(Jewish Group)ADL singles out Poland, Hungary, Russia & British Labour Party in Europe anti-Semitic
Authorities in Poland, Russia, Hungary and some lawmakers in Britain’s Labour Party used anti-Semitism for political means, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s anti-Semitism report on Europe published Thursday.
In Poland, presidential candidate Rafal Trzaskowski was the target of “antisemitic rhetoric” this summer during an election in which he lost to the incumbent Andrzej Duda of the right-wing Law and Justice party, ADL wrote in the report titled “Choosing Antisemitism: Instrumentalization and Tolerance of Antisemitism in Contemporary European Politics.”
The report noted that Law and Justice’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said in a television interview that Trzaskowski is “without a Polish soul, a Polish heart and a Polish mind” for allegedly agreeing to review restitution claims for Jewish property lost during or after the Holocaust. Trzaskowski is not Jewish.
The report did not call the remark specifically anti-Semitic.
Asked whether ADL considers Kaczynski’s statememt anti-Semitic, an ADL spokesperson said: “His remarks certainly play into longstanding antisemitic tropes. Juxtaposing ‘Polish’ and ‘Jewish’ in this manner sends a signal that Jews in Poland are somehow not real Poles. Mr. Kaczynski’s statement implies that being a true Pole – as an identity – means not accepting Jewish restitution claims. And, by extension, that being Polish means opposing those Jewish claims.”
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