POLAND 2001-2

 

Populist, nationalist and antisemitic parties and right-wing parties with far right connections won some 40 percent of the vote in the September 2001 parliamentary elections. The Liga Polskich Rodzin became the first party of the antisemitic extreme right in postwar Polish history to gain seats in parliament. The level of antisemitic activity remained high in relation to the very small size of the Jewish community in Poland. Extreme nationalists and antisemites, including members of parliament, continued their campaign against commemoration of the 1941 Jedwabne massacre. The participation of President Aleksander Kwasniewski in the official ceremony commemorating the massacre was an important step in Polish acknowledgment of responsibility for the event.

 

the jewish community

There are some 5,000–10,000 Jews in Poland out of a total population of close to 40 million. Most Jews live in Warsaw, Wroclaw, Krakow and Lodz, but there are smaller communities in several other cities. There are virtually no Jews in the eastern part of Poland where once large, important communities existed, such as those of Lublin and Bialystok.

The Union of Jewish Religious Communities (Zwiazek Kongregacji Wyznania Mojzeszowego), or Kehilla, and the secular Jewish Socio-Cultural Society (Towarsztwo Spoleczno-Kulturalne Zydowskie), or Ferband, are the two leading communal organizations and these, together with other Jewish groups, are linked by membership in the KKOZRP, which acts as an umbrella organization.

There is a Jewish primary school in Warsaw maintained by the Lauder Foundation, which has been active in rehabilitating Jewish life in Poland, especially through youth projects, including summer and winter camps. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is also active in Poland, particularly in social welfare activities. The leading Jewish publications are the monthly Midrasz, Dos Jidische Wort, Jidele for youth and Sztendlach for primary school children. Significantly, all of these publications appear in Polish, except for Dos Jidische Wort which is published in a bi-lingual Yiddish-Polish edition.

Other important institutions are the Jewish Historical Institute (which opened its revamped museum in June 2000), E.R. Kaminska State Yiddish Theater in Warsaw and the Jewish Cultural Center in Krakow. There are centers for Jewish studies in Warsaw University and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The Polish government supports plans to erect a hi-tech inter-active Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The proposed institution would be built opposite the Ghetto Monument and funds are being collected to advance this project.

In April 2001, President Kwasniewski vetoed legislation that would have provided for the restoration of private property to Polish citizens only – clearly discriminating against Jewish claimants, the great majority of whom are not domiciled in Poland and are not Polish citizens. In the absence of legislation, no mechanism yet exists that would provide for the return of private assets and the matter continues to be the subject of national and international debate. Jewish factionalism has interrupted the smooth functioning of the fund created to retrieve Jewish communal assets. The restoration of communal property to the Jewish communities and to the Foundation for the Preservation of the Jewish Heritage in Poland continues apace. Among the most impressive buildings returned is the synagogue in Poznan, which was turned into an indoor swimming hall by the Germans, and functioned as such until the present day. A US-based foundation has been established to raise money for restoring the building and to assist in planning its future.

 

PARLIAMENTARY organizations AND

EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

Political Parties

Populist, nationalist and antisemitic parties and right-wing parties with far right connections won some 40 percent of the vote in the September 2001 parliamentary elections. The traditionally antisemitic extreme right has its own independent parliamentary representation for the first time in postwar Polish history. The Liga Polskich Rodzin (League of Polish Families – LPR) now constitutes an important political force in the country after winning 7 percent of the vote and 40 seats (out of 460) in the parliamentary elections. The LPR, which incorporated the All-Polish Youth (see below), as well as other groups such as the Stronnictwo Narodowe (National Party – SN), was formed shortly before the election. Claiming to continue the tradition of pre-war Endecja (the National Democratic movement), the party was formed on the initiative of Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, founder and director of the Catholic nationalist Radio Maryja (see below), from which it draws most of its support.

Many LPR leaders, such as Roman Giertych, honorary chairman of All-Polish Youth, have a history of activity on the militant nationalist fringe. Giertych’s grandfather, Jedrzej, a radical leader and ideologue of the 1930s Endecja, was notorious for his obsessive antisemitism and open admiration for fascism. Roman Giertych’s father, Professor Maciej Giertych, represents the LPR in parliament. Another prominent LPR representative, Zygmunt Wrzodak, is hardline antisemitic chairman of the Solidarity trade union branch in the Ursus tractor factory.

            One of the founders and leaders of the LPR is Ryszard Bender, a historian and a former MP in the communist parliament of the 1980s. Despite Bender’s record of Holocaust denial and his campaign against commemoration of the Jedwabne massacre (see below), after the elections the Sejm (parliament) appointed him a judge to represent his party on the State Court of Justice (Trybunal Stanu), an important constitutional body.

            Samoobrona (Self-Defense) is a populist movement led by Andrzej Lepper, which won 10 percent of the vote in the 2001 election. In recent years Lepper has tried to distance himself from his far right past (when Joseph Göbbels and Jean-Marie Le Pen were his role models), by condemning antisemitism and denying alleged contacts with the extremist international Schiller Institute, founded by US far right leader Lyndon LaRouche. Nevertheless, the attendance of Nazi skinheads at the movement’s election meetings indicates that links with the far right have not been cut completely. Local branches in Koszalin and Szczecin have been infiltrated by members of local National Socialist neo-pagan groups, including Niklot (see below). The center-right weekly Gazeta Polska reported that a Samoobrona senator, Henryk Dzido, was a close associate and legal adviser to the convicted antisemite Kazimierz Switon, who occupied a historic site at Oswiecim (Auschwitz) for over a month in 1998. In January 2002 Gazeta Polska reported that Lepper was behind the rumor spread in Poland that 4,000 Jews remained home on 11 September because they had prior knowledge of the attacks. In 2002 Lepper resumed cooperation with the antisemitic activist and publisher Leszek Bubel (see below).

 

Extra-Parliamentary Groups

The “conservative-liberal” Unia Polityki Realnej (Real Politics Union – UPR), supported by university students and small businessmen, has recently become more nationalistic. UPR founder and leader Janusz Korwin-Mikke repeatedly mentions his implacable opposition to “Jewish freemasonry” and “Jewish communism.” For the 2001 election campaign the UPR joined forces with the mainstream liberal Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform – PO) as a junior partner, but none of their candidates were elected.

The nationalist Catholic youth movement Mlodziez Wszechpolska (All-Polish Youth – MW) is based on the tradition of a pre-war group of the same name. In the 1920s and 1930s the MW was responsible for numerous acts of violence against Jewish students at Polish universities. Today the MW consists largely of skinheads and is enthusiastically supported by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk. For several years the MW has promoted extreme right music and organized concerts of skinhead bands. Since 2001 the MW has intensified its activities nationwide. Although a declared Catholic organization, the MW has collaborated with the neo-pagan Niklot Association on several occasions, especially during street demonstrations, for example, in Szczecin. Several MW members were elected as deputies to the Sejm, representing the LPR.

Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski (National Rebirth of Poland – NOP) is possibly the most dynamic extremist organization at the grass-roots level and among the young. It claims to be an incarnation of the pre-war Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny (National-Radical Camp – ONR), which was banned by the Polish government in 1934. It is estimated that the NOP has some 500 activists nationally, mostly neo-Nazi-skinheads. The antisemitic culture which dominates many sports stadiums in Poland, where rival gangs routinely call each other’s clubs “Jewish” as a term of abuse, is a fertile recruiting ground for the NOP. Party leader Adam Gmurczyk is openly antisemitic: “Europe was great, it was Christian – because it was antisemitic … antisemitism is the virtue that we must cultivate with great care.” The NOP subscribes to the Catholic fundamentalist ideology of Marcel Lefebvre (who rejected the 1965 Vatican II Council reforms) and its leaders have attacked Pope John Paul II for his alleged betrayal of the “true faith.” The NOP denies the Holocaust, and has distributed several books espousing historical revisionism. Bartlomiej Zborski, who writes and translates publications promoting Holocaust denial is employed as a senior editor at Bellona, the state-owned publishing house of the Ministry of Defense.

The NOP opposes Poland’s membership in the European Union and in NATO. The party publication Szczerbiec (The Sword), distributed by the state-owned company Ruch, proposed that guerrilla methods be used against NATO troops in Poland. A recent edition of Szczerbiec eulogized Usama bin Ladin.

The NOP has sympathizers in other countries, notably among the US Polish community, including organizations such as the New York-based Polish Patriots’ Association and the Chicago-based revisionist Polish Historical Institute. Significantly, the NOP is also the Polish branch of the International Third Position (ITP), an alliance of European neo-fascist organizations (see UK). The NOP organized ideological and paramilitary training for member groups of the ITP, including the German NPD. The Italian terrorist Roberto Fiore and several other foreign extremists (including British Holocaust denier David Irving) are listed as members of the editorial team of Szczerbiec. The NOP also collaborates with the US-based National Alliance, promoting the Polish translation of the novels of deceased Alliance leader William Pierce, such as The Turner Diaries and The Hunter, which contain an apocalyptical blueprint for racial genocide initiated by a group of neo-fascist terrorists. The Polish translator of the books is Bartlomiej Zborski (mentioned above). In April 2000 then Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek publicly promised to consider legal action against the NOP, but no such action has yet been taken.

The Niklot Association, led by former leftist Tomasz Szczepanski, is a small but dynamic neo-pagan organization. Niklot recruits its members from the skinhead and black metal music subcultures. Its ideology is based on the pre-war Zadruga group, which sought to purge Poland of Judeo-Christianity. Some leading Niklot members are active in Front Polski (Polish Front – FP), a tiny nationalist group led by retired navy admiral Marek Toczek and science-fiction author and translator Lech Jeczmyk. Niklot leaders cooperate with the Stowarzyszenie Wspierania Kultur Etnicznych (Association for the Support of Ethnic Cultures), which publishes the bulletin Zakorzenienie (Rootedness) and is led by long-time extreme right activist Jaroslaw Tomasiewicz. This association, which is based on the New Right ideology of French writer Alain De Benoist, advocates a strict separation of ethnic groups. It operates on the fringes of the extreme right and extreme left, for example, through cooperation with the anarchist fanzine Inny Swiat (Another World). Publication of materials by members of Stowarzyszenie in Obywatel (The Citizen), the semi-official magazine of the newly formed Polish branch of the international ATTAC, testifies to it influence over this anti-globalization movement in Poland. Individual members of the group have also published their work in a wide range of journals across the political spectrum.

Several international neo-Nazi-skinhead organizations, including Blood & Honour and Combat 18, have recently formed branches in Poland. They have organized several rock concerts, notably in Gdansk.

 

antisemitic activity

Violent Incidents

The number of antisemitic incidents remained relatively high in 2001 and 2002. Some incidents may be attributed to the increase in antisemitic propaganda in the wake of the Jedwabne debate.

A fire, which broke out at the museum on the site of the former concentration camp Majdanek, on 19 May 2001, was suspected of being an arson attack. Similarly, police suspect that a fire in the synagogue at Breslau on 10 May 2002 may have been arson. They have reinforced protection of the synagogue at the community’s request.

On 8 May the Jewish cemetery of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) was desecrated. Thirty-nine tombstones were overturned and smeared with antisemitic slogans and swastikas, including the tombstone of the last Jewish inhabitant, Szymon Kluger, who died in 2000.

 

Antisemitic Propaganda and Holocaust Denial

The main disseminator of antisemitic propaganda in Poland is the Catholic-nationalist Radio Maryja), founded by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, which frequently features antisemitic broadcasts. About 4 percent of Polish society are regular listeners. Radio Maryja’s activities are largely funded by donors from Polish communities abroad, especially the US. Edward Moskal, the notoriously antisemitic chairman of the Polish American Congress (KPA), is a highly regarded figure in Polish far-right circles.

During 2001 extreme nationalists and antisemites in Poland continued their campaign against the commemoration of the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, which they deny having taken place (see ASW 2000/1 and “The Jedwabne Affair). A leading activist in this campaign is LPR leader Ryszard Bender, who during the 2001 election campaign participated in LPR television broadcasts refuting the facts about Jedwabne, and accusing President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who had taken part in the official ceremony commemorating Jedwabne (see below), of serving Jewish interest groups. Further, on 28 February 2002, during a parliamentary debate LPR members accused the chairman of the National Commemoration Institute (IPN) Professor Leon Kieres of being anti-Polish and serving Jewish interests, and even questioned his Polish origins. In December 2001 Kieres had published the findings of his investigation into the massacre. He concluded that there had been no armed German participation and there was no evidence that the Jews had been murdered by shooting; but had been burnt to death in a barn. The use of antisemitism in the parliamentary debate led numerous intellectuals, artists and other public figures to sign several open letters protesting the LPR’s behavior . The UPR was also active in the campaign against the president’s participation in commemorating the Jedwabne massacre.

Another well known antisemite involved in the campaign against the commemoration of Jedwabne is Leszek Bubel, head of the marginal Polska Partia Narodowa (Polish National Party), a former 1995 presidential candidate and publisher of several mass-circulation antisemitic magazines. The weekly Tylko Polska (Only Poland), published by Bubel is sold in state-owned Ruch kiosks throughout the country. Bubel has been a faithful supporter (and publisher) of Holocaust denier Dariusz Ratajczak. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was among the pocket books published by Bubel and distributed through Ruch. He also edited the series Get to Know the Jew, published by Goldpol in Warsaw. Bubel is received as a folk hero by antisemitic inhabitants today in Jedwabne, which he often visits to further his political interests.

 

Holocaust Commemoration and RESPONSES TO ANTISEMITISM

The participation of President Aleksander Kwasniewski in the controversial ceremony commemorating the Jedwabne massacre in July 2001 was an important step in Polish acknowledgment of responsibility for the event, despite the Church hierarchy’s refusal to take part and its holding of a separate ceremony for the victims in a Warsaw church. Kwasniewski’s speech condemning antisemitism made a strong impression on observers internationally but earned him attacks from the right wing.

Poland has adequate legal provisions to combat antisemitism, neo-fascism, and extremism, and has ratified all the major international conventions pertaining to human rights protection and anti-discrimination. A law on national and ethnic minorities is awaiting parliamentary approval. Nevertheless, these laws are weakly enforced due to a lack of political will on the part of the authorities. The government-owned Ruch, which distributes hard-line antisemitic propaganda (including the publications of the NOP and of Bubel) is a case in point.

In rare cases when legal action is actually taken against racists, it is usually against rank-and-file members or sympathizers, not leaders, of far right groups. Even when leaders of such groups have been subject to investigation, the organization itself has not. Unlike other countries (such as Germany), Poland has no special police unit or office that deals specifically with racist extremism. Nor has any state institution ever prepared a report on racism.

            The only organization which has for several years monitored racist and extremist violence is the network of voluntary correspondents set up by Nigdy Wiecej, the Never Again Association. In 2001 alone Never Again collected evidence of 228 hate crimes, mostly acts of violence committed by neo-Nazi-skinheads against those they consider “alien” on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or lifestyle. Since 1989 Never Again has documented 31 deaths resulting from extreme right attacks.

Since football stadiums are a recruiting ground for extremist organizations and neo-fascist symbols are a common sight there, the role of sports authorities, and in particular the football association (Polski Zwiazek Pilki Noznej – PZPN), in addressing this issue is important. The problem of racism in Polish football was discussed during the Extraordinary Congress of the International Football Federation (FIFA), held in Buenos Aires on 6–7 July 2001, which called upon national football associations to join the struggle against racism and to work with non-governmental organizations involved in this mission. PZPN chairman Michal Listkiewicz acknowledged the seriousness of the problem in Polish stadiums in October 2002.

In August 2001 an exhibition commemorating the murder of Sinti and Roma under Nazi occupation was opened on the grounds of Auschwitz concentration camp, where more than 20,000 Sinti and Roma were murdered.

An agreement was reached in Warsaw, in July 2001, between representatives of the International Auschwitz Council, UNESCO and the local authorities of Oswiecim and Auschwitz-Birkenau, to establish a 100-meter protective zone around these memorial sites.

Poland's Institute of National Remembrance has decided to carry out research on a pogrom against the Jewish population of Radzilow to determine whether local Poles killed hundreds of their Jewish neighbors.

A five-volume work entitled Auschwitz 1940–1945 was issued in Poland, in Polish and English, the product of 22 years of preparation by Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The book includes names of perpetrators and victims, as well as construction plans for the gas chamber and crematories.

After protests of Jewish organizations against the opening of a discotheque near Auschwitz, in a former tannery which used slave laborers, the local authorities ordered closure of the disco.