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IN PHOTO: Students from Germany visit the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem's Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem April 14, 2015. Beginning Wednesday night, Israel marks its annual memorial day commemorating the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War Two. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

U.S. Ambassador to Poland Stephen Mull apologised for FBI Director James Comey’s comment which had offended several people. Comey said that some Polish people had been accomplices in the Holocaust.

Comey said at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that the Nazi murderers and accomplices in Germany, Poland, Hungary and many other places did not believe that they were doing something evil. According to the FBI director, they convinced themselves that it was the right thing to do. He said that the murderers believed that they had to do it.

Mull, on the other hand, said that Comey did not speak for the United States. "Any suggestion that Poland, or any other countries other than Nazi Germany, bear responsibility for the Holocaust, is a mistake, harmful and insulting," he said. Mull was attending the ceremonies on the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis. He said that it was Nazi Germany which had borne the sole responsibility for the Holocaust.

Polish authorities, who took offense by Comey’s comments, noted that Nazis had killed six million Polish people, half of whom were Jews. Rabbi Abraham Cooper said that the people of Poland got upset whenever someone referred to “Polish concentration camp” or “Polish death camps.” The associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that it was important to remember that such incidents had taken place in occupied Poland.

Cooper said that Poland had a complicated history before and during the Holocaust. He said that largest number of righteous gentiles honoured by Israel's Holocaust memorial had come from Poland. On the other hand, he added that it was true that the level of anti-Semitism in Poland on the eve of the war had been extremely high.

Hungary too was offended by the FBI director’s comments. The Hungarian foreign ministry said on Monday that Comey’s comments had reflected “astonishing insensitivity and impermissible superficiality.” “We are not accepting from anyone such generalisations and defamation of Hungary, the Hungarian people,” the ministry said.

Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt said that Comey’s comments, though not wrong in the literal sense, were “inartful.” Lipstadt penned the 1993 book "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory."

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au