Israel’s influential Haaretz newspaper said on its Website that the gathering took place Sunday, February 9, in the Polish city of Krakow at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. "The Jews are attacking us! We need to defend ourselves," Professor Bogoslav Wolniewicz was quoted as saying, to stormy applause.
The meeting was organized by the Committee Against Defamation of the Church and For Polishness and Catholic broadcaster Radio Maryja, which has been criticized by the Vatican over its perceived anti-Semitic and populist rhetoric.
Local residents were informed of the service by posters that reportedly proclaimed: "The kikes will not continue to spit on us." Witnesses said the huge church was packed, with people sitting on the stairs and standing n the aisles. After the service opened with prayer and song 91-year-old bishop of Krakow, Albin Malysiak, allegedly began inflaming the crowd with his sermon.
LOVING HOMELAND
"A man who does not love his homeland, but some sort of international entity, apparently also does not love his nearest and dearest," he was overheard saying. Radio Maryja commentator Jerzy Robert Nowak condemned spoke about the new and controversial book by Princeton University professor Jan T. Gross titled ‘Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz’.
The newly released Polish edition of the book has confronted the country with a difficult chapter in its history: the deaths of Jews at the hands of Poles in the aftermath of World War Two. It has added to a debate about anti-Semitism in this Eastern European country, which saw its Jewish population — once Europe’s largest — nearly wiped out in the Holocaust.
The book was first released in the United States in 2006, where it received war reviews. But in Poland, the book has been condemned for allegedly labeling all of postwar Polish society as anti-Semitic. "It’s important that we carry our fight to its conclusion, because Gross and his supporters are marginal, and we will not permit anyone to punish Poland. Leave us in peace. Leave us alone," Nowak reportedly said Sunday, February 9.
MORE ANGER
The speakers not only directed their anger at Gross but also "at Jews in general, at Jews from Brooklyn in particular, at Poles who are willing to sell them anything for money, at Righteous Among the Nations Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, at a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office responsible for Jewish-Polish affairs; and at the newspaper that, in their eyes, represents the Polish left, Gazeta Wyborcza, and its editor, Adam Michnik," Haaretz observed.
There were apparently questions from the audience at the end, mostly of the "how do we defend ourselves against attacks on the church and on Poland" variety. "The best thing is to get organized," Nowak apparently responded. "This was not a pogrom, but it was close," commented Haaretz’s Correspondent in Warsaw, Anshel Pfeffer.
It came after a series of other anti-Semitic incidents in Poland and other Eastern European nations, including Hungary, where in the latest attacks two dozen tomb stones were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery and up to 2000 Neo-Nazis gathered in Budapest.
There has been concerns that economic hardship related to these countries’ European transition will fuel nationalism and violence directed against Jews and Gypsies, who prefer to be known as Roma, and foreigners. (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos reporting from Budapest).
