A menorah was lit in the Polish parliament’s lower house for the first time.
Rabbi Shalom Stambler of Chabad-Lubavitch and Deputy Parliament Speaker Jaroslaw Kalinowski kindled the menorah on Monday, the seventh night of Chanukah. The crowned eagle, a symbol of the Polish state, decorated the pre-World War II menorah.
On the same night, representatives of the Jewish community joined Polish President Lech Kaczynski to light a menorah in the presidential palace in what has become an annual tradition since Kaczynski became president in 2005.
Fewer than 30,000 Jews reside in Poland today, compared with 3.5 million before World War II. Approximately 90 percent of Poland’s Jews died in the Holocaust.
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