Far-right groups hold a demonstration in front of the presidential palace to call on President Andrzej Duda to sign a bill that would limit some forms of Holocaust speech in Warsaw, Poland.

In Poland, a Troubling New Law

On the Media | Feb 16, 2018

Earlier this month, Polish president Andrzej Duda signed a law banning accusations that the Polish nation was complicit in Nazi war crimes during World War II.

The law, which establishes a punishment of up to three years in prison, criminalizes a broad range of speech, from blatant misinformation to uncomfortable historical facts. For instance, Polish citizens can no longer refer to Nazi death camps that operated within Poland as "Polish death camps." And while the Polish government did not collaborate with the Nazis, the new law also forbids speaking about any individual Poles or Polish communities that did. The law has predictably elicited howls of objection from around the world.

Bob talks to University of Michigan sociology professor Genevieve Zubrzycki, who says that the controversy is the latest convulsion in Poland’s struggle over its own identity, which she says has popularly relied on a sense of martyrdom regarding the second world war.

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