Poland's recently elected nationalist government wants to make it a crime to imply that the country bears responsibility for Nazi crimes committed on Polish soil.

Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro has called for new legislation to punish the use of the phrase "Polish death camps" when referring to Nazi concentration camps in Poland.

A drafted bill aims to preserve the "honour" of the Polish people. It calls for the camps to be described as "Nazi extermination camps" or "camps in occupied Poland" and would make it illegal to say that Poland "took part, organised or was co-responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich".

People could face up to five years in prison if found guilty.

Meanwhile, the Polish government is contemplating withdrawing an Order of Merit from the Polish-Jewish historian Jan Tomasz Gross.

Gross said that Poles murdered more Jews during the Second World War than they killed Nazis

Mr Gross, a lecturer at Princeton university, was awarded the medal in 1996 by Poland's former president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, for his research into the Holocaust, Polish-Jewish relations, and his documentation of atrocities committed by Poles against their Jewish neighbours.

His books - among them Neighbours, Fear and Golden Harvest - caused uproar and many in Poland accused him of being a "traitor".

The move by the Polish government comes in the wake of German magazine Die Welt's interview with Mr Gross last September in which the historian claimed that "Poles murdered more Jews during the Second World War than they murdered Nazis".

He also accused many Poles of handing their Jewish neighbours over to the Nazis.

A few MPs filed a complaint to Poland's General Prosecutor and demanded that he launch an investigation into the historian's remarks. The prosecutor decided there were no grounds for prosecution.

The spokesperson for Polish President Andrzej Duda said that the office received petitions with thousands of signatures demanding that Mr Gross's Order of Merit be revoked.

Jan Dziedziczak, the ruling Law and Justice party's representative in the parliamentary culture committee, said: "The withdrawal of the Order of Merit from Gross will be a very symbolic act. It will serve as a proof to public opinion in Poland and abroad that Gross is the enemy of Poland.

"As a Polish ex-citizen, Gross should be called a traitor and the consequences of his betrayal might be withdrawing his Medal of Honour. I think that it is worth considering this idea."

The government's plan angered many academics in Poland and abroad. Some of them sent a letter to the Polish president, urging him to block it.

"Such a move will damage Poland's image and endanger the freedom of speech and academic research in Poland," their letter said.