In 2006, the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, passed a law which stated: “Whoever publicly accuses the Polish Nation of participation in, or responsibility for, communist or Nazi crimes is punishable by imprisonment of up to three years.”

That, however, was during the nationalist Law and Justice Party’s first two-year reign, when the party did not control the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s highest court. As a result, the law did not go into effect. Twelve years later, at the initiative of the Deputy Minister of Justice, the law was reintroduced in parliament and passed the Sejm in amended form on January 26, 2018 — the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It then passed in the Senate, the upper house of parliament, on February 1 at two o’clock in the morning, without amendments. Several days later it was signed by President Andrzej Duda of the Law and Justice Party (PiS).

The law’s passage was covered as a major story by most of the world’s major media outlets. All reported the same thing: Poland denies the Holocaust. But to understand the alarm this episode caused in Israel, the US, Russia, Germany and other countries, let us take a look at this controversial law and the heightened state of tension between Poland and its foreign partners that has suddenly become apparent after years of going unnoticed.