Definition of anti-Semitism
Definition of anti-SemitismiStock

Holocaust commemoration activists in Poland complained to prosecutors that participants shouted “Jews out” and other anti-Semitic slogans at an Independence Day march in Warsaw.

A small minority of the approximately 60,000 people who participated in the annual march Saturday used racist language, Jonny Daniels, founder of the From the Depths group, told JTA Monday, when he filed the complaint.

“Poland cannot allow this to happen,” he said, adding the racists “hijacked” the event organized each year by the Association for Independence March, a local nongovernmental organization that works with city government authorities to produce the event.

From the Depths documented at least one banner reading “pure White blood” at the event, as well as people shouting, “Seig Heil,” and, “Remove Jewry from power,” Daniels said. He asked police to prosecute the alleged offenders, whom From the Depths could not identify but whom Daniels said the government could easily track down.

If charged and convicted of acts of discrimination or incitement to hatred, participants in the march could face up to three years in prison.

Polish Culture Minister Piotr Gliński condemned the slogans and banners mentioning race in a statement. It did not mention the anti-Semitic slogans specifically.

“We do not support such slogans,” he said, referencing what he termed, “Use of ethnic and racist terminology to describe the concept of the Polish nation.”

Racist rhetoric was documented also at Nov. 11 events outside the capital.

In the western city of Wroclaw, an Independence Day march of approximately 2,000 participants was led by Piotr Rybak, who was convicted this year for burning an effigy of a Jew two years ago at a demonstration against immigration.

Jacek Międlar, a former priest who also led the Wroclaw march, called on the crowd to take extreme action against what he described as forces of evil that threatened the state. He included among them Jews.

“Be ruthless, be radical in the fight against evil, lies, injustice, lawlessness, the destruction of the Polish judiciary, and Talmudism,” he said. Only then, he added, “this war will be won, and no Jewish Marxist horde will take away our flag or the cross of Christ.”

He also said that in Polish synagogues, “Jews are drunk with Talmudic hatred.”