Polish anti-refugee protesters burn effigy of Orthodox Jew

‘Poland is for Poles,’ speaker tells hundreds of demonstrators attending event in Wroclaw sponsored by far-right groups

By JTA 19 November 2015, 4:13 pm

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Anti-refugee demonstrators burn effigies of Orthodox Jews at a protest in Wroclaw on November 18, 2015. (screen shot: Gazeta Wyborcza)

WARSAW – A Polish demonstration against taking in Muslim refugees ended with the burning of an effigy of an ultra-Orthodox Jew holding the flag of the European Union.

Dozens protested Wednesday evening in front of the city hall in the western Poland city of Wroclaw.

The protest comes in the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks on multiple sites in Paris that left at least 129 dead. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks and police believe that one the terrorists entered the European Union with the flood of Syrian refugees.

The crowd shouted: “United Catholic Poland! National radicalism! Down with the European Union!” The demonstration was organized by the National Radical Camp and All-Polish Youth.

“Our duty, the duty of lawmakers and the government, is to say that we won’t take a single Islamist in to Poland because Poland is for Poles,” proclaimed one of the demonstration’s speakers.

At the end of the demonstration one of the participants set fire to a previously prepared effigy of a haredi Orthodox Jew. “God, Honor and Fatherland,” the crowd then chanted.

“Recalling anti-Jewish stereotypes proves that we are still divided and that cooperation is not possible,” Piotr Kadlcik, a Polish-Jewish activist, told JTA.