Polish state and local leaders have come out strongly in support of the country’s tiny Jewish community in the wake of the desecration of Warsaw’s historic Jewish cemetery last Friday night.
President Lech Walesa conveyed his sympathy to the Jewish community in a letter sent Tuesday to the cemetery director. And Arkadiusz Rybicki, head of Walesa’s committee on Polish-Jewish relations, laid a wreath at the vandalism site and appeared on Polish television condemning the action.
“He said that if this was just vandalism, it was vandalism of the worst kind,” a Jewish source in Warsaw said in a telephone interview.
“He added that if it was politically motivated vandalism, it was harmful to Poland,” said the source, who requested anonymity.
Local political leaders in Warsaw also placed wreaths and flowers at the site.
The vandalism was played up in the Polish media, which showed pictures of a smashed tomb-stone and numerous anti-Semitic slogans scrawled on graves. A monument to Jewish soldiers was also defaced.
“It seems to be part of a rising tide of violence — not just anti-Semitic, but anti-Gypsy, too,” said the Jewish source in Warsaw. “There is something unpleasant in the atmosphere.”
“Not long before the cemetery was vandalized, a group of Skinheads roughed up Warsaw Rabbi Menachem Joskowicz,” the source reported. “The elderly, white-bearded rabbi fortunately was not seriously injured.”
Stanislaw Krajewski, a Polish Jewish leader and Warsaw representative of the American Jewish Congress, said of the cemetery desecration: “This is a very bad kind of vandalism. It is of concern to all Jews here, as Jewish cemeteries are such an important part of the Jewish reality in Poland. I am very glad of the clear official reaction, which has been well publicized.”
“This is a correct change from the earlier official attitude,” he said, “which was to remain silent in the face of such occurrences, reasoning that it would somehow be bad to speak of such things openly, that speaking about them would play into the hands of anti-Semites.”
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