(AFP) - The American Jewish Committee opened a regional office in Warsaw on Monday to strengthen the area's ties to Israel as well as its transatlantic partnership. AJC's Europe director Simone Rodan Benzaquen told AFP the group also plans to "support the region's Jewish communities, even if they're very small, to work on history," and to address "all the challenges that exist throughout the world like the fight against anti-Semitism. xenophobia and racism."
The AJC bureau in the Polish capital will be in charge of the Visegrad Four group of countries -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia -- as well as Baltic nations Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This marks the group's fifth office in Europe, after those set up in Paris, Berlin, Brussels and Rome. The AJC previously had a representative in Warsaw, but in 2008 that position was scrapped for budgetary reasons.