In an interview published onan Italian Catholic website, the retired Polish Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek has accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for propaganda purposes. "While it is undeniable that most of those who died in the concentration camps were Jews, there were also Gypsies, Poles, Italians and Catholics on the list," Tadeusz Pieronek was quoted as saying on the website ‘Pontifex Roma’, which is run by a traditionalist Catholic group.

“So it is not permissible to appropriate this tragedy for propaganda," he said in the posting. There were lots of Poles killed, but this truth is often ignored today…The Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention," said the 75-year-old bishop, who served as secretary-general of Poland's Bishops Conference from 1993 to 1998. The Shoah was "used as a propaganda weapon and to obtain advantages that are often unjustified," he alleged.

"You could speak just as forcefully and establish a day of remembrance for the many victims of Communism, persecuted Catholics and Christians, and so on." Accusing Jews of "intolerable arrogance," he said they "have good press because of their powerful financial means, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States. And this promotes a kind of arrogance, which I consider to be unbearable."

Pieronek also criticized Israel for building a separation barrier between its territory and the West Bank, which he called "a colossal injustice against the Palestinians, who are treated like animals and whose rights are violated, to say the least." Calling for a day honoring the Palestinians, Pieronek lamented that "with the connivance of international lobbies, we don't talk about these things much."

"Of course all this does not deny the shame of the concentration camps and the aberrations of Nazism," he said.

The bishop – who was a friend of the late Pope John Paul II – also said claims that anti-Semitism in Poland was still widespread were “a joke” and had nothing to do with reality.

The European Jewish Congress called the comments “shocking”. “We find it unacceptable that an important religious figure in Poland, only a few days away from International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is capable of making such inflammatory and false remarks,” EJC President Moshe Kantor said in a statement.

Reacting to the outcry his interview caused, Pieronek said on Monday: "I have not seen the printed text of the interview, which I have given but have not authorized. But if I were to believe in what I hear from the media then it looks as though the final form of the interview... is full of vague statements." He explicitly denied saying that he had called the Holocaust a "Jewish invention".

Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, nearly half of them came from Poland.


Read the interview (in Italian) on the ‘Pontifex Roma’ website.