At last week’s commemoration in Jerusalem of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Polish delegation was conspicuously absent. The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, boycotted the event because his Russian counterpart had been asked to give a speech but he had not, and also on the grounds that the ceremony, which is normally held at the site of the death camp, shouldn’t have been moved to Jerusalem. To Melanie Phillips this incident demonstrates how Jews and Israel have been caught in the crossfire of competing Polish and Russian efforts at historical revisionism:

Russia and Poland [are now] accusing one another of facilitating or standing idly by Hitler’s assault on Europe and the slaughter of the Jews. The Soviet Union may have made its infamous pact with Germany in 1939 merely as a defensive measure, as Vladimir Putin has implied. And the Soviet Union was critical to the eventual defeat of Hitler. Nevertheless, that pact gave Hitler the confidence to start a world war by invading Poland. The Polish government believes that Putin’s main motive in provoking this row is to weaken Polish influence in the European Union.

If Putin, however, was being cynical, Poland’s revisionism has been egregious. . . . It is extraordinarily offensive to claim that the state of Israel, which arose from the ashes of the Holocaust, should have no role in commemorating the liberation of the most infamous of the Nazi extermination camps.

Such arrogance is of a piece with Poland’s appalling historical revisionism. True, its history is complex. The Poles were indeed badly victimized by the Nazis, forming the second-largest group murdered in the extermination camps. They also suffered greatly from Soviet oppression. . . . It’s also the case that more Christian Poles have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations for risking their lives to aid Jews during the Nazi period than citizens of any other country in Europe. But . . . there were also Poles who helped the Germans hunt down Jews and kill them.

[W]hat Poland goes to such lengths to deny is that [its] culture has always been riddled with anti-Semitism, due in large measure to the primitive prejudices promulgated by the Catholic Church. . . . This Auschwitz row is effectively holding the memory of the Jewish dead hostage to international politics. It tells us yet again that, despite such commemorations, too many still regard the Jews as little more than a troublesome and even despised impediment to their own agendas.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.