Speaking to reporters in Luanda, Angola, on Monday, Tusk said he "could not believe" what he read in the post, published a day earlier on the social media platform X.
Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust remembrance authority based in Jerusalem, wrote that "Poland was the first country where Jews were forced to wear a distinctive badge in order to isolate them from the surrounding population."
The post went on to describe a November 23, 1939 order by Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of the so-called General Government, a German-run administration set up in occupied Polish territories.
The decree required all Jews aged 10 and over to wear a white armband with a blue Star of David on their right arm.
Tusk said that, as written, the message suggested Polish responsibility for measures imposed by Nazi Germany during World War II.
"Yad Vashem is a very serious institution," he told journalists. "Jews and this institution have no need to distort history."
The Polish prime minister added that the wording looked "not like a mistake, but like bad will on the part of whoever edited that text, because it is so contrary to history and so obviously untrue."
He said he hoped "this Yad Vashem disgrace, in this specific case, will awaken their attention and conscience and that they will not do such foolish things again."
Tusk added that, in his view, there was no doubt in Israel about who was responsible for the persecution and murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland.
"I am convinced that in Israel everyone knows that it was the Germans, the Nazis, Hitler, Governor Frank, who are responsible for what happened in Poland between 1939 and 1945, and for crimes against Polish citizens and Jews living in Poland,” he said.
He added that he expected Yad Vashem to avoid "similar errors" in the future and to issue an unambiguous position on the matter.
Polish officials reacted within hours of the original post.
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski publicly asked Yad Vashem to clarify that, when Jews were forced to wear the armband, Poland was under German occupation and the measure was ordered by the occupying authorities.
Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who is also defense minister, wrote on X that Poland was at the time occupied by Nazi Germany and that "it was the occupiers that introduced those heinous rules."
Government spokesman Adam Szłapka wrote: "We cannot allow history to be falsified. It was not Poland that introduced laws forcing Jews to wear identifying marks. These regulations were imposed by Nazi Germany after it invaded and occupied Poland. Poles and Polish Jews were victims of the Holocaust - never its authors."
'It was Germany that introduced and enforced this antisemitic law'
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, southern Poland, also criticised the Yad Vashem post on X, calling it a "false message that distorts history."
The museum said: "It seems that if anyone should know historical facts, it is Yad Vashem. They should be fully aware that Poland at that time was occupied by Germany, and that it was Germany that introduced and enforced this antisemitic law."
Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state body that researches and documents crimes committed under Nazi and communist rule, said that "a lack of knowledge about the German regulations imposed on Polish society enslaved by the German Reich (including Jews), or ignoring them, is unbecoming of institutions such as Yad Vashem."
On Sunday evening, Yad Vashem posted a follow-up message on X, pointing out that the article linked under its original post states that the order to wear armbands with the Star of David was issued by the German authorities.
Poland summons Israeli ambassador
On Monday afternoon, the Polish foreign minister announced he had decided to summon the Israeli ambassador because "the misleading post has not been amended."
Yad Vashem is Israel’s central institution for documenting the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust and commemorating its victims. It was founded in 1953.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP