While anti-Semitism is no longer a part of the platform of Poland's major
political parties as it was in the inter-war period, it is still disseminated by
small extremist parties and groups. Radio Maria, a broadcasting network
with millions of listeners, highlights the role of clergy at various levels of the
Catholic Church who openly spread anti-Semitism. Vandalism of Jewish sites
and targets continued in 1998 and attacks by skinheads on visiting Israeli
youth delegations increased. Jewish leaders described the tone of the new
radical right-wing journal Poland Now as "frightening." Although previously
unknown in Poland, Holocaust denial is surreptitiously taking root there. In
early 1998 Polish lawmakers launched parliamentary moves to restore Polish
citizenship to thousands of Jews who left Poland in the late 1960s.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
There are some 8,000 Jews in Poland out of a total population of 39 million.
Some estimates place the number much higher as a result of the growing
rediscovery of Jewish roots among people who were raised as Christians
during the Holocaust, or whose parents concealed their origins during the
communist era. The largest concentration of Jews is in Warsaw, with smaller
communities in Krakow, Lodz, Wroclaw, Szczecin, Gdansk and Katowice.
There are almost no Jews left in the eastern part of the country, where major
Jewish centers such as Lublin and Bialystok once flourished. Close to 3
million Polish Jews perished in the Holocaust.
The Jewish umbrella organization is the Coordinating Committee of
Jewish Organizations (KKOZRP). The Union of Jewish Religious
Communities and the secular Social and Cultural Organization are two other
leading Jewish organizations. The Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH) plays an
important role in documenting the rich history of Polish Jewry. The Lauder
Foundation has been especially active in Poland, sponsoring activities for the
younger generation. Warsaw's E. R. Kaminska Yiddish Theater is one of the
only regularly operating Yiddish theaters in the world.
In 1997 the Sejm (parliament) passed a bill regulating relations with the
Jewish community, and providing for the restitution of Jewish communal
property to existing Jewish communities. Under the new law the community
has succeeded in securing the return of a number of synagogues and
communal buildings in various cities and towns, including the site of a
synagogue destroyed by the Nazis in Gdansk (see also ASW 1997/ 8). The
legislation has been criticized by Jewish groups outside Poland which
contend that the local Jewish community cannot claim to be the exclusive
heir of pre-war Polish Jewry and that the bill attempts to sidestep Jewish
claims by restoring a small amount of property to local Jews.
In early 1998 Polish lawmakers launched parliamentary moves to restore
Polish citizenship to thousands of Jews who left Poland in the late 1960s as
a result of the anti-Semitic campaign of the communists, who scapegoated
Jews for the regime's political, social and economic failures. The tone of the
Polish media, like that of the political leadership, was apologetic in its
numerous discussions of the subject. This initiative was seen as a further step
toward eliminating the historical obstacles to Polish-Jewish reconciliation.
The renewed interest in the 1946 Kielce pogrom, commemorated in
several public and academic events in the past years, and the extended
apology of the government, was seen by anti-Semites as a further indication
of the Jewish "manipulation" of events, in order to press their demands and
dictate their terms to Polish society.

EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS AND ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES
In his "Polish Jews: A Postscript to the 'Final Chapter'," published by the
Institute of the World Jewish Congress, Lawrence Weinbaum concludes that
"anti-Semitism has hardly disappeared and remains a matter of considerable
concern." While it is true that today anti-Semitism is no longer a part of the
platform of Poland's major political parties as it was in the inter-war period,
it is still disseminated by small extremist parties and groups.
Since the 1993 general elections, Poland's extremist organizations have
remained on the fringes of political life, without parliamentary representation.
However, some dangerous undertones have become evident, with
extremist xenophobic nationalists showing an ability to exploit social and
economic dislocations in order to advance their own causes. Extremist
activities attract the attention of the mass media, and their meetings and
rallies are often reported in a sensationalist way.
There was some concern regarding the participation of right-wing, and
even anti-Semitic, elements in the ranks of the broad Electoral Action
Solidarity coalition (AWS) which won the 1997 elections. Several dozen
members of parliament elected on the winning ASW ticket profess right-wing,
nationalist views. However, in 1998 it appeared that the tone of
nationalist and anti-Semitic rhetoric was lower because of Poland's economic
problems and its complex relationship with NATO and the European Union
on the eve of its joining NATO.
The Youth of Greater Poland (MW) , which aims at uniting various
extremist nationalist organizations, expanded its activities in a program that
calls for "promoting Catholicism, national identity and Latin civilization."
Based on the ideology of a "greater Poland," the MW cooperates with the
extremist Polish National Community, led by Boleslaw Tejkwoski, and
with the Polish National Front. While MW's polemical tone is somewhat
more moderate than the vitriolic language used by various smaller groups,
its emphasis on the Polish leadership's promotion of foreign economic
interests, including those of Israel, leave no doubt as to its ideological
position.
A troubling development has been the growing popularity of Radio
Maria, an anti-Semitic broadcasting network covering dozens of stations,
with millions of listeners and an active "listeners' club." The seven-year-old
network led by a priest, Thadeus Riszik, once again highlights the role of
clergy, at various levels of the Catholic hierarchy, who openly disseminate
anti-Semitic ideas. The network, which de facto has gradually turned into a
political movement, warns, inter alia, that Jews are conspiring with the
Germans and Americans to re-partition Poland, a favorite motif of extremist
nationalist circles. Radio Maria has constantly opposed any solution that
would lead to the removal of the crosses at Auschwitz (see below), and
claims that Catholic Poles were the main victims of Nazism and the Jews.
Desecration of Jewish sites and acts of vandalism against Jewish targets
continued. In August 1998 and again in January 1999 the Jewish cemetery in
Krakow was vandalized. In the January 1999 attack (as reported by Central
Europe Online of 22 January 1999), some 57 tombs were destroyed. In
another incident, the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported on 16
February 1999 that the memorial in Warsaw to Jewish deportees sent to the
extermination camps, was defiled with anti-Semitic slogans. Further, in May
1998 ten tombstones were vandalized in the 200-year-old Jewish cemetery in
Warsaw. In the town of Krosno 22 Jewish graves were desecrated, following
which a group of skinheads was arrested.
Extreme right-wing activists, including Leszek Bubel, one of the leaders
of the campaign to erect crosses at Auschwitz, have begun publishing a new
journal called Poland Now, which Jewish leaders have called "frightening"
because of its aggressive anti-Semitic tone. In one article, the author claimed
that a "Polish-Jewish war" was under way and that "Jews must understand
that those who fight with the sword must die by the sword."

ATTITUDES TO THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA
Until recently Holocaust denial, such as that expressed in Western Europe
and in some East European states, was unknown in Poland, the killing fields
and campsites being vivid testimony to the Holocaust on Polish soil.
However, in 1998-99 Holocaust denial appeared to be surreptitiously taking
root. For instance, Dariusz Ratajczak, a popular professor at the University of
Opole was suspended from his post following protests over his book
Dangerous Topics, which claimed that for technical reasons it would have
been impossible for the Nazis to kill people with Zyklon B and that there
was no Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jews. According to various
sources, including the Jewish Telegraph Agency (12 April 1999) and Die Welt
(10 April 1999), the Polish author attacked "Holocaust scholars who are
adherents of the religion of the Holocaust." Ratajczak was not the only
person to deny the Holocaust: in 1998 a group of young neo-Nazis published
an anthology of articles by Western revisionists. It remains to be seen how
Polish society and the legal authorities will react to these emerging signs of
Holocaust denial on Polish soil.
The dispute focusing on the building of a shopping center outside the
Auschwitz camp was used by extremists to accuse the Jews of imposing their
views on Polish society. Likewise, nationalists raised the issue of restitution
of Jewish property in order to stress their opinion that Jews were "squeezing"
and "blackmailing" Poland.
The issue of confiscated private Jewish property continued to remain
unresolved. It was raised during the visit of Polish President Aleksander
Kwasniewski to Israel in January 1999 and at his meetings with Israeli
leaders. Kwasniewski stressed that "our country is ready for a new chapter
in its relations with the Jewish people."
Also during his visit to Israel, President Kwasniewski bestowed the High
Polish Order of Merit on Professor Yisrael Guttman, a fighter in the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising and leading Israeli historian of the Holocaust. The Polish
president stressed that Poland acknowledged its burden of responsibility to
ensure that the memory of Holocaust victims was given all due respect.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM
The formation of the new center-right government in Poland following the
1997 elections raised some apprehensions among the Jewish community and
outside Poland that it would prove less determined than the previous liberal-socialist
government in handling issues related to racism and ethnic hatred,
including anti-Semitism. However, Poland's eagerness to join European
structures of integration, especially NATO and the European Union, as well
as the new government's assurances to Jewish organizations that the process
of returning confiscated property would continue, left little doubt that the
new government's position on these issues would not differ significantly
from that of the previous one.
During his visit to Israel in January 1999, Polish President Kwasniewski
noted that anti-Semitism in Poland was "emerging." It was connected with
very few people, he said; he was very frustrated that such people existed in
Poland and he would try to be active in combating it. In an interview on the
eve of his visit to Israel, he also stated that the "the Polish people do not
believe in anti-Semitic nonsense, except for a small number of extremists."
He added that this residual anti-Semitism must be confronted "with full force."
The Polish media continued its frequent discussions on the nature of
present day Polish-Jewish relations and anti-Semitism in Polish society.
These debates had intensified following the anti-Semitic remarks of the priest
Henryk Jankowski in October 1997 (see ASW 1997/ 8).
Polish-Jewish relations remained overshadowed by the dispute with the
Catholic Church over the 300 crosses erected at the site of the Auschwitz
death camp. The Polish president promised in early 1999 that the dispute
would be resolved in the near future, and that the government was prepar-ing
a new law to preserve the death camps and empower the authorities to
intervene if anything controversial arose. The Polish Catholic Church
distanced itself from Kazimierz Switon, who headed the campaign for the
erection of the crosses. Legal action against him on the grounds of spreading
racial hatred led to his indictment in March 1999. This followed condemnation
of his activities by the Sejm for "betrayal of the people." Among his
publications, Switon issued a leaflet in which he named Germany and Israel
as "pagan Satanic forces" whose aim was the destruction of the Polish nation.