But he doubts whether the new law will be effective.
Under the planned new rules, anyone who suggests that Poland was complicit in crimes committed by Hitler’s Nazi German regime faces up to three years in jail or a fine.
According to Weiss, the law would only be enforceable within Poland.
He added that, like laws banning the use of the swastika which are in place in some countries – including Poland, the new law would be difficult to police.
Weiss also said that it would be difficult to prove to a court whether the phrase was used maliciously and not out of ignorance, adding that, in any case, it would be unlikely that Poland would take to court a high-ranking foreign politician caught using the phrase.
He also highlighted that, while the phrase is most often used because of a lack of understanding of Poland's World War II history, some may be using it intentionally.
“What happened in those days was so shameful and terrible that if you can find someone and put the blame on them and evade responsibility – there are some doing that,” Weiss said.
The lower house of Polish parliament has passed a bill to change Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a government-affiliated organisation which prosecutes crimes against Poles during and after WWII.
Under the new rules, anyone who publicly ascribes blame or joint blame to the Polish nation or state for crimes committed by Nazi Germany or for war crimes or other crimes against humanity would face up to three years in prison or a fine.
Between one and 1.5 million people died at the largest of the Nazi German camps in Poland, Auschwitz-Birkenau, near the southern city of Kraków, the vast majority of whom were Jews, and more than 1.5 million others died in other camps located in what is now Poland.
Poland has long been campaigning against the use of the expression “Polish death camps” in foreign media.
Weiss was born in 1935 in Borysław, eastern Poland, which after the war became part of Ukraine.
He survived the Holocaust, rescued by Poles and Ukrainians.
Now a lecturer at Warsaw University, he served as Israel's ambassador to Poland from 2001 to 2003. (vb/pk)