’s question, Morawiecki said the new law aimed to prevent falsely attributing Nazi crimes in Poland under Nazi occupation to Polish government policy at the time. He said that last year Polish embassies had to respond 260 times to statements referring to “Polish death camps.” 
 
 He said the Polish people generally aided their “Jewish brothers and sisters” during the war, and that the lines between Holocaust victims and perpetrators were becoming increasingly blurred. 
 
 The legislation prescribes prison time for using phrases such as “Polish death camps” to refer to the killing sites Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland during World War II. Its provisions run wider, however: 
 
 “Whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich… or other crimes against peace and humanity, or war crimes, or otherwise grossly diminishes the actual perpetrators thereof, shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years,” a translation of a key paragraph of the bill reads. 
 
 The legislation sparked outrage in Israel, with some lawmakers accusing the Polish government of outright Holocaust denial. 
 
 The dispute has elicited bitter recriminations on both sides. Some Israelis have accused the mostly Catholic Poles of being driven by anti-Semitism and of trying to deny the Holocaust. Poles believe that they are being defamed by being linked to German crimes, of which they were one of the largest group of victims. 
 
 Israel, along with several international Holocaust organizations and many critics in Poland, argues that the law could have a chilling effect on debating history, harming freedom of expression and leading to a whitewashing of Poland’s wartime history. 
 
 Netanyahu has pilloried the law as “distortion of the truth, the rewriting of history, and the denial of the Holocaust.” 
 
 Amid the dispute some Polish commentators, including in government-controlled media, have made strong anti-Jewish remarks. 
 
 In one instance, the head of a state-run channel suggested referring to Auschwitz as a “Jewish death camp,” in response to an outcry over use of the term “Polish death camp” to describe the Nazi killing site in German-occupied Poland. 
 
 Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
– Angry Polish leaders have demanded an apology from the US ambassador after some ill-judged remarks on the Holocaust from FBI Director James Comey. "In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn't do something evil," Comey wrote in a Washington Post column. "They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do." Many Poles are infuriated by the suggestion they shared the blame for Nazi crimes, reports the BBC, which notes that around 6 million Polish citizens died during the 1939-45 occupation. "Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War II," says Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz. "I would expect full historical knowledge from officials who speak on the matter." The American ambassador in Warsaw says suggestions that any country other than "Nazi Germany was responsible for the Holocaust are wrong, harmful, and offensive," adding that he thinks Comey's wider message was that there were people, even in the US, who "aided the Nazi criminals, or there were people who did not respond sufficiently," reports Reuters. In another Washington Post column, Anne Applebaum writes that it's wrong to call Poles "accomplices" because after the 1939 invasion of Poland, it was Germans who created "a lawless, violent world, one in which anyone could be arbitrarily murdered, any Jew could be deported—and any Pole who helped a Jew could be shot instantly, along with his entire family. Many were."