Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never planned to attend next month’s 80th year anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem said on Sunday.
The clarification comes after speculation in Polish media that the Israeli premier was not travelling to the event due to fear of arrest after Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski, secretary of state in the Polish Foreign Ministry, said Warsaw would follow through on the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant over allegations of war crimes in the 15-month war against Hamas in Gaza.
Bartoszewski, whose late father, former Foreign Minister Władysław Bartoszewski, was a prisoner in Auschwitz in 1940-41 and participated in the Polish resistance’s 1944 Warsaw Uprising, is organizing the memorial. After his release from the German camp in 1941, the elder Bartoszewski was a member of the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews. Yad Vashem recognized him as a Righteous Among the Nations.
“The event was not even in the prime minister’s schedule from the beginning,” a source in the Prime Minister’s Office told JNS on Sunday.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch is expected to represent Israel at the Jan. 27 ceremony on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is slated to be attended by scores of leaders and heads of state, including Britain’s King Charles.
Warsaw is set to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union next month.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has threatened to sanction U.S. allies enforcing ICC arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.