2017-01-18 09:57 update: 2018-09-27, 00:26
Prezydent RP Andrzej Duda (P), były ambasador Izraela w Polsce Szewach Weiss (C) oraz pierwsza dama Agata Kornhauser-Duda (L) Fot. PAP/Radek Pietruszka
Polish President Andrzej Duda Tuesday in Jerusalem decorated former Israeli Ambassador to Poland Shevach Weiss with Poland's highest state distinction, the Order of the White Eagle.
Awarding the distinction to Weiss, Duda called him "a son of the Jewish nation and Polish soil" and recalled his contributions to deepening relations between Israel and Poland.
Thanking Weiss, Duda said the ex-ambassador "always spoke the truth, also in difficult matters", and remarked that "this truth often defended both (Poland's - PAP) friends and the Poles as a nation".
Weiss, a long-time head of the Israeli Knesset, called it "symbolic and moving" that he was being awarded the Order of the White Eagle in Jerusalem. He added that the distinction was in fact deserved by all Israeli envoys to Poland, whose mission "was no easy matter" in view of the fact that the Nazis carried out the World War Two Holocaust on Polish soil.
Earlier in the day Duda addressed Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Institute, where he stressed that there "could be no consent to hatred and anti-Semitism, either among politicians or ordinary people".
"There can never be consent to hatred, to anti-Semitism, not only among politicians but also among ordinary people, citizens of the world. Ideologies which foment such hatred can never be passed by with indifference", the Polish president said.
In Jerusalem Duda also laid flowers at the tombs of former Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. (PAP)
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