(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 6 - ''We read with dismay the headlines and most of the comments published by the Italian press on the law concerning the National Memory Institute approved by the Polish parliament'', the Polish Embassy in Rome announced in long a statement. ''We are disconcerted, because it seems clear to us that the intentions which the new law is based upon and some of its provisions have not been correctly interpreted''.

''The headlines on the pages of newspapers and radio and television news sound unfair and painful to us. Poles suffered enormously during the Second World War. Every family has lost at least one of their beloved relatives. Not many remember that the Nazis' ''Generalplan Ost'' envisaged that millions of ''sub-human'' people, including the Poles, would be exterminated or enslaved by the Aryan race. Poland cannot forget this aspect.

Therefore, how can we be accused of denial? On our land there are traces of the crimes committed by the Nazis.

Poland is firmly committed to preserving the museum area of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, which has become Unesco world heritage, a place visited by many young people coming from all over the world. The museum was founded in 1947 in order to preserve ''until the end of time'' the remembrance of the Nazi crimes whose victims were first of all Jews from all over Europe, but also Poles, Roma, Sinti, war prisoners and minorities that the Nazi criminal project condemned to annihilation. It is thanks to Poland that Auschwitz, transformed into a state museum, did not disappear from like many other places that had been built on the land occupied by the Nazis, and Poland assumed responsibility for the maintenance of the former Nazi camp in the last forty years.

We should also remember that that since 2007 the official name of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp on the UNESCO World Heritage List has been: ''Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi concentration and extermination camp (1940-1945) ''. The new name was presented to the UNESCO assembly including Poland and Israel and it was accepted, without any opposition, by over 150 countries.

Poland tries to keep its memory alive not only by taking care of the former extermination sites, but also through new projects that are a reminder of the millenarian common history that unites the Polish and Jewish communities. One of the most important cultural investments made in recent years was the creation in Warsaw of the important Polish Museum of the History of Polish Jews, where the relationships between the two communities that for centuries have coexisted in the same country are very well described. It is also important to remember that during the Second World War, after the Nazi invasion, when Poland was under the German occupation, nobody, acting in the name of Poland and the Polish people, ever did collaborate with the Nazis. Although there were cases of individuals working with the Germans, the Polish state can not be accused of being responsible for the Holocaust.

Therefore, regardless of the current discussion about the new law, accusing Poland of denying the Holocaust and Nazi crimes, can only be seen as a consequence of ignorance or ill will. The new law on the Institute of National Remembrance was conceived with the main aim of fighting against the denial and falsification of the truth about the Holocaust, including diminishing the responsibility of the true culprits of these crimes.

The bill has been publicly available for over a year and a half, has been openly and widely discussed and the law is based on the EU Council Framework Decision Directive 2008/913.(ANSA).