WARSAW — Poland’s Foreign Ministry urgently summoned US Ambassador Stephen Mull on Sunday to ‘‘protest and demand an apology,’’ saying the head of the FBI suggested that Poles were accomplices in the Holocaust.
FBI Director James Comey made the remarks in an article about the Holocaust that was published by the Washington Post on Thursday. It was adapted from a speech he gave Wednesday at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In the article, Comey said, ‘‘In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do.’’
Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said Comey’s words were unacceptable in Poland.
‘‘To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War II,’’ Kopacz said. ‘‘I would expect full historical knowledge from officials who speak on the matter.’’
After meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Leszek Soczewica on Sunday, Mull said he would contact the FBI about the matter. Earlier in the day, Mull said that Comey’s words were ‘‘wrong, harmful, and offensive,’’ and did not reflect the US administration’s views.
The meeting was held shortly after Mull attended ceremonies marking the 72d anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazi Germans, who transported tens of thousands of the residents who remained in the ghetto to their deaths at the Majdanek camp operated by the Germans near the Polish city of Lublin.
Nazi Germany brutally occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945, and ran death camps there, killing millions of Jews, Poles, and others.