Andrzej Duda

Merrill Eisenhower will join Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Polish President Andrzej Duda alongside 80 Holocaust survivors, some of whom were liberated by U.S. and Allied forces led by his great grandfather.

“Poland is a safe country and any leader visiting Poland is entitled to protection granted by the Ministry of the Interior,” Warsaw told JNS.

Bilateral ties were severely damaged last year after Warsaw passed law effectively preventing restitution to the heirs of property seized by the Nazis.

Poland has become an “anti-democratic, non-liberal country,” says Israel’s foreign minister, after Polish President Andrzej Duda approves legislation restricting claims on property stolen by the Nazis and confiscated by the communists.

It is the only European Union member-state that has not adopted a national comprehensive private-property restitution law.

“I will be clear: We have decided that I as the Polish president will not participate in the event,” said Andrzej Duda, adding that not allowing him to publicly honor Polish victims of the Holocaust was equivalent to a “distortion of the historical truth.”

Speaking with “Israel Hayom” on the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, Andrzej Duda calls it “the most tragic day in the history of the Polish nation.” Regarding reparations, he says the issue “concerns all those who lost property, irrespective of their nationality.”