Defenders of the bill say it is meant to indicate German responsibility for the Holocaust. “Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a Polish name, and Arbeit Macht Frei is not a Polish phrase.”PhotoBut critics, including those in Israel, home to tens of thousands of aging Holocaust survivors, believe the law would hamper dialogue about the Holocaust and distort history. Yair Lapid, leader of a centrist opposition party in Israel and the son of a Holocaust survivor, wrote of the Holocaust on Twitter: “It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. “My grandmother was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles,” he wrote. About 250,000 Holocaust survivors were living in Israel a decade ago, about half the number who arrived after the state was founded in 1948, according to Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial.

Source: New York Times January 27, 2018 22:41 UTC