Jew burned in effigy by Polish anti-migrant demonstrators

Because it is always about them, because no one is a victim but them, because no one counts but them.

JERUSALEM POST

Anti-immigrant boiled over into anti-Semitism in Poland on Wednesday when a protest against taking in Muslim refugees ended with the burning of an effigy of a haredi Orthodox Jew holding the flag of the European Union.

Several dozen people were reported in attendance at the rally, in the western Polish city of Wroclaw, which was held in the wake of last Friday’s Paris terrorist attacks, one of whose perpetrators was said to have entered the EU with the flood of Syrian refugees.

The crowd shouted: “United Catholic Poland! National radicalism! Down with the European Union!”  The demonstration was organized by the National Radical Camp and All-Polish Youth.

“Our duty, the duty of lawmakers and the government, is to say that we won’t take a single Islamist in to Poland because Poland is for Poles,” proclaimed one of the demonstration’s speakers.

At the end of the demonstration one of the participants set fire to a previously prepared effigy of a haredi Orthodox Jew. “God, Honor and Fatherland,” the crowd then chanted.

“What happened last night in Wroclaw is outrageous and concerning. We cannot help but to remember how Jews were burnt in effigy in the 1930’s and today by Hamas,” Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

“We are moved by the strong moral voice and clear condemnation of this action by the Mayor of Wroclaw, Rafal Dutkiewicz.  We are certain that others in Poland will do the same very soon,” he said.

“Poland has a new government and it appears that anti-Semites like ONR are under the belief that they have support from this new government for such actions.  We are certain that this is not true but we also hope to hear clear and moral statements to this effect in the very near future. This is just one more example showing how the hatred for migrants comes from the same place as the classic hatred for Jews.”

While scholars largely agree that, unlike countries such as Lithuania, the former eastern bloc nation has for the most part faced up to its anti-Semitic past, there is progress still to be made and issues related to Holocaust memory and Jew hatred still occasionally come up.

Wednesday’s incident comes only a week after the nominee for the country’s Defense Minister came under fire by Jewish groups for stating that while there are doubts as to the authenticity of the book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it does contain a kernel of truth.

“I read it. It is very interesting. Some say it is authentic, some say it’s not. I am not a specialist. Experience shows that there are such groups in Jewish circles,” said Antoni Macierewicz.

The book, which purported to prove the existence of a Jewish cabal secretly controlling the world, was exposed decades ago as a czarist forgery and is not considered credible by mainstream academics or researchers.

Despite the statement having been made in 2002, the Anti-Defamation League jumped on it as a sign of “virulent anti-Semitism,“ demanding that Macierewicz recant before being allowed to continue his candidacy for the position.

The Protocols and the attitudes therein “led Europe into the catastrophe of the Second World War,” said Dr. Charles Asher Small, director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy, at the time.

When the same text is used to legitimize violence against Jews in the Middle East, he said, it is incumbent on “people of goodwill” not to “allow this hatred to enter into the body politic of Poland and of Europe, for we all know what this can create.”

The local Jewish community told the Post that they had accepted Macierewicz’s apology and that it indicated that there “is a general attitude of condemning anti-Semitism.”

Last month, the Polish episcopate declared anti-Semitism a sin, drawing praise from Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, who described the move as “a clear and important declaration of moral and historic value not only for Poland but for Europe and beyond.”

May’s Polish Presidential election saw opposing candidates spar over their countrymen’s role in aiding and abetting the murder of their Jewish neighbors during the German occupation, with the opposition candidate excoriating the incumbent for attempting “to destroy Poland’s good name” by admitting any degree of culpability.