[3] The legislation is part of the historical policy of the Law and Justice party which seeks to present a narrative of ethnic Poles exclusively as victims and heroes.
[9] A 2006 amendment with some of the same aims, Article 132a of the Polish Penal Code, was passed in 2006 with the efforts of Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro but was invalidated two years later on procedural grounds.
[3] The proposed legislation was criticized internationally as an attempt to suppress discussion of crimes that had been committed during the Holocaust by Polish citizens.
A non-protest charge was filed against the BBC for a production on the Auschwitz concentration camp that used the term "Polish Jewish ghettos".
A court action aimed at protecting the Republic of Poland’s or the Polish Nation’s reputation may be brought by a non-governmental organisation within the remit of its statutory activities.
[29] In late June 2018, the Polish government decided to stop waiting for a ruling from the constitutional court and in a hasty process, the legislation passed in record speed, only eight and a half hours, modified the act.
[36] Uladzislau Belavusau writes that, despite repeal of criminal sanctions, "the fears that the 2018 Law may negatively impact on freedom of expression about Polish history have solid foundations...
"[33] American jurist Alexander Tsesis states that the law, even its revised form, "restricts the acquisition, expression, and dissemination of knowledge" and "its ambiguity makes it uncertain who will be punished and for what communications", leading to a chilling effect on "satire, political commentary, historical analysis, and eyewitness testimony".
He concludes that "Poland's effort to control the public spread of information is likely to lead to misleading conclusions that downplay victims' sufferings and incite hate propaganda.
The law "is the most recent proof that in Poland the past continues to be seen as a collection of indisputable truths, not open to divergent interpretations and historical debate".
[38][39] Constitutional law scholar Wojciech Sadurski states that "[t]he chilling effect of such penal and civil sanctions upon scholarly or journalistic debates regarding the darker sides of Polish history is obvious" and that the law "concerns not so much statements of fact, but rather an opinion: an opinion about (the alleged) responsibility of, say, passive onlookers.
"[41] He also expressed the opinion that it did not meet the requirement of being necessary in a democratic society in order to allow a restriction in freedom of speech per Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
On 31 January 2018, before the Polish Senate vote on the bill, Deputy Prime Minister Beata Szydło said: "We Poles were victims, as were the Jews ...
[46] The Polish Bishops' Conference noted a rise in anti-Semitism after the amendment was passed, declaring the phenomenon "contrary to the Christian tenet of loving one's neighbor",[47] and the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland said the legislation has led to a "growing wave of intolerance, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism", making many members fearful for their safety.
Israel's Foreign Ministry director-general Yuval Rotem reported that preserving the memory of the Holocaust takes priority over international relations.
[56] Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, has opined: "There is no doubt that the term 'Polish death camps' is a historical misrepresentation ... .
However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion.
Writing in Haaretz, he called for a reappraisal of Israeli Holocaust education policy, to more greatly emphasize German culpability and Polish resistance during the March of the Living.
[59] In the U.S., Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed "disappointment" in the bill, adding: "Enactment of this law adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry.
[64] Jeffrey Kopstein of the University of Toronto and Jason Wittenberg of the University of California, Berkeley, authors of the book, Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust, about anti-Jewish violence in occupied Poland after the Nazi invasion of Soviet Union, opine that the purpose of the new bill "is clear: to restrict discussion of Polish complicity."
They also suggest that "Poland's current government will likely face the unpalatable prospect of enforcing an unenforceable law and denying what the mainstream scholarly community has increasingly shown to be true: Some Poles were complicit in the Holocaust.
[9] Article 2a was criticized because the law singled out "Ukrainians" as the only national group explicitly stated to have carried out crimes, while the only action qualified as "genocide" was the massacres of Poles in Volhynia.
[74][75] Article 1 - the mission statement of the Institute - was changed to include "protecting the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation".