Poland furious over FBI director's Holocaust remarks

WARSAW, Poland, April 20 (UPI) -- Comments by FBI director James Comey, suggesting Poland collaborated in the Holocaust, have led to a demand for an apology.

Poland summoned the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw, who apologized.

Formal protests were lodged by the Polish president, as well as the country's Parliament speaker and ambassador to the United States, over comments made by Comey in the Washington Post last week.

"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," Comey wrote in an editorial commentary suggesting more education about the Holocaust is required.

Although Nazi concentration camps were built on Polish soil, as well as in other countries, there was no formal collaboration by the Polish government with the Nazis during the Nazi occupation, as was the case in France and elsewhere. A Polish government, in fact, was nonexistent for much of World War II, and suggestions that occupied Poland conspired with Germany in concentration camp deaths has long been an issue with Poland.

The Polish Foreign Ministry expressed its displeasure with Comey's thought that Poles were accomplices, and President Bronislaw Komorkowski said Comey's comments were an "insult to thousands of poles who helped Jews" escape the Nazis.

Polish Prime Minister Eva Kopacz responded, "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 II. I would expect full historical knowledge from officials who speak on the matter."

After the summons to the U.S. ambassador, U.S. envoy Stephen Mull made clear that the U.S. belief is that "Nazi Germany alone" was responsible for the deaths of six million people in the Holocaust.

"[That] Poland, or any other countries other than Nazi Germany, bear responsibility for the Holocaust, is a mistake, harmful and insulting," Mull said. He later added, "I now have a lot of work before me to make things right in this situation."