Poland invites Noa Kirel on Holocaust educational tour after ‘painful’ Eurovision remark

Poland has invited Israeli Eurovision star Noa Kirel to visit the country and learn about the Holocaust after her “painful” remarks about the country’s role in the Holocaust.

Kirel told KAN Public Broadcaster that Poland awarding Israel 12 points in the Eurovision Son Contest was a “victory,” since almost the “entire Kirel family was murdered in the Holocaust.”

Kirel, whose family members were killed in Auschwitz, visited the Nazi death camp in 2019.

Her comment was met with outrage in Poland, which considers itself one of the worst victims of Nazi Germany.

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński accused Kirel of repeating “bad stereotypes and false statements about Poland’s role in the war.

Jabłoński then invited Kirel on a tour to Poland “to understand why she thinks about our homeland in this way and to explain why (her comments) are painful to us.”

Kirel, he argued, would be able to “see with her own eyes the places where Nazi Germany committed cruel crimes against Poles and Jews in our country.”

“The fact that many people in Israel consider Poland to be a co-perpetrator of German crimes – not their victim – is often the result not so much of bad will as lack of knowledge and incomplete education,” Jabłoński added.

Israel and Poland have engaged in heated debates about the Holocaust over the years, with senior Israeli officials blaming the country for taking part in spreading antisemitism.

In 2019, then Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz caused a diplomatic spat with Poland when he said that “Poles collaborated with the Nazis, definitely. As (former prime minister) Yitzhak Shamir said, they suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk.”

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki fired back at Katz, calling his comment “nothing short of racism.”