Polish lawmaker posts cartoon comparing meat industry to Holocaust

A Polish lawmaker at the European Parliament shares on social media a drawing showing cows at a slaughterhouse wearing striped uniforms with yellow stars like the ones the Nazis made Jews wear at concentration camps.

Sylwia Spurek, a 43-year-old Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats representative, shares the drawing by Jo Frederiks, an artist who focuses on animal welfare.

Amid criticism of her actions on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Spurek defends them by quoting “the Jewish Nobel laurate Isaac Bashevis Singer,” as she describes him, who once wrote that: “In their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis.”

She adds about the painting: “Does this art delight me? No, it scares me how people treat other animals and I think that every intelligent person should understand the message of this artist.”

Spurek’s critics charge that the comparison she endorses is offensive to Holocaust victims. People involved in Holocaust commemoration and animal welfare activists often have clashed over the drawing of parallels between the genocide and the meat industry.

From the Depths, a commemoration group in Poland, writes to complain today about Spurek to European Parliament President David Sassoli.

The group’s founder, Jonny Daniels, calls it a “hateful post” and asks Sassoli to take “disciplinary actions” against Spurek and to urge her to apologize to survivors and their families.

— JTA