60,000 strong fascist march in Warsaw for a White Europe on Poland’s independence day

 “Pray for Islamic Holocaust” reads the banner and the crowd chants “remove Jewry from power”   

Warsaw Demonstration

 It was one of the largest fascist rallies in Europe in the post-war period.  But to Interior Minister, Mariusz Błaszczak “It was a beautiful sight,”   Poland’s far-Right Law and Justice government is led by Prime Minister Beatta Beata Szydło.  

The Law and Justice Party is an anti-Semitic party, one of whose missions is to write out of history Polish collaboration with the Nazis in the murder of Jews.  This has not stopped Netanyahu welcoming Beata Szydło to Israel and returning the honour.

Poland, along with Hungary and the other East European countries are the most hostile to refugees in Europe.  Their racist hostility to Muslims and refugees is shared by most Israelis and Netanyahu which is one reason for the symbiosis between Israel and Poland.

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo

Of course the anti-Semitism of the Polish government is no obstacle to its friendliness to Israel.  As the Times of Israel reported Is new Polish law an attempt to whitewash its citizens’ roles in the Holocaust?  “the Education Minister Anna Zalewska insinuated that the Jedwabne massacre of 1941, when Poles burned alive more than 300 Jews in a barn, was a matter of “opinion.”  This was in an interview in July on the Polish public broadcaster TVN. 

Polish Newsweek, a Polish public opinion survey reported, following Zalewska’s statements that 33% of the population agreed with the minister that the Polish massacre of Jews at Jedwabne is an opinion, 29% were undecided and only 38% agreed with the statement that “Poles burned Jews in a barn in Jedwabne.” The highest percentage of disbelief was found among youth.

Polish nationalists light flares as they march through Warsaw to mark Poland’s independence. Photograph: Bartłomiej Zborowski/EPA

In fact the number of 300 Jews who were burnt alive is a conservative estimate.  Anna Bikont, in The Crime and  the Silence - A Quest for the Truth of a Wartime Massacre estimated that up to 1,600 hundred Jews were herded into a barn which was then set alive by those villagers in Jedwabne who were supporters of the Nationalist Party. Polish-Jewish historian Jan Tomasz Gross, in his book Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne concurred. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosts Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło
Official

I have already written previously about how former Law and Justice MEP Michal Kaminski, who led the Committee to Preserve the Good Name of Jedwabne, was also a vehement Zionist and was defended by Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard who described him as the ‘best friend’ that the Jews could want in the Guardian. [David Miliband's insult to Michal Kaminski is contemptible’]   In 2009 Kaminski was a guest speaker at the World Summit on Counter Terrorism:Terrorism's Global Impact - ICT's 9th International Conference at Herzliya in Israel.  And of course he paid the obligatory visit to Yad Vashem, Israel's holocaust propaganda museum.

Polish film ‘Aftermath’ explores the massacre at Jedwabne. (courtesy)

Tommy Robinson at Polish fascist march

The newly elected President of the Polish state’s Institute of National Remembrance Jaroslaw Szarek, recently told a parliamentary committee that “the perpetrators of this crime were the Germans, who used in their own machine of terror a group of Poles.”

Also present last Saturday was the founder of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson.  Robinson, like so many fascists these days, combines anti-Semitism with strong support for Zionism and Israel.  He is one of an increasing band of White Zionists.  Robinson’s affections for Zionism are reciprocated.

To many Zionists Tommy Robinson's views are attractive because of his Islamaphobia

Far Right Zionist solicitor Robert Festenstein is interview for a video with Tommy Robinson

The Jewish Chronicle reported that

‘A lawyer for the Jewish Human Rights Watch organisation has appeared alongside former EDL leader Tommy Robinson in a politically motivated video made for a right-wing media website.

Robinson meets an MP from the ruling party

Robert Festenstein is filmed by the Rebel Media Youtube site being introduced to Robinson, as he visits a Sunderland based shop owner who had been contacted by police and asked to remove a sign he had placed outside his shop relating to the funding of terrorism.

Jayda Fransen of Britain First speaks at rally in Wroclaw

Festenstein of Jewish Human Rights Watch is a far-right Zionist.  He attempted, together with fake charity Campaign Against Anti-Semitism to stop Palestine Expo 2017 in the Queen Elizabeth Centre II last July by making false allegations of anti-Semitism.

Other visitors from the British Far-Right were Jayda Fransen the Deputy Fuhrer of Britain First and a contingent from BF. They headed for Wroclaw, Poland’s third largest city which was the scene of the burning of an effigy of a Hasidic Jew about a year go.

The naked anti-Semitism of Britain First doesn’t stop former Vice Chair of the Zionist Federation, Jonathan Hoffman and other Zionist activists, including Simon Cobbs of Sussex Friends of Israel keeping company with BF’s ‘Intelligence Chief’ (I use the term Intelligence lightly) Paul Besser.  [EXCLUSIVE – Lifting the lid on Collaboration between the Far Right and Zionist Activists]

Although in Western Europe the overwhelming bulk of racism is directed towards Muslims and Roma, this is not true in Eastern Europe where anti-Semitic attitudes are common.

A counter-demonstration was much smaller. CreditMarcin Obara/European Pressphoto Agency

Even in Spain, where half the people have unfavourable attitudes to Muslims or Roma, 21% have negative attitudes to Jews.  In The Netherlands just 4% of people have negative attitudes towards Jews compared to over one-third to Muslims and Roma.

But in Eastern Europe although negative attitudes to Roma and Muslims afflict over half the population, there is still significant hostility towards Jews. 

Netanyahu and Hungary's Viktor Orban

In Poland 47% are hostile to Roma and 67% towards Muslims compared to 24% with Jews.  Given there are a maximum of 10,000 Jews in Poland this is an anti-Semitism without Jews.

In Hungary which has the largest Jewish community in Eastern and Central Europe (about 80,000) although  hostility towards Roma and Muslims are higher (64% and 72%) negative opinions of Jews are a third (32%). 

In Italy, which is surprising given the role of Italians in saving Jews during the war, 24% have hostile attitudes to Jews although this is dwarfed by a figure of 69% and 82% towards Muslims and Roma respectively.

It is clear that although anti-Semitism has virtually died in Western Europe it still plays a key ideological role in the fascist arsenal in Eastern Europe.  There is no doubt that the reason for this is the economical condition of Eastern Europe with high unemployment and poverty.  Anti-Semitism plays a different role from for example anti-Muslim racism and functions primarily on the ideological level.  The Jewish conspiracy  theory, of Jews owning the banks and controlling credit and therefore being responsible for the economic plight of these countries seems to play a large part.  It is to a great extent an anti-Semitism without any Jews.

What is also clear though is that the far-Right racist regimes of Eastern Europe combine anti-Semitism with a slavish support for Israel.  Israel in turn is more than happy to ignore the anti-Semitism of these regimes.  Why not?  Zionism has always thrived on anti-Semitism.

Tony Greenstein

White Europe’: 60,000 nationalists march on Poland’s independence day

Xenophobic phrases and far-right symbols mark event described by anti-fascists as a magnet for worldwide far-right groups

Tens of thousands of nationalist demonstrators marched through Warsaw at the weekend to mark Poland’s independence day, throwing red-smoke bombs and carrying banners with slogans such as “white Europe of brotherly nations”.

Police estimated 60,000 people took part in Saturday’s event, in what experts say was one of the biggest gathering of far-right activists in Europe in recent years.

Demonstrators with faces covered chanted “Pure Poland, white Poland!” and “Refugees get out!”. A banner hung over a bridge that read: “Pray for Islamic Holocaust.”

The march organised by far-right groups in Poland is an annual event originally to mark Poland’s independence in 1918. But according to Nick Lowles, from UK anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate, it has become an important rallying point for international far-right groups.

“The numbers attending this year seem to be bigger and, while not everyone on the march is a far-right activist or fascist, it is undoubtedly becoming more significant and is acting as a magnet for far-right groups around the world.”

Far-right marchers brandish banners depicting a red falanga, a far-right symbol dating from the 1930s. Photograph: Janek Skarżyński/AFP/Getty Images

Some participants marched under the slogan “We Want God!”, words from an old Polish religious song that the US president, Donald Trump, quoted during a visit to Warsaw earlier this year. Speakers encouraged attendants to stand against liberals and defending Christian values.

Many carried the national white-and-red flag while others held banners depicting a falanga, a far-right symbol dating to the 1930s. A demonstrator interviewed by state television TVP said he was on the march to “remove Jewry from power”.

Among the far-right leaders attending the march was the former English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, and Roberto Fiore from Italy. It also attracted a considerable number of supporters of Poland’s governing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.

TVP, which reflects the conservative government’s line, called it a “great march of patriots”, and in its broadcasts described the event as one that drew mostly ordinary Poles expressing their love of Poland, not extremists.

“It was a beautiful sight,” the interior minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, said. “We are proud that so many Poles have decided to take part in a celebration connected to the Independence Day holiday.”

The march was one of many events marking Poland’s independence in 1918, when the country regained its sovereignty at the end of the first world war after being partitioned and ruled since the late 18th century by Russia, Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian empire.

A smaller counter-protest by an anti-fascist movement took place on Saturday where, although organisers tried to keep the two groups apart, nationalists pushed and kicked several women who had a banner saying “Stop fascism” and chanted anti-fascist slogans.

“I’m shocked that they’re allowed to demonstrate on this day. It’s 50 to 100,000 mostly football hooligans hijacking patriotism,” said a 50-year-old Briton, Andy Eddles, a language teacher who has been living in Poland for 27 years. “For me it’s important to support the anti-fascist coalition and to support fellow democrats, who are under pressure in Poland today.”

Earlier in the day, the president, Andrzej Duda, presided over state ceremonies also attended by the European council president, Donald Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland.

Tusk’s appearance comes at a time when Warsaw has been increasingly at odds with Brussels because of the PiS government’s controversial interference in the courts, large-scale logging in a primeval forest and a refusal to accept migrants. Relations between PiS and Tusk have been so tense that Poland was the only country to vote against his re-election as council president in March.

Nationalist March Dominates Poland’s Independence Day

Thousands of far-right nationalists marched through Poland’s capital, Warsaw, on Saturday, waving red-and-white Polish flags and carrying flares.

The crowd at the march, which coincided with Poland’s Independence Day, commemorating the reinstatement of sovereignty at the end of World War I, far outnumbered those at official government events earlier in the day.

Some of the marchers carried the flags of far-right groups like the National Radical Camp. CreditAdam Stepien/Agencja Gazeta, via Reuters

Many participants held up Christian iconography.

But others held banners of white supremacy, including one that read “White Europe of brotherly nations,” according to The Associated Press. Still others carried signs equating Islam with terrorism, waved signs denouncing same-sex marriage, and carried banners of the National Radical Camp, an anti-Semitic group founded before World War II on extreme nationalist values.

The annual march has become something of a magnet for white supremacists and far-right groups from across Europe since it began in 2009.

As Poland has moved further to the right, the rally has grown. The right-wing Law and Justice Party, which was voted into power in 2015, has moved the nation from liberal European cooperation to an inward-facing agenda.

The slogan for Saturday’s march, “We want God,” comes from an old Polish nationalist song. President Trump quoted the phrase during his visit this year.

The crowd at a counterdemonstration, with the slogan “For our freedom and yours,” was greatly outnumbered. Some participants held umbrellas that spelled out “Stop Facism” and others carried a banner that read “Rainbow is the new black.”

Poland's New anti-Semitic Government - Israel Keeps Silent

Although Poland’s Michal Kaminski has now deserted Law & Justice for the right-wing Civic Platform party, the differences between the two parties are marginal.  Both oppose abortion and the right of women to control their own bodies, both are homophobic and anti-gay rights, both oppose same sex marriages, euthenasia and the decriminalisation of soft drugs.  Both are free-market parties that support privatisation and liberal economics and of course both are virulently nationalist.

Kaminski led the campaign against a national Polish apology for the burning alive of up to 900 Jews in Jedwabne by Poles in 1941 (see )  Kaminski was formerly a member of the fascist National Revival of Poland Party. 

Kaminski paying the ritual visit to Yad Vashem - an obligatory stop for racist visitors to Israel

Kaminski was also the Zionists’ favourite anti-Semite, being a guest of honour in Israel at the Global Counter-Terrorism Conference in Herzliya, Israel, September 2009.  He also paid his respects to the dead of the holocaust at the Yad Vashem propaganda museum, following in the wake of former Nazi John Vorster and others.

However, according to the far-right Zionist editor of the Jewish Chronicle Stephen Pollard, "Far from being an anti-Semite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israeli an MEP as exists."  ‘Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews’.    Indeed Kaminski is ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town [Brussels] where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ 

 In other words his Zionism shielded his anti-Semitism.  And Pollard wasn’t the only one.   Rabbi Schochet, member of the virulently racist Lubavitch sect, of Mill Hill synagogue, invited Kaminski to his synagogue explaining that:  “We are intending to host Michal Kaminski at an evening open to the entire community once his itinerary is confirmed. It is hoped to hold this event in liaison with Conservative Friends of Israel and I personally hope to host him in a private capacity on a Friday night.’

“I decided to extend the invitation precisely because of the ambiguity surrounding him. Mr Kaminski is known to have a colourful past but is presently a strong supporter of Israel and is leading a lobby against the anti-shechitah parties.”   JC 3.11.10.

A ‘colourful past’ is certainly one way of describing being a member of an openly anti-Semitic and fascist organisation, wearing fascist insignia and being a homophobe (among other sins). 

The following article in the liberal Jewish magazine Forward describes the anti-Semitic tendencies of Poland’s new Law & Justice Party.  It describes how in Wroclaw, a demonstration against Muslim refugees ended up burning an effigy of a Hasidic Jew, demonstrating if any proof were needed, that racism against Muslims will inevitably cross over into anti-Jewish racism.  Of course Israel has not criticised Poland’s new government.  Why should it?  They are both Islamaphobic and racist and in any case, anti-Semitism in Poland can only result in emigration to Israel, which is something that Netanyahu always welcomes.

Tony Greenstein

Poland Turns Hard to Right — and Jews Wind Up in Crosshairs

When some 50,000 people turned out in Warsaw recently to protest a plan by Poland’s ruling party to pack the nation’s constitutional court, the hard right-wing political faction responded quickly with a counter-demonstration of its own. Its counter-protest featured, among other things, a placard that mocked those claiming to defend democracy as “the committee to defend Jewish-Communist wealth.”

At around the same time in Wroclaw, Poland’s fourth largest city, crowds at a parallel demonstration to support the recently elected Law and Justice party shouted, “Wroclaw is being de-Polanized as the Jews are buying up homes in the city.”

At another Wroclaw demonstration, held November 18 to protest a European Union plan that would see Poland admit some 7,000 Syrian refugees, demonstrators denounced the proposed immigrants as Islamists — and to somehow add to this point, they set fire to a previously prepared effigy of a Hasidic Jew holding the E.U. flag.

Image: Reuters:  Rage and a Non Sequitur? To protest against the immigration of Muslims and Syrian refugees, demonstrators in Wroclaw on November 18 burn an Orthodox Jew in effigy.

“God, Honor and Fatherland,” the crowd then chanted.

Since the October 25 elections that gave the strongly nationalist Law and Justice Party an absolute majority in parliament, Poland has been a nation in crisis. Like several other countries in Europe, the right-wing party’s rise back to power after eight years in opposition was fuelled in part by anti-immigrant furor, but also anger with the corruption of the government led by the incumbent Civic Platform party. A backlash from rural Poles who feel left behind by the country’s free-market reforms also played a big role. But critics charge that Law and Justice is now using its absolute majority to implement anti-democratic measures they denounce as “Putinist.”

And amid all this, somehow, Jews have become a focus of ire among the party’s defenders in the country whose huge Jewish population was decimated in the Nazi Holocaust.

“This government harbors anti-Judaic sentiment which can easily become anti-Semitism,” said the Rev. John Pawlikowski, professor of social ethics and director of the Catholic-Jewish studies program at the Catholic Theological Union, in Chicago.

Among other things, Law and Justice, known also by its Polish acronym, PiS, has failed to denounce the effigy burning in Wroclaw. The party also has appointed a defense minister who’s made anti-Semitic comments and has, via its culture minister, Piotr Glinski, threatened to sue those it believes guilty of “defamation against Poland.”

Image: Getty Images:  See You in Court: Piotr Glinski (center), Poland’s minister of culture, has threatened to sue those he believes guilty of defaming his country.

“It reminds me of the Communist takeover in the 1940s,” said Andrzej Zoll, a former ombudsman for the constitutional court.

David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, will soon visit Warsaw to discuss the current situation with members of the new government. In a telephone interview December 1, Harris told the Forward that any move away from the full throttle of democracy that Poland has experienced since 1989 would be a very disturbing development.

Harris cited AJC’s partnership with the Forum for Dialogue, the largest Polish nongovernmental organization dealing with Polish-Jewish relations, which has sponsored wide-ranging Polish-Jewish dialogue since 1996.

“If the forum continues to flourish, it will be a good and welcome sign,” Harris said. “If this is not the case, everyone should be concerned, and it will be a good litmus test.”

AJC has been involved in Poland for 26 years. “We will continue to remain involved with democratic forces there,” Harris said.

Many see the new government’s drumbeat for Polish patriotism as cause for concern.

Barbara Engelking, director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research at Warsaw University, said she saw the form of national identity that PiS promotes as an immature and simplistic model that constitutes a setback in Polish thinking about the past.

Citing historical research in recent years that deals with Polish crimes against Jews, such as the 1941 massacre at Jedwabne and the murder of Jews elsewhere during the German occupation, Engelking said she had hoped this research would give the national discussion a deeper dimension that would force serious reflection and help build a mature, complex national identity with an awareness not just of Polish victimhood, but also of the crimes that Poles have committed against Jews.

Jan Zaryn, a PiS senator, disagrees. During a phone interview, he denied that nationalists were rewriting history. “We do not have to lie about our history, because it’s beautiful,” he said, citing the valor of the Polish underground during the German occupation and the loss of 3 million non-Jewish Polish lives under the Nazis, the same as the number of Polish Jews. Zaryn also denied that there is deeply rooted anti-Semitism in Poland.

Polish prosecutors are considering a libel suit against Jan Gross, a Polish-born Princeton University professor who recently wrote an opinion piece that appeared in the German newspaper Die Welt, in which he claimed Poles killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the German occupation. Gross is the author of several books about Polish atrocities during World War II, including “Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne,” about the 1941 Polish massacre of Jews.

The Polish American Congress, representing 9.5 million Polish Americans, doubts that its countrymen murdered between 350 and 1,000 Jews, as generally estimated by historians, in Jedwabne then. Frank Milewski, who is in charge of documenting Holocaust information for the organization, said German bullet casings were found in the barn where the Jews were burned to death. He said no conclusions could be reached unless the bodies were exhumed. Frank Spula, president of PAC, declined comment.

In America, the Anti-Defamation League has expressed concerns about the government not taking the opportunity to distance itself from expressions of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic acts. Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski responded to a call by the ADL on the government to condemn the burning in effigy of a Hasidic Jew at the November 18 Wroclaw protest by invoking “the Jewish lobby” and calling for Poland to create its own lobby and narratives.

At a November 17 conference in the Presidential Palace, called by President Andrzej Duda, representatives from Polish museums and other cultural institutions were told to galvanize Polish nationalism and to discard narratives that brought Poland shame. Glinski told the gathering that building a national identity was an important component in the PiS philosophy of government.

Notably, there was no E.U. flag in the conference room. According to Marcin Zyla, an editor at the Krakow-based liberal Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, the absence of the E.U. flag was a symbolic rebuke to the secular Western European community, which PiS sees as an existential threat to Catholic Poland.

“The push to create a bright image abroad is not new, but this government is promoting PiS policy much more brazenly and aggressively,” said Jan Grabowski, a Polish-born professor of history at the University of Ottawa, in Canada.

Polish xenophobia was very much evident during the November 18 demonstration in Wroclaw, when demonstrators demonized Muslim refugees, warning that the refugees were not welcome in Poland.

“Raped, beaten and murdered by the Islamic savages,” the crowd shouted. “Do you want it on our streets?” But what was the connection there between that and the burning in effigy of the Hasidic-looking Jew holding an E.U. flag, an action that Poland’s B’nai B’rith was quick to denounce?

“The Jew has always been portrayed in Polish folk culture as an eternal threat and a stranger,” said Piotr Pazinski, editor in chief of Midrasz, a Jewish cultural magazine in Warsaw. “Holding an E.U. flag fortifies their racist belief that Jews are orchestrating an E.U. plot to destroy white Catholic Poland.”

Image: Getty Images:  Powerful Pair: Poland’s new defense minister, Antoni Macierwicz (left) has suggested that the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion may be valid. Prime Minister Beata Szydio (right) has rebuffed demands to revoke his appointment.

So far there has been no official government denunciation of the Wroclaw incident.

“The silence of the government is deafening,” said Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, although he believes the Wroclaw demonstration consisted of a small group of marginal people.

But some Jews outside Poland with years of philanthropic investment in the country are reluctant to stigmatize the new government. Sigmund Rolat, a Holocaust survivor and funder of Warsaw’s new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which also receives government support, urged caution.

“Remember, everything is relative,” he said. “We know about the threat to Jews in Western Europe. By comparison, Poland is a safe haven for Jews. The mayor of Wroclaw has ordered an investigation of the incident, and they know who set the fire.”

Rolat has played a major role in the success of the annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow and is an honorary citizen of his hometown, Czestochowa, for his contributions to cultural life.

The museum’s director, Dariusz Stola, a history professor, stressed that he does not expect any pressure from the government to change the museum’s portrayal of Polish behavior during World War II. “The museum is a huge success,” Stola said.

Repeated efforts to reach philanthropist Tad Taube, whose foundation is a major supporter of Jewish life in Poland, were unsuccessful.

But the xenophobia and bigotry evident in the comments of government officials and in public behavior at pro-government rallies has left many observers pessimistic about the prospects for civil liberties and democratic values in Poland.

In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Mitchell Orenstein, a University of Pennsylvania history professor of Slavic studies, wrote “goodbye to gay rights, in-vitro fertilization, abortion in the case of potential harm to the mother, and other liberal policies.”

As for the future of the 10,000 members of Poland’s organized Jewish community (estimates of the total number of Jews in Poland beyond that core range up to 20,000), Konstanty Gebert, a columnist and veteran of the underground fight against communism, said: “If this democracy is curtailed, Jewish life will shrivel. We are too few to hunker down and weather the storm. Our future may well be on the line.”