Poland Summons Israeli Ambassador Over Yad Vashem Post on WWII Jewish Badges

Poland summoned Israel’s ambassador on Monday after a Yad Vashem social media post described the 1939 order forcing Jews in Poland to wear distinctive badges without explicitly noting that the country was under Nazi German occupation at the time.

The dispute, which escalated throughout the day, centers on a historical message Yad Vashem posted on X marking the November 23, 1939, decree issued by Hans Frank, governor of the German General Government. Polish officials said the wording risked implying Polish responsibility.

Yad Vashem’s original message stated: “Poland was the first country where Jews were forced to wear a distinctive badge in order to isolate them from the surrounding population.” The post continued with the historical description of Frank’s order requiring Jews aged 10 and above to wear a white armband with a blue Star of David.

Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski announced that he was summoning the ambassador after Yad Vashem did not amend the post. “Since the misleading post has not been amended, I have decided to summon the ambassador of Israel to the foreign ministry,” he wrote on X.

Polish officials argued the message overlooked a central fact: Poland had been invaded and fully occupied by Nazi Germany. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum criticized the post directly, writing: “If anyone should know the historical facts, it is Yad Vashem. They are fully aware that Poland was occupied by Germany at the time, and it was Germany that introduced and enforced this antisemitic law.”

Arkadiusz Mularczyk, a member of the European Parliament, said: “Poland was the first victim of World War II, not a perpetrator of crimes. The Holocaust was a German crime — a fact that is not subject to negotiation or ‘reinterpretation.’”

Poland’s embassy in Israel also condemned the wording, stating: “An institution that expects to be respected does not distort history. Beginning in September 1939, Poland was under brutal German Nazi and Soviet occupation. Claims that Poland enacted antisemitic measures ignore this reality and misrepresent the past.”

Yad Vashem issued a clarification later Monday, emphasizing that the order was issued by the German authorities: “As noted by many users and specified explicitly in the linked article, it was done by order of the German authorities.”

Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, defended the institution’s work, saying its materials clearly reflect that Poland was under German occupation. “Any other interpretation misreads our commitment to accuracy,” he wrote.

More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, nearly half of all Jews killed in Europe. Poland itself was occupied and ruled directly by Nazi Germany after its 1939 invasion, a relationship that Warsaw stresses today to underline that the persecution of Jews on its soil was carried out by the German occupiers, not by Polish authorities.