Residents of a small town in southeastern Poland marked a Christian holiday on Friday by making a large doll resembling a Hasidic Jew, hanging it, beating it up and then burning it.
At the event in the town of Pruchnik, the effigy was dressed in a brimmed hat and Peyos, along with a long nose — a trope used by Nazi Germany and by anti-Semites worldwide to demonize and dehumanize Jews.
After being sentenced to “death” at a “trial”, the crowd cut the effigy down from the tall tree, dragged it on a rope through the town, with the public — including many children — beating it up with sticks. After reaching the local river, the head of the effigy was cut off and the effigy was burned.
The public spectacle was a re-enactment of a Christian tale used to incite violence against Jews for hundreds of years.
Following the sickening event, senior Israeli politician Yair Lapid condemned “hatred of Jews in Poland”.
“Poles should fight antisemitism, not pass laws that deny their role in the Holocaust”, he wrote, adding that the “Netanyahu government should stop stuttering and unequivocally condemn [it].”
Lapid is referring to recent laws passed in Poland which penalizes those who link the Polish nation to the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. Poland claims that since it’s government never directly collaborated with the Nazis Y”MS, it is misleading to use phrases like “Polish holocaust”.
Poland was home to Europe’s largest Jewish community before the Holocaust, and many of it’s citizens participated in the murders. Poland has seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in recent years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignited controversy during a February visit to the country, when he said “Poles cooperated with the Nazis”. His comment, which was misrepresented in some media to include all Poles, triggered a diplomatic spat. It escalated when Israel’s acting foreign minister, Israel Katz, later said that Poles take in “anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”
כמות הבוטים והטרולים שיש לפולין מדהימה אותי כל פעם מחדש. מאז הבוקר הטוויטר שלי מלא בקללות, הבהרות מי הוא יהודה איש קריות (שממש בטעות הולבש כיהודי חרדי – פשוט כי ככה התלבשו אז) וכמובן תמונות של חיילי צהל מכים ילדים פלסטינים. ובכן פולין תצטרכי להתאמץ קצת יותר כדי להשתיק אותי pic.twitter.com/1JBhgKl3N7
— Antonia Yamin אנטוניה ימין (@antonia_yamin) April 21, 2019
In other news, the U.S. ambassador to Poland wished Jews a happy Passover in Polish, and the reaction was a wave of angry comments on Twitter.
Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher also wished Poles a happy Easter on Sunday. By then, Mosbacher had been accused of offending Poland with her Passover tweet and reminded she is serving in a predominantly Roman Catholic country.
Krystyna Pawlowicz, a lawmaker with Poland’s right-wing ruling party, called the ambassador’s tweet, which was posted Friday along with a colorful illustration of items for a Passover Seder, a “provocation.”
Z okazji rozpoczynającego się dziś wieczorem święta Pesach, obchodzonego na pamiątkę wyjścia Izraelitów z niewoli egipskiej, życzę pokoju i radosnego święta! Chag Pesach Sameach, Happy Passover! pic.twitter.com/2ZXvQ1S4i6
— Ambasador Mark Brzezinski (@USAmbPoland) April 19, 2019
Some came to Mosbacher’s defense, recalling that Poland also has a small Jewish population.
Michal Szczerba, an opposition lawmaker, put some blame on the ruling Law and Justice party, accusing it of encouraging Polish nationalists by failing to react to past cases of racism and anti-Semitism.
(Nat Golden – YWN / AP)
בסרטון רואים בבירור כיצד ילדי העיירה מתאספים על מנת להכות את הבובה בעלת הסממנים היהודיים @kann_news pic.twitter.com/ze4NJjAL3m
— Antonia Yamin אנטוניה ימין (@antonia_yamin) April 21, 2019
והנה עוד סרטון – אחרי שהילדים ואנשי העיירה סיימו לגרור את הבובה ״היהודית״ ברחבי העיר הם שרפו אותה pic.twitter.com/ztNHmvwk39
— Antonia Yamin אנטוניה ימין (@antonia_yamin) April 21, 2019
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17 Responses
Wake Up! This is what Poland is really all about. This is Poland-1939 and Poland today.
Yet the Prime Minister bucked Netanyahu’s invitation to Israel to protest his comment as they related to Polish atrocities during the war. Netanyahu should call him and ask him to explain this: not a challenge per se’, just an explanation. Or, alternatively an official call to voice protest. But the facts are thus borne out; loud and clear. It’s not news to us! We knew this all along. There’s a reason most of us have done away with our domestic help.
Nazis.
Surprised? It’s Poland
It’s an important article, but would be better if you could correctly spell the possessive determiner “its.”
Poles have been known to be the biggest collective antisemites for many many decades and centuries.
There’s another story that occurred over Yom Tov, a couple days ago, that YWN may be interested in reporting (if you haven’t already) about the U.S. Ambassador to Poland having tweeted “Happy Easter and Passover to all Poles”. And — get this — Polish lawmakers verbally attacked and denounced President Trump’s ambassador because she wished Poles “Happy Passover” — rather than just Happy Easter — because since almost all the Polish Jews were massacred and there are very few Jews left in Poland, how dare America wish Happy Passover to Poles after they already made sure there are barely any Jews left in Poland.
The indignity.
It’s Poland. What do you expect?
Polish people are antisemitic? stop the pressess!
New joke alert! How many pollacks does it take to beat up a dummy? Hularious
And the real sickening story should be,that hundreds of thousands of Jews who have no self respect flock yearly to that cursed blood soaked country and pour hundreds of millions of dollars into their economy.
Are we really that stupid and dumb? do we really think that these holy tzadikim buried there ,really want us to come back and pray at their kevarim ? NO NO NO ,they absolutely don’t want this,they would rather everyone stay home and light a candle and learn a perek mishnayos at home.
Had we Jews had an ounce of self-respect and a little backbone,not one Jew would have stepped into that cursed blood soaked antisemitic hell hole,what a CHILLUL HASHEM this is
This is what happens when u hang effigies of blacks and of haman and ten sons.
Everyone can justify why they do things , but at the end of the day its a 2 way street.
Who cares? Do people honestly think condemning antisemitism will do anything… hilarious btw
This should remind Jews what poland is about when they choose to support the Polish economy.
This is in Galicia, not Poland. The Galitzyaner were more anti-semetic. Galicya was most of the times throughout history part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Poland was part of Russia or had their own kingdom.
The real sickening story should be,that hundreds of thousands of Jews who have no self respect flock yearly to that cursed blood soaked country and pour hundreds of millions of dollars into their economy.
Are we really that stupid and dumb? do we really think that these holy tzadikim buried there ,really want us to come back and pray at their kevarim ? NO NO NO ,they absolutely don’t want this,they would rather everyone stay home and light a candle and learn a perek mishnayos at home.
Had we Jews had an ounce of self-respect and a little backbone,not one Jew would have stepped into that cursed blood soaked antisemitic hell hole that is Poland and Germany and Hungary,what a CHILLUL HASHEM this is
Chugibugi says:
NO NO NO ,they absolutely don’t want this,they would rather everyone stay home and light a candle and learn a perek mishnayos at home.
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And u know this how?
@Takes2- That’s a ridiculous comparison. Hanging an effigy of a specific person who oppressed the Jews and ended up getting killed, vs. hanging and burning the “Jew”.
Takes2-2tango wrote: “This is what happens when u hang effigies of blacks and of haman and ten sons.
Everyone can justify why they do things , but at the end of the day its a 2 way street.”
Effigies per se are not the issue here. The Poles were supposed to be making and destroying an effigy of Judah, and in itself that is not so terrible (just distasteful for many people, like me). Tasteful or not, an effigy of Judah is not threatening anyone other than Judah, who died 2,000 years ago. They crossed the line by making the effigy look like a particular group of people today and by linking today’s Jews to the people involved in that incident. By linking the effigy to Hasidic Jews, it becomes a threat. Countless Jews throughout history have been killed as revenge for incidents that took place 2,000 years ago. Are you unaware of this?
Jews who hang an effigy of Haman on Purim are commemorating the hanging of a genocidal murderer from almost 2,400 years ago – the Hitler of that generation. They do not link him to modern Persians or make caricatures of today’s Persians, so it is not a threat to anyone today. I personally find it distasteful, but it’s harmless. And nobody is making effigies of black people. Many years ago one idiot made an effigy of Haman that looked like a black person, and it was immediately condemned by everyone and taken down. In this current case in Poland, nobody in that village protested and stopped the ritual. On the contrary, they all participated down to the little children. (Thankfully, the Church condemned it.)