Poland will not penalize claims that it was complicit in atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, the parliament decided on June 27.

Warsaw backed down on the controversial law after months of international outrage, especially by Israel and the US, which said the bill could quell the ever-raging debate on Poles’ wartime attitude to Jews under the Nazi occupation of Poland.

The amendment to the law, tabled by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and fast-tracked through the parliament, removes prison sanctions that threatened anyone convicted of making statements of Poland’s complicity in Nazi war crimes. The law still makes it possible to go after authors of such statements in civil suits.

The rush with which the government proceeded on the law – it was passed in just two hours – is seen as the result of the pressure from the US. The Trump administration has reportedly told Poland that the US president would not meet his Polish peer Andrzej Duda until the issue was resolved.

With the July meeting of Nato heads of states in Brussels fast approaching, the pressure on Warsaw had only grown bigger.

In a statement delivered in the lower house, Morawiecki said the law has played its role in alerting the world to the injustice done to Poland by linking it to Nazi war crimes. 

“The law [in its original version] was a step in the right direction. It was a policy that paid off,” Morawiecki said.

However, he added, the change was necessary because of the reality in which Poland could not effectively prosecute offenders abroad. 

Faced with potential civil suits and damages to pay, the international media will now “think twice” before publishing articles with phrases like “Polish SS” or “Polish concentration camps,” the PM also said.

Thousands of Poles helped Jews survive the occupation, during which the Nazis exterminated over 90% of Poland’s Jewish population. However, there also are numerous examples of Poles’ turning Jews over to the Nazi administration or directly killing them. 

Those atrocities have been documented in accounts of witnesses, historical research, and books, such as the most recent book “Night Without an End” by historians from the Polish Center for Holocaust Research.

“Two out of every three Jews who attempted to seek shelter among the gentiles died,” the book, which was published in April, said.

“The studies included in the [book] provide ample evidence of the important, and previously underestimated level s of the scale of the complicity of certain segments of the Polish society in the extermination of their Jewish neighbours and co-citizens,” the publisher said in a note upon the book’s release.

The Nazi Germany-orchestrated killing of approximately six million European Jews – including nearly all of Poland's three million Jews – happened for the most part in occupied Poland. 

Warsaw has long objected to the Western media’s use of phrases such as “Polish death camps” for extermination camps that the Nazis set up on Polish soil in the 1940s. The campaign for accuracy in describing the atrocities has been largely successful, with major US media taking care not to use the inflammatory wording.

However, the current right-wing Law and Justice government has considered these efforts insufficient. The ruling party says Poland is regularly besmirched by accusations of its complicity in the Holocaust. 

By removing the section that criminalises the complicity claims, Poland will now step up efforts against “defamation,” the Law and Justice chairman and informal top decision maker Jaroslaw Kaczynski told the pro-government newspaper Gazeta Polska.

Polish and Israeli prime ministers also issued a joint statement on the day the amendment was passed, asserting that “contacts between our countries and societies have been based on a well-grounded trust and understanding.”

“We support free and open historical expression and research on all aspects of the Holocaust so that it can be conducted without any fear of legal obstacles,” the statement also said.