Polish President Andrzej Duda has reportedly blamed the increase on antisemitic attacks in his country on Israel.

He was referring to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who caused a diplomatic row earlier this year when he repeated the comments of former President Yitzhak Shamir that “the Poles suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk”.

According to the website Jewish Insider, Mr Duda said that Mr Katz’s conduct had resulted in increased anti-Jewish incidents and that some of his countrymen had advised him not to go to Israel until the Foreign Minister apologised.

The Polish president is said to have made the remark while meeting American Jewish leaders at the Polish Consulate in New York during a visit to the United Nations.

The website reported witnesses as saying that Mr Duda's words were defended by Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg, who recently received Poland’s Order of Merit.

The history of the Holocaust has become a highly contentious issue in Poland. Last year its senate passed a controversial law making it illegal to suggest Poland was complicit in the extermination of the Jews.

As a result of Mr Katz’s comments in February, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki pulled out of a meeting for EU leaders in Jerusalem.

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who attended the meeting with Mr Duda, said he had objected when Mr Mosberg had suggested that Mr Katz’s comments had created antisemitism in Poland.

Rabbi Boteach also described the Foreign Minister’s comments as “not just factually wrong but an affront to Jewish values”.

He wrote that the Polish President has met Jewish leaders during the annual UN gathering for several years and the meeting with Mr Duda was “amicable and respectful”.